“For some time now, Daum Kakao’s business strategy will be focused on Southeast Asia, and we’re exploring other markets to land our services. The new frontier will be apart from the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia where we’ve already set up offices.”
“At the initial stage, we heavily invested in marketing sections aimed at expanding our international businesses. After the merge with Daum, however, we came to a conclusion that it would be much efficient to cash in on Daum’s extraordinary resources in content business.”
– Lee Sirgoo, co-chief executive officer of Daum Kakao
Lee Sirgoo joined Kakao as the vice president of marketing and PR in 2011. (image: Kakao Corp.)
SEOUL, Dec 28 (Korea Bizwire) – Daum Kakao, South Korea’s largest messenger app provider, is accelerating its business ‘pivot’ to South-east Asia, according to Lee Sirgoo, co-chief executive officer of Daum Kakao, in an interview with Yonhap News Agency which was held on December 28.
Lee said, “TV ads or outdoor billboards only work for so long as they’re there, and people stop downloading (the app) once we take them down,” raising the question over lasting effect from the marketing investment.
He accentuated it was game content that could spur the growths when it comes to pushing other services such as Kakao Talk, the company’s signature messaging app service. In this regard, “localized” strategies tailored to each market will be increasingly important, underscored Lee.
Kakao Corp, operator of the nation’s dominant mobile messaging service KakaoTalk, merged with Daum Communications, Korea’s second largest Internet portal site in an all-stock deal that values the messaging app operator at Won3.1tn ($3bn) in May this year.
By M.H. Lee (mhlee@koreabizwire.com)
