LivePerson the NASDAQ listed tech company that invented live chat in 2008, officially announced its new office in Singapore that will serve as a central hub for the Southeast Asia region.

LivePerson’s expansion into the Southeast Asia region will see the company further deepen its existing partnerships with many of its global customers based throughout this region. With approximately 650 million people and some of the world’s fastest growing economies in the digital sphere, the Southeast Asia region is a key plank in the company’s growth strategy.

To further drive company growth and presence in the region, Lim Wee Tee has been appointed as Regional Sales Director of Southeast Asia in July 2019. He will be responsible for spearheading sales and customer success operations in ASEAN, with a focus on expanding the business into the region.

Lim brings 20 years of experience in the technology industry to build, lead and manage teams across Southeast Asia. Prior to joining LivePerson, Wee Tee held instrumental roles in DataSpark, IBM and Symantec.

Looking ahead, LivePerson plans to invest and be fully present in other countries in the region – such as in India, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines, with the aim to double employee numbers to support the growing clientele within the retail, telco, travel, insurance, education and automotive industries.

Founded in 1995, LivePerson has been innovating digital connections between brands and consumers, starting with the invention of live chat on websites. Since then, it has been evolving consumer communication technology and driving today’s new era of messaging, conversational design, and the integration of bots and artificial intelligence (AI) into the customer care of the world’s largest brands.

With its headquarters in New York City, LivePerson has worked with more than 18,000 businesses, including Adobe, HSBC, EE, IBM, L'Oréal, Orange, PNC, and The Home Depot to deliver an AI-powered conversational platform that helps businesses to reduce costs, increase lifetime value, and create meaningful connections with consumers.

Carousell, one of the largest e-commerce platforms in Asia, unveiled a fresh new look which includes a revamped logo, brand positioning and visual identity developed by next generation, creative brand agency, Superunion. The updated look is being rolled out across Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia.

The new branding captures the power of positive experiences and possibilities living in the Carousell ecosystem, an app-first, peer-to-peer, digital marketplace where consumers and businesses exchange goods and services, including personal items like fashion and electronics, as well as cars and properties.

The big idea behind Carousell’s new visual identity is that behind every Carousell transaction is a win-win story. What sets Carousell apart from other online shopping platforms is that two real people, a buyer and seller, come together to make an exchange happen, creating a 'magic moment.' The new visual identity leverages pops of colour, charming illustrations, motion and overlapping shapes to bring these magic moments to life.

The Carousell platform itself has also been updated to be in line with the visual identity, simplifying its user interface and marketing communications to focus on Carousellers’ items and stories.

AnyMind Group announced the establishment of a joint venture, called AnyUp, with SUNNY SIDE UP, a Japan-based integrated communications firm that represents enterprises, celebrities, talent and athletes.

SUNNY SIDE UP was established in 1985 and is currently ranked 20th in the “Global Top 250 PR Agency Ranking 2019” of the Holmes Report. Leveraging on over 30 years of marketing and communication expertise, SUNNY SIDE UP has propelled Japanese celebrities and athletes such as Hidetoshi Nakata to a global scale, and operating the restaurant “bills” from Sydney, bringing the group as a global brand and achieving many groundbreaking results.

AnyUp will look to form a new breed of public relations-tech companies in Japan, leveraging on CastingAsia’s influencer marketing expertise, network and technology, and SUNNY SIDE UP’s content discovery and public relations capabilities.

AnyUp will offer marketers and spokespersons for enterprises in Japan with efficient support for public relations and promotion capabilities whilst leveraging on a scaled influencer network, and provide integrated services such as strategy planning, influencer selection, content production, and campaign analysis. Additionally, marketers and spokespersons for enterprises can now tap on deep analytics and campaign insights through the CastingAsia platform to further integrate influencer marketing with public relations activities. The joint venture will also accelerate the business development of AnyMind Group in Japan.

For celebrities, athletes, content creators and personalities in Japan, AnyUp will offer services including account set-up and operation, content production and editing, monetization support and matching with advertisers.

TikTok has concluded its search for a global media partner, appointing PHD as its Global Agency of Record to manage media planning and buying duties across all channels in international markets outside of China.

As one of the fastest-growing social media platforms in the world, hitting 1 billion downloads globally in February 2019, TikTok’s tremendous success has contributed to its parent company, ByteDance, being named the world’s most valuable startup. The app, which specializes in short-form video content, became the world’s most downloaded iOS app in the first half of 2018 and has remained among the top 4 global apps on all mobile operating systems ever since. The company will now leverage PHD’s global media expertise to drive further growth.

PRecious Communications today announced that it has been appointed by Sustainable Energy Association of Singapore (SEAS) to lead public relations activities around the sixth edition of the Asia Clean Energy Summit (ACES) and second edition of PowerACE 2019.

ACES 2019 is part of the Singapore International Energy Week (SIEW), an annual platform for energy professionals, policymakers and commentators to discuss and share best practices and solutions within the global energy space.

PRecious Communications will drive awareness through media relations, social media and content marketing for the event, which will take place this year at Marina Bay Sands, Expo and Convention Centre from October 30 to November 1, 2019. ACES continues to bring together leaders in the regional solar and renewables space to exchange best practices, debate trends and solutions in the clean energy industry. Regional thought leaders from both the public and private sector will discuss how Singapore can lead clean energy initiatives and shape the future of smart-sustainable cities.

PRecious Communications, a multi-award-winning integrated communications agency, just celebrated its seventh anniversary.

Believing that people are the key ingredient to success, the PR agency welcomed Sangeeta Sakhrani to the senior leadership team as Human Resource Director (Southeast Asia), overseeing hiring across all regions. Sangeeta brings more than twelve years of experience to PRecious Communications, with expertise in the areas of recruitment, employee relations, training, change management, project management, and organisational structure.

Planning to further its headcount by the end of 2019 to support long-term growth and meet the demands of its growing client base, the agency is moving forward successfully and is already a part of the GlobalCom PR Network, an association of 70 independent PR agencies in 60 countries worldwide by serving as its Southeast Asia representative.

Gowthaman Ragothaman, former Global Client Lead at WPP and Global Blockchain Solutions Lead at GroupM, announced the launch of Aqilliz, a blockchain solutions provider for the digital marketing sector.

Aqilliz has been created in collaboration with Zilliqa, a blockchain platform designed with security, scalability, and performance in mind, and aims to address sector-specific challenges in order to facilitate a fairer industry ecosystem underwritten by greater trust, transparency, and engagement.

Having witnessed first-hand friction points across the digital platform ecosystem, Aqilliz leverages on Zilliqa’s technical infrastructure to address three key areas: reconciliation on the digital supply chain; verification and authentication of transaction parties; and risk mitigation in costs and consumer outcomes. This ultimately ensures the fair distribution of value exchanged between advertisers, platforms, and consumers.

First to implement a functional model of sharding as a scaling solution, Zilliqa is a public blockchain designed with performance, scalability, and security in mind. The project has established key partnerships across the fields of digital advertising, financial services, payments, gaming, as well as digital entertainment.

After joining forces with Mindshare in 2017, Zilliqa helped to establish Project Proton, an alliance that explores the benefits of blockchain in addressing issues in programmatic advertising. With Zilliqa as Aqilliz’s blockchain infrastructure provider, the team’s original academic research and technical aptitude will form the backbone of the highly-tailored applications being developed for real-world use.

Incubated and taken to market by Anquan, the Singapore-based technology group, Aqilliz equally benefits from its strong understanding of all the participants across the value chain. Aqilliz will actively collaborate with various partners in the advertising, data, marketing, technology, and analytics industries, and will be onboarding clients by the end of the year.