GroupM to offer clients preferential access to Lazada assets

Lazada has selected GroupM as a 'preferred partner', allowing the agency group to offers clients preferential access and pricing to the ecommerce platform's marketing assets, as well as best practices for managing the online store experience.

The partnership covers all six Southeast Asia markets which Lazada Group serves, and will provide GroupM agencies with best practices on how brands can deliver a leading shopping experience under the LazMall channel, including how to manage their stores and leverage Lazada's sponsored solutions.

The preferential access and pricing to Lazada's marketing assets is a key element of the partnership, which GroupM said is the first agency group partnership of its kind across the APAC region.

Lazada Group’s chief marketing officer Mary Zhou said: “We are pleased to partner with GroupM given their expertise and dedication to the e-commerce space. Lazada Sponsored Solutions enable brands to better interact and engage with customers on our platform using our knowledge and insights about online consumer trends.”

The partnership will be managed by GroupM Commerce, a dedicated team that consolidates the ecommerce expertise across the group. The team envelops ecommerce operations in China and India (led by Jerman Zhang and Suraj Dhillon respectively), Australia (Roger Dunn), Southeast Asia (Toni Ruotanen), as well as local market commerce leads and dedicated agency commerce leads in Mediacom, Mindshare and Wavemaker. GroupM’s chief operating officer for Asia Pacific, Jon Thurlow, will lead the GroupM Commerce capability in addition to his existing responsibilities.

The commerce team will offer an "end-to-end solution" to clients spanning strategic planning, optimising on and off-platform marketing investments (search and display), traffic generation, social, affiliate marketing, KOL, livestream, on-platform traffic management, content and creative development, online store management, analytics and reporting, and ecommerce operations.

The capabilities can be tapped by any of GroupM’s agencies, which includes MediaCom, Mindshare, Wavemaker and Essence.

Ashutosh Srivastava, the CEO of GroupM Asia Pacific, said the agency group has seen a "marked increase" in client activity in ecommerce since the beginning of COVID-19.

"We are pleased to partner with Lazada to further enhance our capabilities," he said.