KUALA LUMPUR (Oct 11): Astro Malaysia Holdings Bhd, which is aggressively expanding in the digital space, is aiming to attract 16 million new users, as it adapts to an entertainment market that is filled with technological disruptions.

Astro's chief operating officer Henry Tan said the group is undertaking a three-pronged strategy to achieve the target.

"Digital expansion is what we are doing and in simple terms, Astro is undertaking three major thrust, one is expanding from home to individual [users]," he said in his opening keynote for a marketing conference organised by Astro today, titled 'Quake'.

"Today, Astro is in 5.2 million homes: we are telling our team that is good. But let's move on to now winning over individual [users], and our target is to win over 16 million individuals, through whatever devices and screens," he added.

Secondly, Tan said the group is expanding beyond Malaysia, into the Asean region.

"Why are we doing that? Because the only way for us to improve [the] quality [of our products] is to get more scale, and to get more scale, [we have] to go beyond Malaysia. I always tell people Malaysia is not 30 million small, it is actually far smaller than that. When you look at the Malay market, it is actually 16 to 18 million, the Chinese market is even smaller," he explained.

"So we are in a very unique country, whereby our population is segmented, and that is the very real base that we have to work with, which is why we have to go beyond Malaysia," he stressed.

Lastly, Tan said Astro, as a pay TV company, will go beyond selling content.

"We are transacting content, and our goal is to sell beyond content to literally sell everything and anything — shopping, e-commerce, and merchandise," he said.

Digitalisation has been Astro's strategy in defending its leadership in pay TV and content creation in Malaysia against disruptors like Netflix and iflix, and free content providers like Facebook and YouTube.

Tan also said the marketing industry today has to concentrate on value creation for businesses, which is not necessarily cost saving.

"We have enough talent in the finance and procurement team, when it comes to saving money. Marketers have to create value and balance the management, because cost savings are for the short term, and value creation is something long term," he added.

The one-day conference, which was attended by some 500 participants — mainly marketing experts — sought to address the need for marketers to change their mindset in an age of technological disruptions.