 Hello everyone, welcome. My name is Willem Smith. I'm professor of marketing at Asia School of Business. And despite this very strange situation we're all in, we're very happy that you have joined us for our fifth webinar in the series on the day after tomorrow. ASB has launched this series because there's an increased demand among executives and firms on how to deal with this very uncertain and new situation. And that is also for marketing and marketeers and that's why we have today's topic on marketing for a new normal. Marketing for a new normal, is there gonna be a new normal? That is a question. We don't really know. And if we ask, if we look at firms, actually no firm can adequately or accurately predict what will be that new norm. But there is a benefit to find out as one of the first to how that new reality looks like. And so in this seminar we will talk or we will talk about what is currently happening with markets, with consumers, consumers bound at home and we'll offer some perspectives on how to respond to this new situation. And for that we have experts from the business intelligence community join us to provide very up to date insights in what is happening. We have global marketing research company Ipsos joining and sharing their perspectives but we also have the region's largest data analytics and agency firm ADA join us as well. So it is really a true honor to present you our two guests. First we have Jocelyn Pinto who's manager data strategy analytics at Axiata. She is an expert in monetizing data assets for companies. She also was recently asked to join a special task force to help the Malaysian government in combating the COVID virus. And we also have Arun, managing director of Ipsos. Arun prior to coming to Malaysia he built up the financial services business for Ipsos in Middle East and North America. And he is an expert in consumer behavior and customer loyalty. So the third point I'd like to raise before moving to our guests is we'll have Q and A sessions. So you'll see a screen. You can, there's a pop-up version you can select and add to your questions there. You can even vote for the questions you think are really interesting to be asked. So you can upvote the question, yeah? Then I'd like to actually raise two points and that is the questions that I receive as a marketing professor from many firms in dealing with a downturn. So the questions that marketers ask like, what do I do? How do I apply my marketing mix in this change situation? And from marketing science actually there are insights that have been proven and proven again. So there's a large amount of empirical data that can guide you. And the two don'ts in marketing in a downturn are don't cut your marketing budget because by cutting your marketing budget you run the risk to actually lower your share of voice compared to competitors and maintaining that share of voice is critical for growth after the recession. So if you are very much cutting your marketing budget you run the risk of being of your brand being harmed in the long run. Second don't is actually not to apply price promotions. When you can raise the regular price, please do because there's a wider group of consumers and customers that are more price sensitive in a downturn. So when you can, you should do. However, if you cannot do and your price promotion will only be temporary you'll disappoint a lot of people when you need to raise back to the regional of a regular level of prices. So those are the don'ts that you should avoid in dealing with a downturn. But so what is this downturn like? And that's the second issue I'd like to bring up before giving the floor to our guests. And that is whether or not this is not, this is a normal in the beginning. I think in March people were expecting a kind of a V shaped recovery. So after the downturn, there will be a quick rebound of economic activity. And it's more like a V shaped plastic maybe three, four months of recession. However, now since this is taking longer people are getting worried whether this will be an L shaped recession. That meaning a very slow recovery after we have hit button. And so there are kind of two extreme scenarios which gives us uncertainty. But this is a very unusual type of uncertainty that we're faced today. And so let me explain why this is a kind of a different uncertainty. And so if we look at a business science we can compartmentalize the uncertainties in the following three ways shown by kind of these three urns. The left hand urn is a transparent urn and when a blindfolded person would pick a ball from that urn you can actually see what are the chances that she or he will pick up the white ball. So that's 25%. And so in similar to this situation if it was a normal recession you would kind of have an estimation based on past recessions, the 11th recessions that we had since the Second World War and make an estimate on how long it will take. I'm not so sure we can do that now. Maybe it's much more of a second type of a distribution where we cannot see or not gonna predict that much. We can only slowly get ideas as we pick kind of figuratively big balls from the urn. So meaning we slowly inform ourselves with how things are going on a month by month basis or weekly basis. So like purchasing managers index or other consumer confidence indexes. So slowly we get to know what this recession is. And this is what we call in business science a knowable distribution. However, maybe we can think of the COVID uncertainty much more as a distribution an unknowable distribution. So everything that comes out that we experience are basically from very different sets of variables. So we don't know the vaccine, how when the vaccine will come, what are commodity prices, how they will react. There's disturbances in the global supply chain. People adopting more and more online behaviors. So there's a lot of