UMG’s Cassandra Tan Talks about Consumer Engagement during the Economic Downturn

Cassandra has over 10 years experience in bringing the voice of the consumers to the business, specifically with global and regional brands in the Asia Pacific. In her current role as Director, Insights and Analytics for Southeast Asia and Korea at Universal Music Group, Cassandra conducts analysis to provide market outlook, identify growth opportunities and assess gaps that impact existing business models to inform commercial plans and innovation partnerships. She partners closely with senior leadership, regional marketing, commercial strategy, and brand partnerships to translate insights to activation plans.

 

This text has been edited for clarity.

Colin Wong: Hi, Cassandra. How are you today? 

Cassandra Tan: Good. How are you, Colin? 

Colin Wong: Not too bad, not too bad. You know, thank you for taking your valuable time out of your busy schedule, especially it being Friday today. I know it’s probably the end of your week, a lot of things to finish unpacking, and it’s great to have you on board, and it’s always a pleasure talking to you.

Cassandra Tan: Same here, Colin. 

Colin Wong: Yeah, I’m actually very excited today, because we are basically going to learn from you how to actually engage consumers in a downtime of the economy. And I’m really, really looking forward, especially in this period of time, in the last 18 months, where we have the pandemic and it affecting globally the economy. In APAC itself, in Southeast Asia, we also see that it’s been greatly impacted. 

But before we get into the nitty-gritty, I think it would be great to maybe take the next couple of minutes to introduce yourself, give our audience a bit of a background. Who is Cassandra Tan, and what’s her experience. Where does she work at the moment. So over to you. 

Cassandra Tan: Thanks. I’m Cassandra. I’m currently based in Singapore. I have more than 10 years of experience in bringing the voice of the consumer to businesses. I’m currently at Universal Music Group; leading insights, analytics, and strategy for Southeast Asia and Korea. 

Insights in the company is being used to support commercial marketing and brand partnerships. So, it’s pretty broad. 

Colin Wong: Great, great, great. Thank you for that, Cass. So, what are some of the strategies that UMG is currently using to encourage consumer engagement? 

Cassandra Tan: Yeah, the music business has shifted from physical, where we were more reliant on CD sales and vinyls, to the digital realm of streaming and content creation today. In a way, the pandemic, people actually engage with music even more, because they are stuck at home. They’re looking for entertainment.

The missing link would be concerts, and the role that physical events play in informing music discovery and engaging with fans. Because before the pandemic, there were concerts, there were gigs, artists meeting with the press, meeting with fans physically. You have backstage passes. Exclusive activities that you can attend when the artist is in town. 

But with all these restrictions, this touchpoint is gone. And physical events have a before and after effect. Before a concert, the fans will listen to the artist’s album. They’ll memorize the songs, so they can sing along during the concert. 

And after the concert, they may continue listening to the album to reminisce about the event. I went to the concert. I want to relive that moment again. These are all interconnected in that sense, like that whole journey of consumer engagement. And without that central piece of that physical event, that before and after is now kind of missing. 

It’s something that we are still trying to make up for, like through virtual performances, partnering with brands. Recently, we have a partnership with Coach, the luxury brand with our label Def Jam. They did a virtual concert experience across Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and Thailand. 

The fans or customers can actually get exclusive links with any Coach purchase, when they want to attend the virtual concert. The question is how we are encouraging consumer engagement during this period of time where there are no concerts, and without those touchpoints; we are still doing it virtually. I won’t say it’s the best way. I mean, humans do need physical – 

Colin Wong: Exactly, connection, yeah. 

Cassandra Tan: – interaction to connect. But that is definitely a new strategy, in a sense, in the interim that we are deploying. But at the same time, it’s good that we are seeing other e-commerce platforms like Lazada and Shopee doing livestream shows almost on a monthly basis, because that’s also where we have our artists featured as well. It wasn’t as prevalent before the pandemic.

And I think, lastly, how we try to kind of innovate during this time is using technology as well. So virtual concert is no longer one-dimensional. It’s not just using a camera and having one background and all. We have Billie Eilish’s virtual concert where you see a lot of special effects being added to the production. And I’m not sure whether you’re aware of the BTS Bang Bang Con last year – 

Colin Wong: Oh, nice. Yeah. 

Cassandra Tan: Yeah. They filmed it as if they’re in a sitcom or like a studio. They moved from one room to another room. 

Colin Wong: Their room, yeah. 

