Based in Seoul, Korea, Krema Worldwide has created various award-winning ideas to help brands grow, innovate, and transform. With its wide range of strategic and creative talent, Krema derives optimal strategies and crafts globally competitive campaigns.
Having worked with global behemoths like LG Electronics, Samsung Mobiles, Lotte, and Disney Korea, the founder, and CEO, of Krema Worldwide, Dong Jin Son, brings more than two decades of experience with him. Majored in foreign literature, Son joined Korea’s number one advertising agency Cheil Worldwide, where he was assigned to the department of global marketing business. Soon, Son went on numerous business trips across the world and accumulated local marketing insights, and realized that advertising is not just a creative video that appears on the viewer’s screen but it is a solution that solves various concerns of the marketers. At this point of time, Son understood that his role was limited only to large organizations, so he voluntarily left Cheil Worldwide and moved to a three-person startup. Meanwhile, he completed his MBA from a University in Finland and received his doctorate in digital content, which helped him understand clients’ concerns in their broad business
activities. Later in May 2009, he founded his own company Krema Worldwide, focusing on providing specialized services for overseas marketing and clients who can utilize the organization’s capabilities while conducting global marketing.
Path Breaking Services
Since its foundation, Krema Worldwide has successfully established itself and proliferated in sales and size in a yearly manner. As a result, Krema received 17 awards in the last five years in various leading international festivals like Cannes, New York, and One Show. The organization was also ranked among the top 10 across multiple ad journals, including Ad Age and Campaign. “This is proof that our company has been recognized worldwide for creativity, which is the core of advertising. Since January 2019, we have also expanded the area of ad agencies to an e-commerce business that encompasses all participants in the marketing ecosystem.”- says Son. He explains the primary goal of his business is to provide A to Z solutions starting from overseas marketing to sales agents for various small and medium-sized companies that have competitive products but lack an international presence. Krema also has a roadmap to build a very competitive e-commerce platform by connecting clients, individual sellers, digital media owners, and financial & trade businesses.
Working as the backbone of the company, Krema’s planning professionals make the most timely, trendy, and accurate marketing results by learning fast trends. They are the strategists, communicators, and do-it-all creatives who deliver flawless project execution from concept to creation. Additionally, the firm uses current technologies like AI, data, and metaverse to internalize all the internal and external resources in the shortest time possible; depending on that; immediate service can be operated. With its agility and mobility, Krema’s business model is much ahead of other professional agencies.
The Asian Business Environment
Son feels growth in Asia will be much more noticeable in the future, especially in Indonesia, which has witnessed a rapid recovery of the advertising market since late 2020. The proportion of digital advertising costs in countries like India and Indonesia stands around the 20% range. However, with the rapid growth rate of 10%, they will soon become the pillars of the global advertising market. As a result, the traditional North American and Western European markets will start decreasing in the future.
He explains that Asian consumers are highly interested in social networks. They know the process of learning information quickly and communicate actively, even in non-face-to-face situations. Additionally, their huge interest in the latest technologies meant they were the first to embrace Metaverse and NFT to grow their businesses. So, marketers need to study diligently and move quickly because of these unique characteristics of Asian consumers. Ad-agency’s flagship products have also changed along with those trends. Even a decade ago, an advertising agency’s primary job was to plan and produce commercial advertisements for a market mainly focused on TVC and print. Now cut to 2022, most of the organization’s products are YouTube-based video advertising or a website for consumer awareness of corporate brands and content to communicate with consumers over various communities. At present, organizations are paying much more attention to AI, metaverse, and OTT platforms.
Future Roadmap
As the founder of his company, Son’s short-term goal is to successfully pivot from the world of digital content to the new area of media. He says, “Global advertising trend is shifting to non-face-to-face, virtual reality after endemic, enabling agencies to propose the most practical and efficient ad packages the clients need. To this end, the company’s professional staff are working hard on R&D every day and night and, at the same time, continue to challenge through constant internal collaboration. In the mid-long term, it is to properly demonstrate the synergy caused by M&A. It is to successfully combine marketing assets based on IPs of ads, movies, and dramas to develop service products for clients that have never existed before.”
Led by Son, Krema recently ran M&A with Asia’s one of the best new media content production companies Dexter Studio. He feels the synergy of M&A is of utmost importance in realizing Krema’s dreams. It’s also much easier to raise investment funds than it used to be. “I strongly believe skilled tech resources combined with our planning resources would greatly increase the chances of achieving business objectives. We’re not going to stop here, but we’re going to expand our reach further as a group specializing in global digital media and content.”– he says.
Few Thoughts
As an industry, advertising is well known for its cutthroat competition. Recently multiple cases of business failure have emerged due to the pandemic. Son says, “But in the meantime, someone is making money out of this red ocean, leading the market, generating demand. I try to keep Dexter Krema (changed company name after M&A last year) listed in that mainstream. Only diligent research and development, maintaining a young and fast organization, and constantly finding newness and collaborating with outside powers make this possible.” This year, Dexter Krema plans to lead the industry by introducing the latest marketing by combining various partners and technologies related to the 4th industrial revolution. “In addition, we will share the fruits of the fast-growing company with all our stakeholders, helping to create a successful future for each employee, not the fundamental goal of sales as mentioned earlier.”– he added.