uncertainty. So this could be classified as an unknowable distribution. And I think the nature of this recession is very much like that last one. And what we normally do is when we want to know about what is going on, we would normally go into the streets or see people's behavior. But in today's situation, streets are empty, offices are empty, shops are empty and people are bound at home. So consumers are staying at home and we wonder what is going on. What does the data tell us? And that is why we'll ask our panelists who are experts in business intelligence to share with us what they observe. What does the data tell us about the consumers staying at home? Arun, can I ask you to share your insights from Ipsos? Thank you, William, and all for joining. So William, to answer the questions, we probably try to see it as from three different angles. So because we don't live in isolation, so we need to see it as society, market and individuals as we are, so from these three angles. So let's start from a Malaysian context specifically. So we have, when we started the MCO period, like this is where everybody being aware of the situation, the gravity of the situation as such. So around 95% of the Malaysians actually supported it. And even 94% said that putting the measures that the government has come up with, which is putting the border control and everything is the right thing to do. So when we went to this MCO period, overwhelmingly Malaysians agree to those decisions as such. So we agree as individual as a society, these are the right things to do. And as we see in the next slide as well, which information did they look into? Where did they actually go into to get this information? William, if you can, sorry, if you can change to the next slide. Yes. Sorry for that. So we look primarily for the government in Malaysia. So we know that traditional media in Malaysia has a bigger trust than the news, the new channels and the others as well. But it's quite surprising, like compared to some of the other markets, which is what we see in the US and Europe and some of the other markets. Malaysia do look actually into the government and the government sources or the local health authorities for the information as such. So in a way, what I say, there is a specific source of relevant information that Malaysians are always visible into. So we are not as, there are a few people who are definitely dependent on WhatsApp and YouTube and what's happening in there. But those sources are probably less relied upon than compared to this. So we agree to go to this and we are relying on the same source of information as we look into, right? So as you rightly pointed out, the streets are empty, the shopping malls are empty. So how do we get the information? We have another source, so we have another source, which is our social media platforms. So that's where a lot of conversations happening as we speak and discontinues to happen as well. And it's a treasure trove of information for each and every one of us and all the marketeers and the business people as well. So if you look at the first phase of MCO, you can see that from the 15 to 31st period, the number of mentions related to COVID-19, MCO extension, you can see it's initially spiked somewhere till the 1st of April, till the 21st of March, then it's kind of slowed down as we go in itself, right? So this gives a lot of information for us to say, so okay, what are people actually speaking about? What is happening in their life in itself, right? So we all have knows our lives and people around us, their lives as well, but the wider population what it is. So in the next slide, we can see that the main conversations which is actually happening across different paradigms. So of course, 22% of the Malaysian was speaking about quarantine itself, like no, stay at home, hashtag stay at home, it was trending a lot. And but also on what is the preventive measures? We are actively switched into, okay, now how can we prevent COVID-19? Nothing happened to us. So around 7% of this millions of conversation was about sanitizers and face masks and everything. But there is also this concern of the job losses, which is on the left side, you can see the smaller mention of job losses, but there is subsequent mention of a lot of things, right? So there's a funny post of cats are trying to measure their base size and stuff into attribute into that, am I going to gain weight during this period, right? How do we manage that? How am I going to manage my lifestyle in itself? But there is also mentions of mental health. That's one of the things that it's a bit of a trauma to be hooked up into one place for 24 hours a day. So it's quite a traumatic. So there's a lot of conversations happening online around these topics as well. But we also try to capture it through some of our survey, through online surveys as well. So one thing which we can clearly see is this drastic shift towards the digital and online behavior as well. So what we did is that what used to be offline, we moved it to online to a greater extent. So relations are known to be quite addicted to social media. We spend a lot of time on our Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and all, but imagine 79% with more intensity. So it's much more intensely. We are focusing on social media, following on news and WhatsApp and stuff. And interestingly, 48% almost half of so as are using e-commerce platform, purchase platforms more than what it used to be there. Even the enough food and grocery delivered, you can see 46% of it. So what happened here is that other than those who usually traditionally use, which is what I would probably consider the profile of the millennial generation, younger urban population, even the semi urban and the rural areas are moving online to make this purchases and stuff. So there is a significant movement towards that. That's