KUALA LUMPUR: Media research company RECMA has updated its research on media agency performance in Malaysia and based on its February 2022 publication, Trapper is reported to have achieved best progression in the Malaysian market over the past three years.
This elevates Trapper’s ranking to third position amongst all agencies and the No.1 independent agency in Malaysia.
Trapper is one of Malaysia’s largest independent media agencies, founded 22 years ago by Sivanathan Krishnan (file pic) and Beverly Jitam. Over the years in business, the local agency has achieved more than RM1bil in total billings.
The recent appointments of Kenneth Wong as the CEO of Trapper Interactive and Lim Sue-Anne as the CEO of Trapper, signified a transformational plan to scale the Trapper group of companies to meet global client standards.
“We’ve achieved the best client portfolio growth of the market at 63% for 2021. We’ve competed a lot and the results are showing – this indicates that we’re young and hungry,” said Sivanathan, who is chairman of Trapper Group.
“We are No. 1 in client stability, which goes to show that our business risks are mitigated across client profiles of various sizes without being over reliant on a few key accounts – we put equal focus on every client, many of them are relationships built over the many years.
“We’ve always known to be the champion of local businesses and we continue to maintain that position as well in 2021.
“Many large networks would eschew local small and medium enterprises (SMEs) but we work wonderfully well with them because we are an SME. We understand their DNA, their culture, and their hunger for growth,” he added.
In line with industry movements, Trapper’s digital activities have also increased substantially following the changes in consumer media behaviour, especially during the prolonged movement control order (MCO).
“The group has been driving business results by simplifying digital media and programmatic buying to deliver precision at scale. This is important in helping clients to address their integrated digital needs from branding to tactical and performance-driven campaign outcomes.
“And we’re extending that service to include programmatic digital out-of-home offering,”.
“We will continue to progress and add value to our clients’ business by constantly refreshing our latest tools and partners, as well as upskilling all our talents,” Trapper Interactive’s Wong added.
At the beginning of 2021, Trapper concluded a rebranding exercise with the launch of a new tagline of “The Growth Engineers” to position the agency as a growth-centric one.
This rebranding initiative aimed to communicate to both the industry and internal stakeholders, on the core DNA of Trapper, which is a growth mindset and culture.
“Our eyes are always on the client’s business. We offer a unique whole-business view approach to their growth challenges. However, we put equal importance on our people. We are centred on our DNA in this exact order – grow yourself, grow the client’s business and very naturally, we will grow our own business,” said Lim, who led the company-wide rebranding exercise.
In line with the burgeoning concern of mental health amongst employees, especially in the agency business, she has shared that the group is taking proactive measures to ensure balance between people’s well-being and business performance.
“Last year, we started to digitalise our business and operations to improve our efficiency, which obviously affects how effective we are. We have amped up on growth with both Trapper’s strength and the launch of SEED, our second integrated media brand.
“This year, our focus is on people-first. We have recently appointed a talent lead who’s also our unofficial happiness champion, because we believe in our people’s best interest, growth, and well-being.
“Based on our own tracker, Trapper Group clocked in 26 wins last year despite the MCO and all employees working from home, which is actually the highest conversion in the industry. This is ahead of every other agency in Malaysia and truly a testament to the resilience of our people.
“They stretched when they were called to, but we cannot take that for granted.
“We announced a two-week pitch detox last year but that was a stopgap measure.
“In the long run, we want the Trapper Group of companies to be efficient machineries for our people, not the other way round,” Lim added.
Trapper Group is the holding company that houses various media and marketing communication brands.
Included in the group are Trapper and SEED, both are integrated media agencies, Trapper Interactive digital media agency, a programmatic brand called Adminer, a media marketplace called Adwork as well as a strategy consultancy outfit called Trapper Consulting.
Trapper Group offers end-to-end integrated media and marketing services for clients’ business growth. The group is optimistic in continued business momentum and growth in 2022 as the nation moves into the endemic phase and is on track to achieving two times revenue target against its 2021 financial year.
RECMA is the only independent company to publish a wide range of media agency notation reports on a global scale and to provide strategic intelligence reference tools to help the top 500 global advertisers in their decision-making and agency sourcing.
It collects and analyses data from more than 1,400 media agencies in 90 countries.
Noteworthy to be a Malaysian-born agency, out of 70 independent agencies evaluated around the world, Trapper has recorded the No. 5 best progression of qualitative-scores over three years.