Rafiq Razali and Media Prima Digital's vision

Media Prima Digital recently announced a partnership with global digital media company Ziff Davis, a division of J2 Global, to operate IGN Southeast Asia (sea.ign.com) for entertainment and gaming fans in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Just to recap, IGN is the world’s leading media brand for games, movies, entertainment and fan culture, now available in 30 international editions, 26 languages and 115 countries, reaching a global audience of 196 million users across web, video and social platforms.

Marketing Magazine recently had an opportunity to catch up with the CEO of Media Prima Digital, Rafiq Razali, on what he sees on the horizon for the group moving forward.

Firstly, thank you for taking the time to talk to Marketing Magazine. We recently ran the story about Media Prima Digital in their latest tie-up with IGN. Could you perhaps tell us your feelings about this development?

We are very excited to be working with one of the most established gaming brands in the world. This opportunity came at the perfect time for us as we continue to expand our reach in the fast growing gaming & esports space.

This will also grow our regional presence, on top of our partnership with Mashable. I can’t wait for us to unlock the gaming & e-sports market in this region even more via this partnership.

Obviously there is an e-sports component to this latest tie-up, could you perhaps elaborate on this?

IGN mainly focuses on gaming and entertainment which is the core audience segment for esports. South East Asia is a booming market for esports, and we want to be the catalyst to help this industry grow further.

Through our content, we hope to capture a larger audience from this region and eventually, provide exposure to South East Asian talents and our e-sports culture globally.

From an advertising and marketing perspective, latest technologies like 5G, AR, VR and IoT are reimagining how companies connect with their consumers. What’s your take on this with the latest tie-up with IGN factoring into this area as well?

As a brand that embraces technology, IGN will be at the forefront of these fast growing technologies and we look forward to integrate them in our offerings.

Ultimately, consumers come to us to consume quality content, and that will continue to be our main focus, but we are excited to integrate these technologies to further enhance our relationship with our consumers.

What does Media Prima have in store for Malaysian consumers? How will gaming, entertainment and the overall media landscape be altered as a result of this tie-up?

We have had success in our ventures in this space before, with the launch of our mobile games such as Ejen Ali: Emergency & Mak Cun and our local esports portal MyGameOn, which makes IGN a complimentary partnership for us to further expand in this industry.

As a result, Malaysian consumers can look forward to quality gaming content that will be localised and very relevant to our market.

On top of that, this partnership would enable gaming & esports content to breakthrough further into more mainstream media formats like television & radio which are also a part of the Media Prima Group.

We strongly believe that the gaming space is not a niche product, but can potentially be a core offering of the Group.

In terms of digital transformation, how are Malaysian companies coping in this regard? What’s your take on things?

I don’t think digital transformation is an option, but rather a formality for most companies in Malaysia. The only variable is how long it would take for the transformation to occur & the effectiveness of the exercise.

It’s not only about creating digital touch points with consumers, but also how the organisation operates within. Speed, agility & the ability to maximise the use of data are key towards a successful transformation.

Much has been said about how the advertising marketplace these days resembles a seamless ecosystem that fuses strategy, campaign, content, media, social, crm, analytics, web design and e-commerce in an ever-evolving paradigm that can sometimes be quite mind-boggling to navigate. How does a company like Media Prima cut through the clutter?

You need to always start from the customer and then move backwards. We have to be laser focused on putting the customer at the center of everything that we do.

While the ecosystem is very complex and fast evolving, we believe that as long as we are focused on our customer’s needs, we will figure it out.

Looking forward to the future, how do you see the evolution of Media Prima in a marketplace that is constantly evolving at such a rapid pace?

My crystal ball tells me that in the future, Media Prima is an organisation that puts its customers (audiences & clients) at the heart of everything that we do as we utilise cutting edge tools & technologies to enhance our offerings.

Our core will still be content that Malaysians love, but our workflow and customer touch points would be agile & effective.