one, so that we are, for example, creating a digital life for ourselves beyond taking it away from the street, but also see the purchase behavior has changed. So in this big shot, I will summarize in three sections as such, right? So you can see the hand sanitizers. Obvious, that is probably the face masks and hand sanitizers are not much of a friend in the COVID-19 situation. So it has increased 34% more purchase of it, right? Our stand right can food and stuff like that. So what we have seen is three trends here. One part is that what we usually not given much priority, which is like the hygiene priority, which is like disinfectants and sanitizers has started commanding a bigger share of our no monthly budget and valid and stuff like that. So we are allocating more money for that, right? But because of the stocking situation, which happened, which is at the beginning of this period, we're also stocking a lot of past our eyes and can food, which is, if you notice, all of them are cans last for a longer period of time. So we don't know how long this is going to be, how much of further measures are going to be. So at the initial phase, we are stocking up a lot of this kind of non-perishable items as such. So interestingly, we can also see that that very deep prioritized is our duty and personal care. This is, we can also see that the likes of L'Oreal and like of the, you know, the personal care products and stuff like that, they've been affected significantly. And also your clothing garments and say also chocolates and sweets. So we kind of know, because we kind of thought that if we accumulate these at home, this is probably not good for our health. So let's be prioritized this and move forward for the other thing. We do see going forward, the concept of hand sanitizer and loss for a longer period, but some of the other things will fade away. How did the brands perform in this period? So one thing which almost all the brands and companies has focused is avoid not being an opportunist, which is even the likes of Detol and you know, face mask companies and all of them at the forefront of it. They try not to be opportunistic. But then then some of them took the step as in the sense that you can see, you have seen the OD branding, McDonald's branding, which promote about the distancing angle of it. So they restructured their logo for a period to disseminate that information. But predominantly most of them spread positivity, creativity at this period and move as much as possible onto the digital as well. But the main thing which the brands can do is that what we will mention later is that how do we help people past time? Because how do you create new moments into the people's life? So if people have moved away from outside and moved into the home, then how do you create new moments in people's life? So if people are still celebrating birthdays, sometimes weddings and anniversaries and stuff. So you need to build in this new moments in people's life. That's what we can do. And also a lot of our clients realize that this is a time they can reactivate their purpose of brand. They're relieving the purpose of what they stand for in the society and make them more relevant to the consumers in general. This is some of what we can see and the brands have been doing. And a big part of it is the communication because the channel for the communication, the primary channel, which is your TV, social media, everything is still open there. And people are welcoming because they find it as an escapism as well as information. So the discipline and companies are promoting and sharing information on the COVID-19 perspective. So there's useful information at the same time an ad is actually taking away from the usual daily life which they are a bit frustrated about on a day-to-day basis. So the communication is a big part of it. And that's comes to a point that William, that you mentioned at the beginning which I will end with the next slide on this part is that no, it's not the time probably to cut the spending on communication and marketing as well, right? Because when I quickly looked at the data through the last recession phases that we have, companies who've been continuously spending at this period maintain their market share or increase than company who's actually reduced their communication or the marketing campaigns in itself. So I leave with this few thoughts that we had across the globe within episodes is that be authentic and faithful. It's not time that you reinvent yourself as something different. Find the right story to tell the people and strike the right tone. Why strike the right tone? Because this is a, a lot of the people are trying to communicate within the mood of COVID-19 of the caring and compassionate and everything. So if everybody is communicating at the same way and the same line, it is very difficult for you to cut through. But at the same time, you have a other restriction if you're a marketeer is that you cannot be overly cheerful at this point either because then you'll be completely out of the picture either. So this is something you cannot communicate the same way to everybody because you will be cut through you will not get the cut through in the communication itself. At the same time, you need to reach out to the individual group because each personality is in itself. So that's the learnings that we have at this point about how, what people are doing so far, William. Thank you Arun. Thank you so much. Very insightful. Nice, nice developments and tracks that we see of slowly changing or of actually radically changing behaviors and sentiments. I would like to ask Jocelyn to chime in and share what they have found out looking at consumers being locked down in their homes. Jocelyn. Thank you William, thank you Arun. So in maneuvering through this uncertain time, as William has mentioned, it is important