Conte Defee Marketing (M) Sdn. Bhd. (KOLs.Asia) | APEA - Asia Pacific Enterprise Awards Asia Pacific Enterprise Awards
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FAST ENTERPRISE CATEGORY

Conte Defee Marketing (M) Sdn. Bhd. (KOLs.Asia)

Information about the Company
KOLs.Asia is an end-to-end influencer marketing agency providing macro strategies and marketing solutions to brands. The company identifies and recommends KOLs with the right target audience, manages and executes, provides post-campaign reports with insights at a granular level, and everything in between. The company has over 12 million KOL profiles worldwide in its database, giving them the ability to activate multi-tiered large-scaled campaigns and cross-country events with a short turnaround time.

The company’s vision is to provide an endless, lucrative stream of opportunities for creators. KOLs.Asia envisions to be a leader of the Creator Economy in Asia and is on a lifelong mission to empower creative talents.

The company is guided by the five core values of altruism, passion, empathy, growth, and integrity. These would be the pillars of the foundation for the company to sustain and grow beyond 100 years.

Innovative Corporate Culture & Growth Initiatives
KOLs.Asia observed a revenue growth of 331% in 2021 vs 2020 and has acquired 237% more clients in 2021 vs 2020. Additionally, the company is committed to its long-term goal to empower creative talents that start from the inside out. The team is guided by their five ethe: altruism, passion, empathy, growth & integrity.

KOLs.Asia identifies as a diverse and inclusive community that nurtures and supports its people to strive toward each teammate’s career and personal goals. This is evident as opportunities are given to those who show interest in tasks beyond their designated job scopes. As the company grows exponentially, the people grow alongside it. To further show appreciation and motivate the team, an end of year revenue share with the whole company is provided to each employee. As of January 2022, the company has also included a Department of People & Culture with a Chief Happiness Officer that speaks for the company as a whole and especially for the employees, as opposed to traditional HR representing the management.

Due to the flexible work culture that the company has, it has not been phased by the global pandemic. Instead, the company quickly adapted and transitioned fully to working remotely while gradually introducing a hybrid work mode up until this day. In terms of business models, they have pivoted their social media services to include live streams to provide better value for clients. The company has also rapidly expanded during the pandemic while absorbing valuable talents from other industries that were affected by it.

KOLs.Asia has taken a lean approach and adopts part of a teal organization structure characterized by self-organization and selfmanagement. The company has a foundation for guidance, however, a set hierarchy is not in place as the team feels everyone has the opportunity to contribute ideas for the company. The company strongly believes that everybody is empowered to try new things as long as it is with good intent and entrust to providing growth and opportunity to its people.
Achievements and Impact
KOLs.Asia brings in a lot of young talents and fresh grads. The team grew from over 20 employees in 2020 to over 80 in 2022. The company is also achieving consistent revenue growth since 2018 with 2x YoY revenue growth in 2021, achieving an 18 million turnover.

Many who enter the company as fresh grads have rapidly risen to leadership roles. The company’s CEO, Jason Eng, actively works with other people in the team to constantly educate internal teammates and clients on the rising need for better marketing strategies and approaches in this rapidly evolving web 2.0 (social media) landscape, and learning as the company grows and evolves into different stages.

The company’s theme that was announced during their town hall session in January ‘22 is scalability and quality. Additionally, to work on processes and models to allow the company to scale faster and more efficiently. At the same time, to further improve the quality of all aspects of the company: from campaign quality to client servicing, to internal team capabilities. Another aspect that the company is actively looking into is incorporating tech into marketing, and into the creative field.

Future Direction
Besides giving young talents a space for them to grow and dive deeper into tech-based solutions, the company is also looking at expanding across the SEA region. The company hopes that in 5 years’ time, KOLs.Asia would be a platform with a large enough span that will position the company as one of the largest creator platforms in Asia. To the team, the company is really just starting out. There is a whole lot more in the pipeline that the company is planning for in the coming years. The CEO, Jason Eng is building a company to last at least 100 years and beyond. So in that context, KOLs.Asia is only in its infancy stage.

