The leading media, advertising, communication and marketing forum in Asia Pacific is officially opened by
Agung Adiprasetyo, CEO Kompas Gramedia who is also APMF Head of Advisory Board. With a welcoming theme "How do we see us, now?", Agung invited all participants to see how media is positioned today amidst the vast and advanced development of technology.

After the opening speech, Mari Elka Pangestu, Minister of Tourism and Creative Economy of Indonesia, opened with an executive speech encouraging more than 700 media, advertising, communication, research and marketing experts and professionals to grow the creative industry in Indonesia so that it will further advance itself as the nation's backbone industry in the future.

"The government strongly supports forums such as APMF because with this forum, experts and professionals from the creative industry can grow their business and compete in the increasingly competitive global market. Especially with today's vast development of media technology, it is hoped that through this forum, experts and professionals can share and work in synergy with each other to dominate trends and growth in the industry, " said Mari Elka in front of the participants.

As an opening keynote for APMF 2012, Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman Ogilvy Group, UK, presented the topic "Decisive Moment Forward". The topic, which also carried APMF 2012 theme, brought forward the challenges that experts and professionals face in getting ready to face the new paradigm of creativity.

The first day was filled with three expert speakers with engaging sessions that discussed media trend and strategy. The first session opened at 11.40 morning local time. Edward Pank (Managing Director WARC Asia, Singapore) brought up the topic "Integration as Orchestration" as a panelist. This session talked about the success of WARC as a host of media ideas and case studies that are useful for marketeers in generating creative ideas or learning from other marketers' experiences especially on how to utilise the media channels. This was followed by a session titled "Write the Future", which delved into many success stories in digital campaign of fast moving consumer goods as presented by Liam MacManus (Communications Strategy Director, Asia AMET Singapore) and the Mindshare Asia Pacific Unilever team.

In the third session, experts and professionals in APMF 2012 listened to presentations from four of the best start-up companies in Asia. They were selected to present their business ideas and capabilities as the future media platform in the newest APMF session titled BIG BREAK. The four start-ups selected are Gushcloud from Singapore (spokesperson: Vincent Ha), updateterus.com from Indonesia (spokeperson Jonathan M. Luhur), malesbanget.com from Indonesia (spokesperson: Christian Sugiono) and maaduu.com from Malaysia (spokesperson: Dennis Lee). Jerry Justianto, APMF 2012 Vice Chairman, explained, "The spokesperson from these start-ups will be given a five-minute slot to show their capability to become the next brand engagement media platform."

Apart from these sessions, the rest of the day will be filled with a number of exciting presentations from various high calibre speakers such as "New Center of the World" by Hary Tanoesoedibjo (CEO MNC Group), "The King of Asia: Will it Reign Forever" by Mike Savage (Vice President Media Partners Asia, Hong Kong). Cam Walker (Fox International Channels Indonesia) will present "Better Engagement Through Media Convergence". Meanwhile, Rene Menezes (CEO and Co-Founder or Better Digital Solutions Malaysia) will talk about few things that experts and professionals need to be aware of in using social media through "The Hidden Truth about Digital Engagement".

The second day of the APMF 2012 will consist of even more interesting sessions and presentations. Derek Callow (Head of Marketing Google Southeast Asia Singapore) will start the second day with the topic "Project Rebrief: Advertising Reimagined". In his presentation, Derek invites participants to see the new reinterpretations of old commercials with new media technology today.

The session will continue with a panel discussion on "Relationship 2.0", bringing together three panelists: Ed Thesiger (Technical Advisor GroupM Indonesia), Baslir Djamal (Commercial Director Femina Group) and Michael Hartono (Chief Marketing Officer McDonald's Indonesia).

The first session on the second day will be themed around "Building a Bandwidth Nation" with Adi Kusuma, President Director Biznet Networks, as a panelist. The second session Kensuje Joji (Chief Technical Media Producer Hakuhodo DY Media Partners Inc. Japan) will bring up the topic "The New Communication Groove: Location-Based TV Program Delivery". Whilst the third session will cover the topic "Social Commerce" with Stefan Magdalinski (CEO Multiply Indonesia).

Apart from these sessions, there will be various interesting presentations from various expert speakers such as Peter Gontha (Media Visionary and BeritaSatu Group Publisher) who will present the topic "Experience, Engage, Love. Good Innovation" by Akimasa Baba (GM Global Media & Digital Business Dentsu Inc Tokyo, Japan), and the “Automated Future” by David Gould (EVP Global Digital Managing Director Starcom MediaVest Group, US).

"In each lineup of event in APMF 2012, debate between the speakers and participants will be encouraged to enable experts and professionals to discuss and put forward their thinking and experiences. In the last day, interesting topics that are relevant to today's condition await, such as the presentation from Kevin Kelly, a Technology Visioner from the US who is also the founder of Wired Magazine. Kevin will talk a lot about the changing eco-system of the future digital world that will impact our lives as a whole, " Jerry added.