for brands to stay connected to their customers to be top of the mind but where do we exactly start, right? So Arun has given a very good overview of why we need to find a new paradigm on how to strike the right tone. As most advertisers try to appeal with the same messaging in this current situation, empathetic, caring. So what we have found at ADA is that different people actually react to the pandemic in different ways. So what we did was we took advantage of the hundreds of millions of consumer behavior data that we have and we analyzed the following parameters. Firstly, we looked at the changing behavior. So we looked at consumers' digital habits before the crisis and sort of compared it with during or after the event by tracking over 400,000 apps across the region and their app categories, such as financial, fitness and entertainment apps. We also looked into their location data to determine who is always seen at home and who are part of the workforce who is still frequently seen elsewhere. So this essentially allowed us to collect insights into how consumers are reacting to the crisis. We found that there is no one way to react. So what we have done really is we have clustered consumers together based on their personas. So in the next couple of slides that I think you've already shown here, I'll walk you through some of the personas which we have developed based on our methodology. Here over in this slide, we have a persona which we call the market observer. So this segment is affluent. They are seen to be at home most of the time and they have heavy usage of financial apps. And if I may direct your view to the chart on the top right, here at the red line, basically illustrates the number of COVID-19 cases which we use as a reference line. Also used as a reference here is the white dotted line which represents the average level of ad usage before the COVID pandemic. So it's at the 100% mark. And if you look at the green line, you can see that financial apps are increasingly used by this segment. They may be concerned with the financial impact of crisis or they may just be looking out for other opportunities. Also visible in the chart here are the three graphs where the ad usage is the lowest. So this coincides with the weekends when the market is closed. And in Malaysia, there is a total of 200,000 individuals that fall under this segment. And just the graph below are just a couple of examples of apps that we use to compute these numbers. They consist of investing, currency exchange and stock exchange apps. So in the next slide, we've got people who are out there who are not too concerned with the market but they are more concerned about still being able to continue shopping using online marketplace when they cannot go out or when offline retailers are not in operation. And in Malaysia, there are 435,000 people who fall under this segment. And looking at the green line, you can see that there has been a spike in shopping app usage at the right about the start of MCO. In the next slide, we have the social citizen. So looking at the use of social and new steps, the numbers were normal until the onset of MCO but it's shot up to reach a new normal of 1,400% more and these are concerned people who gather information from social and official news sources and they share them back with their social circles. About 2 million individuals in Malaysia fall under this category. In total, sorry, we're going to go to the next slide. Thank you. In total, we have developed 11 personas for the Malaysian market. Sorry William, can you go on to the next slide please? Thank you. So yeah, we've developed 11 personas for the Malaysian market purely just by analysing their app categories, their usage and places they have been cited at. And if I may go through each of them briefly in the interest of time, besides three illustrated previously, we have the resilient one who are stuck at home but they remain unfast by the situation. They are just going to wait it out. We also have the bored homebody who are killing their time with entertainment, playing games and watching movies. The next segment is the yearning traveller or what I call the wishful thinkers who are really thinking about the upcoming travels or once the crisis is over and the border reopens. We also have the work from home professionals who are adapting to the now remote workforce as most of us can identify with. The health and nut and the whole fitness field are segments who are taking this long-downt opportunity to revisit their mental and physical balance. And another space, another mental space that we see which is not a really great one which is the sad and confused who are digitally less active than before because let's face it, right? Many people are in fear and trepidation of the adverse economic impact brought about by this whole COVID-19 pandemic. Businesses are forced to shut and people are losing their jobs and this takes a toll on their mental health. And lastly, we have the brave ones who are the front-liners working in essential services and continue doing so to go work on a daily basis. What these personas really highlight is the fact that people are in different mental space in current times and this underscores the importance of brands in reaching their customers with the relevant messaging. Thank you. Thank you, Jocelyn. Very insightful, really nice to show that people are responding differently to the lockdown situation and the spreading of the fear for coronavirus. So, but that will not last forever. We'll have a period after COVID. So on the other side of the pandemic, when people come out of their homes, will we see a new normal? And there's wide debates around that, whether that will happen. And if you systematically analyze what people foresee, you see broadly two schools of thought. On the right-hand side, you see people professing a new, a