Cassandra Tan: So, it’s like living room, and it’s the whole stage, staging, and there’s fan interactions being shown at the back as well. They will buy merchandise and they will wave it during the concert as well, even though they are not there physically. So again, these are avenues that the music business is using to continue to engage consumers during this time. 

Colin Wong: That’s really good to say, if I can be a little bit naughty, basically UMG encourages their customers to boogie at home, right? 

[LAUGHTER] 

Cassandra Tan: Yeah. Yeah. 

Colin Wong: Well, I mean, honestly, you know, I don’t think there are any other choices that, like you said, there are no physical concerts. So to engage people, to interact with consumers, you need to think of something. And I think it’s a great way that you get people to watch these sorts of things at home. 

And like I said, you can boogie at home, and say, hey look, I’m just imagining myself at home attending a concert. So it’s kind of like creating a different level of experience, you know, using technology, like you said. So I think that’s actually right, you know, because we do see that in the last 18 months, a lot of companies are actually moving to use technology to help to better connect with their customers. So good to see that you guys actually are on top of that at the moment. 

How do you actually ensure the voice of customer, you know, of each culture is actually heard and represented? Because when we talk about Southeast Asia, I’m going to say it’s more multicultural than here in Australia. Though, you know, there are so many different people who live in Southeast Asia in terms of different cultures, different groups, different backgrounds. So how – I mean, what do you guys do? 

Cassandra Tan: Yeah, I’m glad you asked that. Music is very diverse. 

Colin Wong: That’s right. 

Cassandra Tan: It cuts across different ages, different types of personalities. So even within the market itself, like even one country itself, there are different consumer segments that we target for each genre. We think of it even from a genre perspective. 

We can’t use the same strategy to target 16 to 24-year-olds for every genre. They don’t behave the same way. They don’t discover music the same way. They don’t use the streaming platform the same way. 

A Chinese music listener, a Mandopop listener would differ in their behavior, as compared to a K-pop listener or an international pop listener. For example, karaoke is a very critical touchpoint for Mandopop discovery, which you don’t see that coming out for other genres as a touchpoint. Not as salient, for sure. 

The way that we ensure the voice of the consumer of each culture is really to segment the audience to understand where our starting point is. It’s almost like the 80-20 rule. You start off with the audience, which is active fans for us. 

The 20% is a very niche group, but they generate a huge amount of momentum for the business, or for the artists. 20% of the audience give you 80% of your streams, for example. Because you need that initial kind of momentum. 

Whether it is in terms of conversations, whether it is in terms of just getting people to know that this song or this artist exists. And then, with that momentum, you kind of cross over to what we call a crossover audience. Like based on this starting point. It’s similar to like, you know, I guess looking at the fans, e.g., – BTS ARMY. 

You know, when the song drops, immediately the BTS ARMY activates. They start streaming, and they kind of like bring the awareness over. So for us, it’s really understanding who these audiences are. I guess it keeps changing, depending on the genre as well. 

Like in Singapore, for international pop, we actually start off with artist’s fans, and the aim is that you will cross over to the Chinese listening crowd, so that people who do not typically interact with this genre is also aware of the artist and the song. 

So when it comes to hearing a culture and all that, it’s segmenting the audience, understanding where the starting point is, and then that’s where you kind of create the content, knowing where to – which touchpoints you use to activate and start something like a spark in that sense, to hopefully build that into a fire. 

That’s usually how we go about it. So insights actually come in to provide a wider framework of what the consumer sentiments are, how they behave, how they discover music. And then from that discovery, they move on to repeat listening, and like adding it into their own playlists, and then start streaming basically more than once, basically. 

Of course, there needs to be synergy between insights and the local marketing’s creativity as well, because they are the ones being the market. We are also using tools like social listening platforms to know the trends, like what are the conversations, what kind of content is trending in the market. 

To actually join the dots, right? Because you know how they behave. You know their music motivation and need. You know the artist’s fans. But then, linking it back to what is happening on the ground. Of course, connecting with the local market; with marketing’s creativity, you start to bring forth the kind of content to bring it to the audience. 

And I think just giving a few examples of how we usually go about it. It’s like, for example, we have Justin Bieber’s Peaches. It’s an international track, and we are trying to make it go big in Thailand. So, we started with a translation video, and we create the local covers and remixes, certain interpretations of the song. 

And it’s very, I would say, localized content, and it caught on. That starting point caught on to the influencers, and it’s organic. Like we didn’t pay the influencers to do these covers. It was organic. The influencers caught on to it. And then the track went all the way up to number one across Spotify, Apple, and YouTube, and Shazam. 