FAST ENTERPRISE CATEGORY

Conte Defee Marketing (M) Sdn. Bhd. (KOLs.Asia)

Information about the Company
KOLs.Asia is an end-to-end influencer marketing agency providing macro strategies and marketing solutions to brands. The company identifies and recommends KOLs with the right target audience, manages and executes, provides post-campaign reports with insights at a granular level, and everything in between. The company has over 12 million KOL profiles worldwide in its database, giving them the ability to activate multi-tiered large-scaled campaigns and cross-country events with a short turnaround time.

The company’s vision is to provide an endless, lucrative stream of opportunities for creators. KOLs.Asia envisions to be a leader of the Creator Economy in Asia and is on a lifelong mission to empower creative talents.

The company is guided by the five core values of altruism, passion, empathy, growth, and integrity. These would be the pillars of the foundation for the company to sustain and grow beyond 100 years.

Innovative Corporate Culture & Growth Initiatives
KOLs.Asia observed a revenue growth of 331% in 2021 vs 2020 and has acquired 237% more clients in 2021 vs 2020. Additionally, the company is committed to its long-term goal to empower creative talents that start from the inside out. The team is guided by their five ethe: altruism, passion, empathy, growth & integrity.

KOLs.Asia identifies as a diverse and inclusive community that nurtures and supports its people to strive toward each teammate’s career and personal goals. This is evident as opportunities are given to those who show interest in tasks beyond their designated job scopes. As the company grows exponentially, the people grow alongside it. To further show appreciation and motivate the team, an end of year revenue share with the whole company is provided to each employee. As of January 2022, the company has also included a Department of People & Culture with a Chief Happiness Officer that speaks for the company as a whole and especially for the employees, as opposed to traditional HR representing the management.

Due to the flexible work culture that the company has, it has not been phased by the global pandemic. Instead, the company quickly adapted and transitioned fully to working remotely while gradually introducing a hybrid work mode up until this day. In terms of business models, they have pivoted their social media services to include live streams to provide better value for clients. The company has also rapidly expanded during the pandemic while absorbing valuable talents from other industries that were affected by it.

KOLs.Asia has taken a lean approach and adopts part of a teal organization structure characterized by self-organization and selfmanagement. The company has a foundation for guidance, however, a set hierarchy is not in place as the team feels everyone has the opportunity to contribute ideas for the company. The company strongly believes that everybody is empowered to try new things as long as it is with good intent and entrust to providing growth and opportunity to its people.
Achievements and Impact
KOLs.Asia brings in a lot of young talents and fresh grads. The team grew from over 20 employees in 2020 to over 80 in 2022. The company is also achieving consistent revenue growth since 2018 with 2x YoY revenue growth in 2021, achieving an 18 million turnover.

Many who enter the company as fresh grads have rapidly risen to leadership roles. The company’s CEO, Jason Eng, actively works with other people in the team to constantly educate internal teammates and clients on the rising need for better marketing strategies and approaches in this rapidly evolving web 2.0 (social media) landscape, and learning as the company grows and evolves into different stages.

The company’s theme that was announced during their town hall session in January ‘22 is scalability and quality. Additionally, to work on processes and models to allow the company to scale faster and more efficiently. At the same time, to further improve the quality of all aspects of the company: from campaign quality to client servicing, to internal team capabilities. Another aspect that the company is actively looking into is incorporating tech into marketing, and into the creative field.

Future Direction
Besides giving young talents a space for them to grow and dive deeper into tech-based solutions, the company is also looking at expanding across the SEA region. The company hopes that in 5 years’ time, KOLs.Asia would be a platform with a large enough span that will position the company as one of the largest creator platforms in Asia. To the team, the company is really just starting out. There is a whole lot more in the pipeline that the company is planning for in the coming years. The CEO, Jason Eng is building a company to last at least 100 years and beyond. So in that context, KOLs.Asia is only in its infancy stage.