next new normal. A period after this period of a couple of months of forced experimentation, of online, of working at home, being with kids, developing new habits at home, or in other restricted situations, you will have adopted other habits. And so it would be like what they would say, a press forward button on human history. And that's mainly shown in reports of consultants who predict a more digital, but also at the same time a more distant future. On the other hand, there is a school of thought like, no, there will not be an actual big change. As soon as things are over, the virus has gone, there's a vaccine, people are hardwired and go back, go back to normal. And these critics are mainly saying that the people foreseeing a new normal, they see the change they wanna see. They project that idea of it will be all very different. But the left-hand side school thinks, well, people are hardwired, they will go back. So as we are ASB are very interactive in our classes, in in-person classes, and we cannot do that online. We're building in ways to get feedback, to get interaction from you. So we would like to ask you the question. We'd like to turn to you this question of, will there be a new normal? I will have a vote, a polling coming out, you see it on the screen. I'll give you 30 seconds to give your view on whether there will be a new normal or not. And try the number of votes are coming in. I'll close it in 10 seconds. All right, five, three, two, four, three, two, one. End poll. Okay, and then here I'll share the results. It's quite exciting. We'll see a 90% of you think there will be a new normal. 10% have their reservations. They will say it will not go as fast. It's quite interesting to see that there's variety and maybe between these extreme school thoughts, there's more likely that the truth lies in between of those. So I would like to go back to our panel of experts and ask in this evolving new situation, how should companies respond? With not being certain there will be a big change or there might be a big change? Joslyn, can I ask you to start? Sure, I guess before I answer that question, let's take a look at how some advertisers fair at appealing to cost consumers in the new normal. I'm going to, I'm about to show you a video, but I'm afraid I would have to stop the video prematurely due to time constraint, but I sure hope you can derive some observations out of it. Oh, right, right, right. All right, so generally I think everyone can agree that the advertisements featured in this video all seem the same tune and frankly, not a single one invoked any unique emotion in me that would drive me to action. So what this is really is an attempt to cluster all consumers together with one singular messaging tone and manner. And this just goes to prove my point on the importance of catering your message to different personas. And as we have learned from ADS COVID-19 personas, people are in different mental space and one message does not fit all. For instance, a light-hearted ad will not sit well with people who are depressed and a somber ad would be a mismatch with people who are feeling positive and going back to the three sample personas that I've presented previously, let's take a look at how some of these brands have appealed to each persona. For the market observer, I think DBS has done a really great job in providing economical support and measures by providing relief funds, specifically for business owners and they have actually accelerated contact-free banking. In the adaptive shopper category, Lazada Indonesia aims to provide the assurance of customer experience, peace of mind and reliability to their customers and has even stopped its cash on delivery option. Last but not least is the social citizen where Clorox Philippines has reached out to provide reliable and relevant information by creating shareable tips on disinfection. And in total, there are nine other communication examples that correspond to the other personas but I will not be able to cover them in this section unfortunately. But what's worth noting again really is that different people react in different ways and to be relevant to consumers, we need to understand the different types of personas and to customize messaging and be relevant to all. Very good. Thank you so much for these insights. And yes, being differentiated to people that are in different moods is critical to stay meaningful and relevant. All right. Can I ask Arjun to share his view? Arjun, Arjun, your mic needs to be unmuted. Yes, thank you, William. So one of the benefit of being in different markets is just we can see how each market is evolving and the sphere of the market and the main market which came out of the situation partly is China. So we have done a full degree of how people are going through it. So we have seen that there has been different phases. So it's not just start and stop. It's not like zero and one kind of a situation. So people start with what we call an uncertainty. This is predominantly mostly a pre-lockdown period in each of the countries where there's a lot of fake news. They don't know what it is. They don't know whether it is going to get here and all those kinds of situation. Then they go to stage of preparation. I want to control what I can and that's where we are stocking up or like moving our workplaces to home and stuff happens at that place. Then it's an adjustment period. Okay, this is a new reality. How do I adjust to that situation? Then over the period of it is okay. Now I can just take a step back and relax. So that's where the acclimatization period. Then all of us are waiting. In Malaysia, we are at that stage between acclimatization to endurance, right? Oh, I have to stand there for a bit more and all those things. And then the anticipation of this is going to open up things are going to back to a normal or normal as it is. This