WFA Global Marketer Week to be held in Kuala Lumpur in 2016

The World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) will hold its annual Global Marketer Week in Malaysia for the first time in 2016 in collaboration with the Malaysian Advertisers Association (MAA). This represents the first time the Global Marketer Week will be held in South East Asia.

It marks WFA's return however to Asia-Pacific for the third time in five years with the 2011 and 2014 events held in Beijing and Sydney respectively. The choice of location marks the WFA's commitment to the region; APAC now accounts for almost 30%[1] of global ad spend, fast-growing markets, such as China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia present huge opportunities to global brands while the world is witnessing an emergence of major brands from the region.

The decision is also recognition of the Malaysian Advertisers Association, a well-established organization with significant local industry presence and credibility and a track record of hosting major events.

Global Marketer Week will take place in Kuala Lumpur from March 14th to March 18th 2016. The showpiece event will be the WFA/MAA co-hosted Global Marketer Conference which will bring together some of the global industry's leading lights to share their strategies for growth in a fast-changing, digital age.

The week will also include a number of side events for both public affairs and marketing professionals designed to showcase how marketers must integrate public affairs priorities into their overall marketing strategies in order to align with fast-changing consumer communities, while seeking to inspire marketers with fresh and innovative examples of great brand marketing strategies and executions across a wide range of categories, media channels and regions.

While the week's events are designed for the global marketer, the programme will include a special focus on the opportunities to be had from this exciting region.

Global Marketer Week is celebrated in a different city each year. The 2015 event was held in Marrakech, Morocco, and previously in Sydney, Brussels, New York, Beijing, Istanbul, Sao Paulo & Rio and Mumbai.

"Asia-Pacific has been the growth engine for many global brands for the last decade and more, so it's no surprise that we are returning to this exciting region. We're thrilled to be partnering with our colleagues at the Malaysian Advertisers Association and look forward to holding a world class event that brings the world's best to Kuala Lumpur while celebrating the best of South East Asian brand building," said Stephan Loerke, Managing Director of the WFA.

"We are delighted to be welcoming the world's biggest client-side marketer event to Kuala Lumpur in 2016. We can guarantee a warm welcome and an insightful event that will lay out the exciting opportunities in Malaysia and beyond," said MAA President, Margaret Au-Yong, Director of Media, Marketing & Facilities at Tune Group, the private investment company whose subsidiaries include Air Asia, a budget airline, Caterham F1 Team, a Formula 1 team and Queens Park Rangers, an English football club.

[1] APAC's proportion of global ad spend is 28.9% in 2015 and estimated to rise to 29.4% in 2016 above that of Europe, 27% in 2015, and soon to overtake North America's share of ad spend which is 31.8% of global spend in 2015. (Warc.com)