Colin Wong: Great, oh, wow. 

Cassandra Tan: That’s how, from the understanding, you localize it to the market, because you already kind of know where your strategy is. Because I’m trying to reach the crossover crowd. That was the intention. I know that I’m going to get Justin Bieber’s fans when the music drops. But that’s not my angle. My angle is a different crowd. And therefore, with the angle in mind, I then create the kind of conversation and content to reach that group of people. 

Another example is Olivia Rodrigo, the Sour album. She has breakup tracks. And in Singapore, for Universal Music Singapore, to contextualize it to the local situation, for the song Deja Vu, they changed the song lyrics like from “Strawberry ice cream in Malibu” to “Why is your new girlfriend in the same Tiong Bahru ice cream cafe we went to on a date.” 

Colin Wong: Hey, but triple mocha [INAUDIBLE] I know very well. I love it there. [LAUGHS] 

Cassandra Tan: Yeah, I know. So, they contextualize it to the dating breakup scenario in Singapore. Like from a song that is – I mean, she’s an American artist. 

Colin Wong: So when you break up you go and listen to her song. [LAUGHS] 

Cassandra Tan: It’s quite nice that they talk about – I mean, contextualizing it to like Tiong Bahru ice cream cafe. But also like, you know, saying that it’s a bit embarrassing for you, because I was the one who introduced you to it, and you copied it for every girl that you date. 

So again, you can see the lingo and the target audience that they’re going after, you know – Singaporeans, the Gen Z crowd, and they shift that content to speak to that audience. So that’s how we can integrate the culture. 

Colin Wong: That’s really clever, you know how to localize it. I mean, most of the Singaporeans are very well educated, and also quite westernized as well, I suppose, in a way. And I think that really works really well in Singapore, especially where Singapore has a very high number of expats in it as well. 

So it’s really mixing the cultures, I think. And to bring that insights. But having said that, do you see that the shopping habist has changed in the last 18 months? Or do you think that it is just a continuation of pre-existing patterns? 

Cassandra Tan: I believe with concert, sales of merchandise would have been much better, for sure. Because fan behavior is that they want to collect concert memorabilia to reminisce on the event and experience. But from a wider streaming subscription perspective, it is on an upward trajectory. 

It will be the same for SVOD as well where people continue to subscribe to these services. And sometimes even OK with having multiple accounts, like more than one account. But of course, I think the other pattern that we would see is that now we have the Gen Zs entering the workforce. 

They grew up with streaming services already available in the market. So when they enter the workforce, they are willing to pay for a subscription. It’s almost like a way of life, right? So in that sense, I think the uptick in subscriptions could also be both the effect of people wanting entertainment during a lockdown, but also with this new cohort of consumers entering the workforce, and getting more disposable income. There are challenges, but we see upside as well. 

Colin Wong: That’s really good. I mean, most of the time, you know, people now these days carry mobiles everywhere. And you know, everybody, I think almost 80% to 90% of the population has a mobile of some sort. So I think joining that subscription is really easy these days, unlike if you’re talking about 5 or 10 years ago. If you want to join something, it’s got to be on your laptop or on your desktop, where mobile is still not that accessible. 

So I suppose, in that sense, that’s definitely a technology that’s kind of make it a lot easier for brands like yourself, they’re able to push the product, I suppose, to your customers and provide that easy access to join. 

Cassandra Tan: Yeah. 

Colin Wong: The marketing campaign would most likely need to be a shift from traditional, well, a shift from non-traditional media. How are you targeting these customers? I mean, you talked about Gen Z just now, and these are the people that probably would not work, you know, when they see traditional marketing. 

Like in comparing, I would say probably to our parents’ generation, you know, where everything is old, or newspapers, magazines, and on TVs. And this age, it’s all on laptop, iPads, and mobile phones. Yeah. What’s your thought on that? 

Cassandra Tan: I think what was good during this period of time was TikTok. The biggest change in the past 18 months in the media landscape will definitely be TikTok. 

Colin Wong: Yeah. 

Cassandra Tan: TikTok is a huge game-changer in the market. And it has completely democratized content creation. I mean, in the past, you need at least two years to build up maybe subscriber base on your YouTube channel, or you need at least 10K following on Instagram to have a sizable impact on the influence you have. On consumer engagement. 