is what people are going through. And each stage has a different behaviors. When we look at uncertainty or the preparation stage, we have noticed that people, even if you're familiar with a brand, you will probably go at that stage. This is an example of association with food itself. And this is mostly coming from the social media in itself, right? So if you look at food as, the first stage of, which we say they know the awareness stage of it, we are looking at food as an immunity booster. What can boost my immunity at this stage so that I don't get the virus as such, right? So you go for oranges, you put vitamin C, some of them take flu vaccines, though it might not fully help, they would have an excellent, okay, it might help us a bit in a lot of different contexts in itself, right? So then the phase of stockpiling and panic buying. So that's where your pastas and rice comes into the picture. You get truckloads of, no toilet papers and pasta rice and all those things, that's the stage. Then you have, okay. So I have everything. Now I need to deal with how it is. So that's where the fridge become the enemy because you go back to the fridge and start. So that's a, I know, quarantine snacking place, you know? That's the part. Then you are saying, okay, so now I'm at this place, I have enough time. So what do I do with this? So that's what we call, like, no, we have a different relationship with food itself, like, you know, start cooking at home. A lot of mothers or like, you know, fathers has time to cook for their, they want to test their skills and stuff. So that's what's happened. So this is a very small concept of food itself. And if you can see that this habit and the evolution over a period of what? Six weeks to nine weeks in itself. So imagine the impact this is having on everyone of our face. And the interesting thing is that it is not constant. Not ever think it is like a zero and one concept. It evolved from one stage to the other stage. And each stage we are adopting and developing new habits as it is, right? So I want to zoom into the ones which is now currently relevant to acclimatization, which mostly that we are in, in itself. This is an example from China. For example, so when you are out, you just go and take coffee from any of the Starbucks and, you know, whatever Gloria jeans or whatever coffee shops that we have. Now, when you are at home, you have limited options for coffee. Now you're looking for coffee machines. So there's a huge demand for coffee machines in China so that they get that variations itself, right? So that's one part. On the other side, we are experimenting. You know, we are looking for novelty as it is. So at the early stage of what we call the awareness stage and, you know, adjustment stage, you don't experiment. You go with the family of stuff because I don't have the time for the chance. Now, when it comes to the acclimatization period is that they want a bit of innovation because, you know, can I do something? So that's where the Dalgona coffee, like all of us have heard about it, right? In the social media, so looking at further. And also if you look at Malaysia specifically, the number, the looking for baking recipes, a shootout over that period of time because people are experimenting with food in itself, right? So in itself, a lot of people would have, you know, picked up a new habit in itself. Okay, I know how to bake because after, you know, a lot of press and I have enough times to say. But also in the next slide, when we go to the next stage of it, which is the endurance, which is a bit of a difficult phase, right? Because you, okay, you have said your things and you need now into it for the next few years. Like, and Malaysia is a bit, we all know it's a right measure to do, but even when I get, you know, blip in my heart when 12 days, another extension, then 12 days, another extension, but it is the right thing to do. But this is where people go through the endurance phase. In China, we see that there's, you know, divorce rate spectrum because there's a huge impact on the social aspect. In Japan, they offer separate apartment for, you know, husband and wife to go. But this is an area for the brand to leverage as well. So we have put some examples there as well, is that how do you make it bearable for people? And the brands can make a lot of it, right? For example, specifically, you can engage the kids in there is a, L'Oreal, which we heard in China has come up with a new, you know, testing online. So you can upload your pictures or you can see yourself and then you can try out and stuff. So this is a way of engaging. And I think like people at this stage is looking for an escape system from their day to day life and whatever that they can engage beyond, you know, the Netflix and TV and stuff, they will do and the brand should be able to capitalize on this part of it as well. So, William, if you can go to the next slide, which is going to be that, okay, this is the anticipation phase of it, right? So in Malaysia, when we did the first wave of survey, they were reasonably realistic to say 68% of the Malaysian says that by June, things will be normal. You can see that the Asians are much more positive when it comes to this compared to the rest of the world in the likes of Japan or Germany and the UK and US as well. So 68% of Malaysians are thinking that things will be back to the normal in by the time we reach June in itself, right? But as marketers and the business people, we know that there is no zero to one switch state in itself. And what we understand is that if not, we are looking for more volatility where the brands and the consumers are expected to be more agile. So till we find a vaccine or a proper cure or whether the virus completely vanishes from the face of earth, we will be in a situation which is not something that we want, but the governments will