Harry Kok, Punde, World Cup and the power of music…

The team at Rocketfuel Entertainment has been hitting the ground ever since their launch late last year. Their claim to fame is they nurture, nourish and align stars so they make commercial sense for brands in the marketplace.
They also work closely with clients to design the creative execution of the campaign by generating conversations with the target audience that ensure brand relevance with the right talent fit.
A part of Astro, Rocketfuel’s mandate is to capture the potential of social influencer talent through influencer marketing. By embracing content and engagement into their ecosystem, they are helping brands win, one community at a time…
We speak to Rocketfuel’s top honcho aka Admiral Moots, about how they are taking cluster marketing to a different level.
On the business front, what are the new notches on your belt?
Since setting up, we have beefed our talent pool to 125 talents. Our focus is really to invest in talent brand equity and develop new and existing IPs. We have introduced a few new IPs such as Club Sawse in collaboration with Harvinth skin and Harry Kok plus 16 Baris that have been a phenomenal success for us. The digital platform transformed itself into a movement when we had our first onground activation for 300 fans and 4,000 showed up.

You guys created the Harry Kok character to disrupt traditional notions of entertainment. How far have you pushed Harry to make your point of the idea being beyond the platform?
We’ve been having a lot of fun with Harry Kok Siew Yok, particularly how far we can push a character to say and do things that are not immediately acceptable by societal standards. Harry is platform-agnostic, and his popularity on social media has paved new opportunities for the character in mainstream media. Not bad at all for a rude little puppet.

Tell us about Harvinth Skin and the ruckus about Punde….
Harvinth is a brilliant and ambitious entertainer who is honest, speaks his mind and makes no apologies for wanting to be just himself. Some dude ranted on Twitter about how his pre-teen cousin said the word ‘punde’ to his parents, and blamed Harvinth for it. He used expletives in his rant against Harvinth and ‘punde’, which we found ironically hilarious. It’s amazing to see how the online community got behind Harvinth to defend him, as his fans know that there’s much more to Harvinth than just being an influencer who says ‘punde’. Harvinth’s content isn’t about being shocking, it’s about being relatable.
You guys manage over 100 influential personalities in beauty, fashion, lifestyle, automotive and parenting across ASEAN while leveraging on Astro’s talent pool and expertise in content creation. How is this making cluster marketing an attractive platform for marketers?
Social influencing is no longer just a Reach playing field. Marketers are more focused on niche audience targeting and it’s important for us to identify talent with the right brand fit and relevance for advertisers. We are able to provide this as we have a pool of talent that cuts across a wide variety of pillars from big name mega influencers right down to niche micro and macro influencers. Rocketfuel would also be able to provide a holistic approach to key brand advertisers that include niche audience targeting through key opinion leaders as well as ADEX bundling with Astro media products.
With the World Cup around the corner, what marketing collaborations are you working on?
We are currently working on the Born to Love campaign with the Astro Group which included the adaptation of Queen’s “I was born to love you” by our talent Syamel who recently won Best Vocal Performance at the Anugerah Juara Lagu (AJL). We are also working on exciting new content with Harry Kok across multiple platforms including TV. Aset Kayamas who are the broadcast partners for World Cup have also extended their campaign through Rocketfuel’s social influencers during this period.
You were lead vocalist for celebrated band Pop Shuvit, can you tell us about the evolution of music as you see it – from mass to niche?
Music has gone through such a dynamic change since I first started out in 2001. We were the first band in Malaysia to ever release a single Online first which was unheard of at that time. Music consumption and even production of music has become much more personalised and accessible.
No one listens to albums or follows artists anymore. It’s all about recommendations and the power of playlists. CDs and vinyls have become niche, highly sought after products for collectors but the regular music enthusiast just swipes onto a playlist.
For us, as a label, now all our focus has been on creating digital-first music content to promote our talents. For example, the pengemis viral campaign we did with Hazama that hit 2.3 million in less than 48 hours was done to promote his new single Aku Bukan Dewa. Even production of music has become so accessible.
A song can be churned out digitally in a matter of hours. When we first recorded, it took us a month to complete a single because we recorded everything on analogue and digitized only for mixing. And you had to have all the musicians in the room together.
Now we can all record remotely regardless where we are, without even meeting. I do believe the magic in making music in the digital age has lost its spark but on the upside it has opened the doors for us to explore and experience more music from all corners of the earth, which puts the power in the hands of the consumer…

Is the Customer at the heart of your Digital Transformation?
On 19th of July, MARKETING will be organising a conference on Customer-Centric Digital Transformation (#DTCX2018) to help you answer that question. The conference will be driven by Paul Stewart who authored the best-seller ‘Branded Customer Service’ and currently is the Special Advisor, Strategy & Transformation for TMI Malaysia. Drawing from his 25 years of diverse experience as a Chief Economist, CEO and consulting in organisational change, transformation and innovation Paul will be sharing his learnings and current trends in this realm.
He will be joined by key thought leaders in the areas of transformation, data analytics, customer service, branding, marketing, digital, human resources and more! Some of the key names who will be joining us include:
* Imran Kunalan Abdullah, Advisor/Principal Consultant – Digital Talent Development & Leadership and People Analytics
* George Aveling, CEO, TMI Malaysia
* Laurence Smith, Head, Asia Region, SmartUP
* Falko Leonhardt, Principal Consultant Transformation Strategy and Change, TMI
and MORE!
Get ready to be inspired by case studies on transformation, honest conversations on driving change and actionable insights you can take back to implement in your organisation.
Date: 19th July 2018
Time: 8.30 am -6.00 pm
Venue: Sime Darby Convention Center, Bukit Kiara
For more information on DTCX 2018 contact Amira today at [email protected] or Book your spot early to avoid disappointment!