PUBLISHED BY: The Star Online
06 Feb 2018
The FOREFRONT team taking a group photo during their royal-themed year-end party last December.
AFTER its success in The Star Outstanding Business Awards (SOBA) 2017, FOREFRONT Studio Sdn Bhd continues to chart its growth.
FOREFRONT is today a 4As-accredited creative agency with access to a network of senior industry leaders both domestically and internationally.
The 4As-accreditation allows it to share its best practices and experiences among its peers.
With changing economic trends, FOREFRONT has learnt to diversify its client base.
The company traditionally maintained a 90% property-based clientele.
In 2018, FOREFRONT began focusing on non-property clients up to 30%.
Custom-designed Pawsperity Ang Pows up for sale for FOREFRONT’s ongoing ‘Welcome Pawsperity’ campaign in support of Paws.
Efforts have also been taken to diversify its offerings into various industries while maintaining its core expertise and focus in property.
By opening its first foreign branch in London, United Kingdom, two years ago, FOREFRONT executed a strategic marketing and branding move, which helped the team to develop a global view of its creative process.
It also frequently sends staff for training courses locally and in the UK.
FOREFRONT also intends to capitalise on its regional economic growth power with ventures into markets in Singapore, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Vietnam and more.
With such plans for growth, new innovations are necessary.
Rewarded for its previous efforts in constant innovation, FOREFRONT believes in revamping and recrafting products and services from scratch.
A Forefronteer from The Emerging Technology Department giving a client a virtual reality (VR) demonstration.
A new department and task force, called the Emerging Technology Department, was created to keep it abreast of changes in digital megatrends for business and brand.
It consists of team members from various departments, set up to concentrate on improving services that anticipate the changing client needs amid a global digital revolution in Malaysia.
Combining that capability with the company’s plan content strategy enables FOREFRONT employees to up-skill themselves and its clients to get enhanced service value and scalable effectiveness.
FOREFRONT believes that charity is connected to the greater environment.
For that, it pledges 10% of its annual profit to charitable causes such as Eco World Foundation and Jeffrey Cheah Foundation, which are also its clients’ charitable causes.
FOREFRONT is also a consistent patron of Promise Home Malaysia, which takes care of the orang asli children’s welfare.
This Chinese New Year, FOREFRONT is partnering with animal shelter Paws, in conjunction with the year of the dog.
The campaign “Welcome Pawsperity”, is aimed at helping Paws raise funds for the caretaking of strays.
It is also well aware of its carbon footprint as a growing business.
Forefronteers get to unwind and bond with each other over a movie night once a month.
All its lighting fixtures within its premises were replaced with LED light bulbs and the company fleet has been converted to Energy Efficient Vehicles in stages.
Forefront aims to solidify itself as a holistic branding agency for the future. This is in addition to setting up an emerging technology department to keep it in-sync with the forefront of megatrends.
It will focus on its expertise in employer and corporate branding by helping clients to live up to their brand promises and by designing brand architecture and content strategies that employees can better understand the organisation they work for.
It also helps provide a reason to believe for all its respective stakeholders.
While the available talent pool in Malaysia is competent, the human resources landscape is also competitive.
Forefront sources for talents who share the same core values and who fit into culture seamlessly.
It believes in creating a work environment free from politics, with a flat corporate structure and is collaborative.
Occasional business and leisure trips overseas with key team members present opportunities for senior management and team members to open up to each other on a personal level.
As of this year, Forefront’s headcount crossed 100 and to maintain and improve its operation efficiency, it plans to be decentralised.
Over the years, training programmes have been implemented to groom head of departments into mini CEOs who can take accountability for their departments while exposing them to all the aspects of a business including human resource and finance.
This can also be a measure to ensure organisation growth is sustainable and remains efficient.