be in a situation so it's locked down some part of the countries, right? Or say for example, retail stores are out but the shopping malls are open or some businesses are open. So this is going to be the mix and match. Look at Singapore as a country as an example, they went, then they came back. So that's going to be the situation. So it's a lot of volatility though the general sentiment has been positive in Asia of the economy will recover quite significantly after the space. And if you look at the Malaysia data at the next slide on it. So we always ask if there's a regular survey and we always ask this question whether the country is in the right direction. And I'm assuming that our Ministry of Health and others have a lot of tremendous amount of job to put it back to the right direction. So if you look at in February 46% of the Malaysia were thinking it is in the right direction. That means the 54% were thinking it is on the wrong track. In March, it has dropped to 35%. But if you look at April, it has almost bounced back to 66%. So this is the amount of optimism which is in the country in itself. Okay, the infection rates are coming down. The then things are getting back to normal, let's say. And another chart is that our country's economic sentiment has been going down for months on months. Right now, for example, which been tracking over the years as well. The only update that we have seen is in April. So despite the situation, so the general consumers are, general public is very positive of what things took, things going to back to the normal and they can start a normal life and the regular part of it. But compared to that, there is probably a long way to go to reach there because unlike this popular expectation, it is not going to be a straight road. There is going to be a lot of ups and downs and we are expected to be much more agile to respond and more creative to be responding to us next six months, which is what we expect is going to be much volatile. Very good. Thank you, Arun. Thank you, William. So thank you. Kind of in sum, because I think we have provided our audience with a lot of insights and ideas, but it kind of in sum before we turn to them in a Q&A, I'd like to kind of summarize what we talked about. We started out with setting the stage on there are two clear zones in recession marketing. Then the idea of we're talking about a different uncertainty, a different recession, and so to uncover what is this new uncertainty is, it's important to stay connected and to keep the finger on the pulse, not maybe through regular channels of information gathering, but now with online data, we can do a lot and polling on the distance or maybe other creative forms of collecting customer intelligence. So through that, you showed great examples of, actually there's a discovery of new moments to connect because people are now in a very different situation and they're exploring doing new habits and new behaviors. So that gives opportunities for brands. ADA showed us that there are actually different personalities, different types of responses from different segments in society. And so they developed the COVID-19 personas. Then ideas for companies to respond, you very much recommend customizing your communications and maybe other variables in the marketing mix to the COVID-19 persona. And so to stay relevant to their specific individual situation. Ipsos then gives us further insight in the phases that people will go through and recommends to anticipate the different phases that lockdown consumers have or will experience following the example that they had from China. All right. Thank you. Can I ask a panel too? So I'll ask the panel now to take a couple of questions. I'm mindful of the time. It's nine, I think it's 44 minutes. We're supposed to close at 45. If you would like to leave, you're welcome to. If you want to stay on for a couple of our questions, I think we'll answer four or five questions online. We can take the ones that are in our chat. We can also answer those specifically with email if you have left your name. All right. So for our first question, I would like to, that we got earlier, I would like to ask Joslyn to talk about the interplay that there are within the personas. Are there is one person, one specific persona? So yeah, absolutely. There can be multiple personas as you probably have already identified yourself with one or two other personas. So humans are essentially manifested at the end of the day. We are interested in a variety of things, some of which we have more inclination to it and others not as much. And this can also be quite situational, speaking from my own experience. So I think that's why advertisers should communicate to the different sides of the side of the consumers to reach and connect at the right moment. And I think just to note a point as well, there are other personas that you can develop out of these, for instance, by overlaying segments on top of personas. And by segment, I mean, categorizing people by fluent. So even tapping into first party data to get, to tie back to your point of sale data or even for fall data to create the segments. So this would create a more comprehensive lens to view your customers. Okay, very good. Thank you. Thank you so much. Then I see in the questions that we receive through different channels also a question specifically for the financial service sector. And since Arun is an expert in the financial services, would you give specific recommendations for the service sector and maybe the market observer persona that ADA was mentioning about? Yeah, thank you, William. So what we know is that one of the areas that we mentioned about food, the other area that people are generally looking at is the financial services itself, the financing. So from a consumer perspective or an individual perspective, how do I manage my money or how do I