Tesco moves media business from GroupM to Entropia

(marketingmagazine.com.my) – Tesco Malaysia today announced the appointment of Entropia as its new media agency, parting ways with GroupM after three years.

Entropia will now be responsible for Tesco Malaysia’s strategic and tactical media planning and buying in support of the retailer’s consumer-centric brand strategy.

The retailer began the review in July this year, following its announcement of a major transformation to strengthen its business across 56 hypermarkets, nine express stores and market leading online delivery service.

“Tesco Malaysia is currently undergoing a business transformation journey to strengthen our business in the challenging retail industry. We have conducted an overall review of each part of our business, and that included testing the pool of media agencies in the country,” said Tesco Malaysia’s Customer Director, Vivian Yap.

“The quality of pitches we received were outstanding. It was a difficult decision, but ultimately Entropia showed that it understood our commitment to putting customers at the heart of everything we do. We have some exciting plans for the years to come and we believe that Entropia is the right fit to drive our strategies forward and bring them to life,” Yap added.

“Throughout its 14 years in Malaysia, Tesco isn’t just the leading retailer, but they have often been ahead of the competition through innovation. We are honoured to have been chosen as their media agency, against the biggest and the best,” said Prashant Kumar, Senior Partner, Entropia.

“Winning is a joy. But more importantly, it’s a responsibility. We hope to bring our best to raise the game,” he added.

Entropia, since it launched its beta version in June, has won a series of businesses, including Etika’s 18 brands portfolio from Carat (includes Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Wonda Coffee, Calpis, Goodday etc.), Nippon Paints from Mindshare and now Tesco Malaysia from GroupM.

In the past months, the agency announced the appointments of several key industry players including Zuraida Mohamad, Ramakrishnan C.N. (Rama) and most recently Jane Chong, formerly the head of marketing for H&M Malaysia.

In July, it successfully closed its funding, and plans to expand from a 32 to 50 people team by year-end.