Without these numbers, you don’t really – you can’t really get the traction that you need. But with TikTok, because of the nature of the algorithm, you can be famous overnight with a strong piece of content. You don’t need to have a huge following, and yet you can trigger a movement, if the content is good enough. 

You don’t have to make your content look perfect even. It’s using the features that they have on the platform, and it can basically cause a ripple effect. And I think that has completely shifted the landscape. It also changes the way consumers engage with content. 

It changes virality. It changes the way brands engage with consumers. It’s largely triggered by the Gen Z crowd, but it definitely spills over to the millennials. And for Gen Z, it’s like they’re definitely in on this. It’s really sitting well with their values. 

I think Instagram, or rather millennials tend to go to building a perfect portrait of yourself on social media. But then Gen Z is more about authenticity, vulnerability. And for them, TikTok doesn’t need to be perfectly filmed. You don’t have to look perfect. So I think that, in itself, the platform has led to a shift in consumer behavior, the way they engage with content. 

Colin Wong: Oh, sure. 

Cassandra Tan: And then shift this movement to how brands need to be speaking to them. I mean, for us, it definitely changed the way music is being discovered. Music is essential in all these short video creations. So it’s able to ride along with the boom in short video content creation. TikTok started the wave. And now we have YouTube shorts, Instagram Reels, Instagram music. 

Colin Wong: Everybody is joining in. [LAUGHS] 

Cassandra Tan: And you have channels, which are more artist driven. We have been releasing music videos on YouTube, which was happening for a long time, but you have also now channels that are more user-driven, like on TikTok. 

So that will rely on how we pick the right few seconds of the song. Because you only have that few seconds. And how to inspire consumers to co-create or improvise content from the initial content that you have created. 

So in terms of content creation and all that, definitely we have to recognize that these TikTok and short video platform is where you have the consumers being in the driver’s seat. They are the one that’s going to create that momentum in terms of content creation for your track or your artist. 

But how can you start the initial inspiration. How can you use the best part of the song to capture someone’s attention? It’s like once I hear this song here, I want to go and search. I want to find the full song so I can listen to the full track. So that’s our role in terms of like using the platform and driving music discovery. 

Colin Wong: I mean, looking at a lot of different marketing agencies, the strategies they’re using, you know, TikTok is certainly part of the platform that everybody uses at the moment. I mean, if you just look at the KOL, or the influencers, you know? I dare to say, probably over 90% of them are using TikTok. 

And it’s just like almost becoming a number one tool. But if you want to get a mass message out to everybody, that’s the platform that you’re going to be using, because you know that people will be watching it. And everywhere there you go. So I think it is very, very powerful in that sense. 

And I remember years ago, when Facebook just started, right? There’s no other social media. They’re the only one. And everybody uses them. And again, now I think TikTok is kind of exactly the same in that sort of space. To say, hey, look at our users, you know, because everybody is using this, and we’re the number one technology in actually mass communication. 

So it’s very much made me think about that and the similarities that they are all pulling in is you’re talking to mass public members, not across your own country, but really on the global scale, that people are using that. 

And it is becoming very, very powerful in that sense. So if brands are not catching up and with a platform that is actually used, I think it is really a little bit of a loss, in that sense. Yeah. Moving on, what economic development can be considered one of the main drivers for participation, you know, when it comes to – I suppose not necessarily music, but entertainment, because I guess we can consider music as the entertainment. 

So as the overall industry, you know, everything entertainment industry, what’s your thought on the economic development? How it is actually pushing or driving the industry itself? 

Cassandra Tan: There is definitely a rising middle class in Southeast Asia. And that contributes to increased disposable income, and hence, expenditure. I think that’s why Southeast Asia attracts investment and attention. 

But the other factor will be also the convenience and access which e-commerce platforms like Lazada, Shopee, and Tokopedia provide in the market. The prices are now more affordable, and there are no issues with cross-border shipping. So that would, in itself, have grown the market demand. 

The other angle would be the population size in the region. So when it comes to consuming entertainment goods, like streaming, music, and content creation, Southeast Asia benefits from this population size. So there is volume and scale. 

It has also been published by Chartmetric for a few years now that Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia and the Philippines, act as trigger cities. Trigger Cities means that music can be exported from Southeast Asia out to more developed markets. 

In the past, the song is a hit in the US, and then it transfers over to this region. But in today’s world, it can go the other direction. So we can be a trigger region, a trigger city. So when it comes to participation with entertainment goods, it goes beyond buying behavior. 