manage my savings? So you are in this period where there is a risk for your salaries, you have a risk for your income assets. But again, this is not general for everybody. So you have what we call the T20 of Malaysia who can always leverage on their savings and investment. So then whereas you have the B40s and M40s assets, right? So that's across the globe as well. But irrespective, we wouldn't be surprised that everyone would have at least thought about their money and saving in this period of time. So what happens is that some of them has more time to think about it. That's another fact. So you might think about it, but this is a time and you probably want to take some actions around it. So this happens from this two angle to it. So how do I make sure that I have enough savings to support me through this crisis? That's one part of it. So we do see there is, those who have regular income, they would, for their salaries or incomes are not affected. They are saving more monies in their bank accounts, right? So that's where that's one part. And it's quite interesting what Jocelyn has shared in terms of market observer. There's a lot more upticks in terms of looking at the financial products and services online. It has picked up over the period of time. So that means that it is already translated into some of the people's behavior online there because whatever they are thinking they're actually checking online as well. Or like now they are doing some actions around it, right? So when I look at a financial services so that what we would consider is that people trying to optimize whatever that money that they have, that's one group of people that might be looking at, how do I better save to support over the period of time? So that means that after this period, there are going to be a certain group of people which has considerable amount of savings that could be invested on something else. So that's one group of people. There's another group of people who are which we say that they are going to delay their purchases. And for example, if I'm planning to make a major decision of buying a car or buying a house or as such you would want to delay it for another six months period. So there's a group of people who are thinking along that period. There's another group of people who are actually looking for investments at this point of time. If you look at the stock markets across the globe and probably there is an expectation of the property prices and everything. So I have this cash reserve. So I need to be looking at how do I invest it so that I have a better return at a later stage. So they don't have any need for cash for immediate subsistence but they would want to channel it to somewhere else which gives them a bigger return. So if I look at my financial consultant or financial services you need to see from these angle which group is speaking to me within that path so that I tune my product according to that at the overall level. But irrespective, we see that there will be a shift to the online or the digital angle of banking and the financial services in itself. So that because people are more used to it because you cannot transfer money to a friend as a cash anymore. So you have to do it online at this period of time. So you are used to it. But the thing about moving to digital and online banking is it's not a reversible thing because you're already used to the convenience and you will rather stick with it. So this is what I would consider from a financial service assignment. All right, okay, very interesting. Because other industries can learn from this from the financial industries like how to make now the change, the adoption of new technologies that may be helpful in their favor to stick, how can it be in reversible? So maybe before a lot of companies did a lot of efforts to have people adopt new technologies. In this new situation, this lockdown situation people were forced to adopt that had not adopted yet. So I think the shift and the anticipation that companies then should make if digital works in their favor to put efforts on making it irreversible to focus on retention on that behavior. And so learn from the financial industry. So I see that we have many questions. We don't have time to unfortunately to answer all of them but we will take time to answer them online. When we can trace back who sent the message or the email, well actually we can answer all of the questions and send those two people that are interested. I will take one last question. I think it's the most popular question on top as a final question. That question is, are Asia did not follow the don't cut price rule? That is number two. So why was it successful? So in that sense, I think that cutting, so I don't want to talk about a race specifically. I think much more learning is from the fact that you in this period, a lot of the learning can be done actually in applying other marketing mix variables. So instead of easily cutting prices, now we are forced to think of what are the new products to be launched that are meaningful and relevant to this change situation. What are different channels to communicate but also deliver our product services? And so instead of only resorting to pricing and communication, I think this is the time that we would need to think about a broader strategy and have marketing more be involved in decisions on products and on channels and not only on communications. So with that, I would like to thank everyone, the support team, everyone attending. And especially I would like to thank our panelists, Jocelyn Pinto and Arun Menon for these fantastic sharing of their insights. And I hope that you'll stay connected, do stay and follow us for our next seminar, which is next week. Stay tuned and keep in touch. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, William. Thank you, Esb. And thank you all. Fantastic, guys.