V47 Entertainment, through its specialist brand and culture agency VIRTUE Asia, today announced a partnership with the microdrama and vertical-first entertainment pioneer, COL Group, to expand brand access to short-form storytelling across South East Asia.
VIRTUE Asia and COL will collaborate to develop, package and distribute brand-funded entertainment opportunities for the region’s marketers, spanning the rapidly expanding categories of microdrama, vertical video and mobile-first narrative entertainment.
The partnership opens up a new range of formats for brands, such as original brand-enabled microdrama, sponsorship of existing vertical entertainment properties and bespoke creator-led activations, designed natively for the screens and viewing habits of South East Asian audiences.
Microdrama and vertical entertainment has emerged as one of the fastest-growing content categories globally, with audiences in South East Asia among the most engaged in the world. According to an Omdia report, Asia’s top five microdrama apps reached a cumulative total of 150 million monthly active users in February last year. Short-form, mobile-first narrative content offers brands new ways to reach consumers with story-led communication that performs differently from traditional digital advertising, generating higher attention, deeper engagement and more shareable creative moments.
“Brand marketers across South East Asia are telling us the same thing, they want vertical formats and microdramas, but they need a partner who understands both the creative craft of the platform and the commercial reality of activating against it,” said Lesley John, CEO, VIRTUE Asia. “This partnership gives our clients direct access to one of the most exciting leaders in the category, backed by the regional brand and cultural expertise our team has been building for years. It is a meaningful step forward for the brand-funded entertainment opportunity in South East Asia.”
David Webster, chairman of Vault47 Group and V47 Entertainment, added: “V47 was created around a simple belief that brands will increasingly need to move beyond advertising and participate directly in entertainment ecosystems audiences actively choose. Microdrama and vertical storytelling represent one of the fastest-moving shifts in entertainment consumption today, and the partnership with COL allows us to connect brands, creators, platforms and audiences in ways that simply weren’t possible before.”
Timothy Oh, Flareflow chief marketing officer and general manager of COL Group, said: “South East Asia is a strategically important market for us, and V47 and VIRTUE Asia bring the brand and commercial capabilities we believe will help unlock its full potential. We see this partnership as a powerful vehicle to drive our Vertical 2.0 strategy by bringing next-generation, premium brand-funded stories to audiences in the region in a way that respects both the creative craft and the massive commercial opportunity.”
COL Group is a China-listed digital entertainment powerhouse with more than two decades of experience in content development, distribution, and IP management. As the first company to pioneer and launch the microdrama format in China, it helped define a new category of short-form storytelling before launching FlareFlow to scale its global ecosystem. Today, FlareFlow commands a massive global footprint, engaging a community of 33 million registered users across more than 200 countries and regions with its mobile-first narrative content.
V47 Entertainment launched in late 2025 as a joint venture between VIRTUE Asia and Goldfinch International focused on developing and commercialising brand-enabled entertainment IP across Asia. Working with COL Group represents an expansion of that vision into the rapidly growing microdrama and vertical entertainment market, combining creative, commercial and distribution capabilities across the value chain.
The partnership will operate across ASEAN markets including Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam, with initial brand campaigns and creative collaborations to be announced in the coming months.
Picture L to R: Lesley John, David Webster, Timothy Oh.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source campaignbriefasia.com ’