Like this region also has that creativity to create original content, localized content, and trigger virality in other parts of the world. So I think that is, I guess, referring to the previous point that we were talking about, like TikTok actually democratizing content creation. 

So as long as you have a mobile phone, you can create content, right? And then you can export it to other markets. So you realize that now the language is no longer an issue or a barrier anymore. So a Thai movie or Thai series can be in Top 10on Netflix in Singapore. We have an artist, Sprite – his song’s Ton actually crossed over from Thailand to Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam. 

So it is not like a barrier to success and scalability. So that’s something that the whole economy, with the rising middle class, together with the infrastructure that is available because of the tech companies in this part of the world, as well as the creativity of the markets locally. 

You start to see that actually, it lifts up the importance of the region in terms of, at least from an entertainment goods perspective, it definitely highlights the importance of Southeast Asia. 

Colin Wong: Yeah. When you mention Netflix, you know, what came to my mind is I don’t know if you have been watching Korean drama called Squid Game lately. It’s currently the biggest, ranked number one in the foreign drama on Netflix. 

So you think about, you know, how is a Korean drama doing that well on Netflix, right? And it tells you that really that sort of things are actually changing and pushing all the different cultural boundaries in entertainment. And I think music probably does the same thing as well. 

So tell me, you know, what tools and technologies UMG using to engage your customers with added – with the value added experience, I suppose? 

Cassandra Tan: We believe in partnerships. So a lot of times, when we do a – when you say value-added experience, it’s like, for example, the example that I gave on Coach and Def Jam coming up with a virtual experience or a virtual concert. So that’s one way, partnerships with other brands. 

Colin Wong: No free handbag from Coach. [LAUGHING] Over 50%. Hey, [INAUDIBLE], Coach will give you a 50% discount. [LAUGHS] 

Cassandra Tan: So that’s one way for using, and like I mentioned also earlier, you know, Lazada, Shopee, the live streaming. That’s another touchpoint to kind of value add the whole experience. But beyond that, Universal Music is going to showcase ABBA concert –

Colin Wong: Great. 

Cassandra Tan: – next year. And that is really bringing technology to another level, because we are going to stage a virtual concert using digital avatars of ABBA themselves in London next year. Go book your tickets.

Colin Wong: That’s it. That’s it. 

Cassandra Tan: It’s out in the news already. Yeah. So we are constantly evolving in trying to integrate the technology that exists in the market, and also bring that into the experience to the consumer. 

Colin Wong: Cass, thank you very much for your time today. And before we go, I’m probably going to put you on the spot a little bit. I’ll ask you to, you know, sum up the key message out of our chat today. As a researcher yourself, what would you say would be the number one key to engage consumers? 

Cassandra Tan: I think keeping the pulse in the market. I think social listening, social media platforms give us very quick feedback to what we are putting out, and what we are saying to the consumers, and even how they are feeling. 

Even analytics itself, like you know, streaming behavior, whether they save it to their playlist, whether they repeat the song or not, these are all signals that consumers are speaking to us. Like it is more of us joining the dots and thinking like what does it mean to the business, in terms of how do we plan our next action plan, our strategy to continue to engage our customers. 

I think that’s, well, the key role of insights within the business. But also, making sense of all the data that we have as well. Because today, we do live with a huge volume of data. So it is not just relying on one source, but connecting all the information that you receive, synergize it, and then bring a solution to the business, and help to value add that experience for the customer. 

Colin Wong: Thank you very much for that. I very much appreciate it. You know, it’s been great learning from you today, and seeing how UMG is actually really pushing the boundary to engage your customers. And I’m hoping that when we actually publish this video, a lot of press out there probably will share some consensus, in a sense that we all need to be innovative and find ways that we can actually talk to our customers. 

And I’m sure that people will find it very, very useful as a case study even, to look at how a leading global brand like yourself really pushing research boundaries, and hence, you are making better use, as you mentioned, rightly mentioned that making better use of the data that we are collecting. It’s fantastic having you on board today. And I have to say that even for myself, I have learned quite a bit today. 

Cassandra Tan: Thank you, it was so nice to meet you, Colin. 

Colin Wong: Yeah. Likewise, likewise. You know, and I very much look forward to the next opportunity to have a chat with you on some other topics. Again, thank you again. It’s been fantastic. And yeah, you enjoy the rest of your day, and I look forward to chatting with you again soon. 

Cassandra Tan: Yes, thanks. 

Colin Wong: OK. 

Cassandra Tan: Bye. 

Colin Wong: Thank you. Bye.