Trapper Media’s new CEO, Sue-Anne Lim brings her strategy experience to the table

Trapper Media Group, one of the country’s leading media communications agency has hired Lim Sue-Anne as CEO. Sue-Anne who was the Managing Director of M&C Saatchi global’s marketing and branding consultancy Clear KL will be reporting to founder and group CEO Sivanathan Krishnan. 

Coming from a strategy background, one of Sue-Anne’s first orders of business will be to look at a rebranding exercise in the form of a three-year business transformation exercise to look at Trapper Media’s core capabilities.

“Basically expanding or collaborating with the right partners to offer innovative and integrated offerings that makes sense to the client’s business,” she told MARKETING Magazine. “We cannot be everything to the client and that’s not a space we want to be, we want to be innovative where it matters and not for the sake of.”

Moving further into 2021, Trapper aims to be a more business-need-centric brand rather than a media-first company while it restructures its talent resources to mirror this objective. 

As such, Sue-Anne says that Trapper encourages its clients and anyone else interested, to throw their toughest marketing challenge to the group. 

“I’m personally, very energised with that sort of problem-solving opportunity,” Sue-Anne told MARKETING Magazine. “Trapper has been in business for 20 years and is a veteran in the industry, so I can confidently say our network of specialists is well established.”

On what her experience at Clear KL was like and what made her decide to move to Trapper, Sue-Anne said that she met Sivanathan shortly after she accepted the offer in Clear. “We had a chance to meet again 12 months later, and I was very intrigued with this transformational task against the vision Siva has in mind.”

Having been in consulting for the past years, advising C-levels and owners on how to transform their business, she then realised the offer from Sivanathan was her chance to put money where her mouth is.

Being a new team leader during a pandemic

As most businesses continue to work from home in light of the increasing number of daily COVID-19 cases in Malaysia, taking on a new position amidst the current arrangement can be a challenge. Sue-Anne agreed and said that one of the first things the group will be looking at is becoming a mobile-first company.  

“We want to maintain a high level of work productivity, social connectivity and data security as an organisation, with or without the lockdown,” she said. “We should be winning the lockdown this second time round and I’m glad I managed to at least have some one-to-one facetime with everyone as I begin this new journey because people are really important to me – to be present for them and listen to what they are not saying.” 

What can clients expect from Trapper in 2021 with Sue-Anne as CEO?

According to Sue-Anne, the most significant change in the business world is the rapid mega-convergence that is presently taking place. 

“Partners become competitors, competitors become partners,” she said. “To solve a customer problem at scale, the solution could be media, not CRM because the cost will not make sense.”

Similarly, in order to solve a sales problem, a partnership could prove to be a more effective solution over digital advertising and to solve an image problem, relooking at Employer Brand Strategy and communicating a strong Employee Value Proposition could be the answer,  Sue-Anne explained. 

Sue-Anne went on to point out that clients themselves are unsure of what they are looking for, as a trend that is seen happening in the industry is an unfocused call for pitch as digital, media, PR and creative agencies are all invited for the same project. 

“I am not solely from a media background though I have some experience in it; I come from a strategy background, so my approach is holistic and integrated,” she told MARKETING Magazine. “Who knows in the future, we might be working with IT firms to transform marketing departments!”

Hence, moving forward, clients can expect Trapper to be upskilling its talents to be more astutely aware of their business and capable of working across boards with multiple stakeholders within their company.  

“Aside clients, we want to be the missing piece for all our business partners – as a group, we understand creative, digital, media and technology,” Sue-Anne explained to MARKETING Magazine.  “We can help our partners fill in gaps in their offering to their clients as much as they can help fill ours and we want a win-win future and grow the ecosystem.”