ANALYSIS: Direct - Tempus steeling up for new regional push. Tempus is aiming to offer a complete communications solution

Tempus Group has promoted Mark Austin from chief executive officer of CIA Asia-Pacific, to the newly-created position of Tempus Asia-Pacific chief overseeing all the companies within the marketing communications conglomerate: CIA, strategic marketing consultancy Added Value, design and brand identity firm Brown KSDP and digital agency Outrider. Austin's new role is to manage the group, so all the business units work together as a unified force, allowing Tempus to persuade existing clients to use all the services in the group. To achieve this goal, a new central business unit - Tempus Partners - has been established to work with clients and liaise with all the companies in the group. It is also employing "communication channel planners" to take-over the account planning function currently offered by ad agencies. The strategy behind this move is to strengthen Tempus' relationship with clients by ensuring clients rely more on Tempus Group and less on outside ad agencies. Tempus claims to have the breadth of expertise to solve a client's major marketing problems and wants key clients working with Tempus from "top to bottom", says Austin. In other words, working with Brown KSDP and Added Value early on and then having CIA and Outrider help implement campaigns. Austin argues the benefit to clients is "we're part of the same team so companies in the group work well together". He says one reason Added Value - Europe's largest marketing consultancy - joined Tempus Group was because it could develop a comprehensive strategy for a client. "But the client would then go to their ad agency and the strategy would evolve into something completely different because of some creative idea that was developed". Now that is less likely to occur because Added Value can call on sister company CIA to help with implementation rather than relying so heavily on outside companies, he says. Austin claims Tempus Group is the "agency of the future" and advertising agencies are "dinosaurs". He says it makes more sense for Tempus to have CIA rather than own an ad agency because media buying and planning has come to the fore. "Media buying and planning used to be relatively simple because you only had a few TV stations, magazines, newspapers and so on to advertise in," explains Austin. "There was very little difference you could make with the media selection so it was right to lead with the creative work and focus on that to differentiate your brand." "You also had ad agencies saying to the media planner 'we have three TVCs and some print ads, come up with the media plan'." "So how creative could you really be with the media?" Austin asks rhetorically. "But media fragmentation and new technologies coming in - laptops, mobiles and so on - have changed that." "Media planning has become far more complicated ... consumers have more mediums to choose from. There is so much clutter that marketers have to be more innovative when it comes to media planning. "They need to find new ways to connect brands to consumers" - a role that the Tempus Group is better positioned to do than ad agencies, according to Austin. He says "not having an ad agency allows us to be more objective because we can consider all the communications channels - public relations, direct marketing, internet marketing and so on" - and recommend the best communications solution. It is no surprise that when clients got to an ad agency with a communications problem they generally come up with an advertising solution. The reason for this is obvious - ad agencies are in the advertising business and they have a vested interest to recommend that clients advertise. But Austin says when CIA, for example, pitches for an account it tells the client "we are independent, we're not influenced by any ad agency." AUSTIN'S RISE TO THE TOP OF TEMPUS ASIA-PACIFIC - 1989 Started Austin West Media in the UK - 1995 Singapore managing director of CIA Asia-Pacific. Helped establish the business in partnership with Batey Ads - 1997 Regional managing director of CIA Asia-Pacific - 1998 Appointed to the board. CIA Asia-Pacific ends partnership with Batey Ads and goes it alone - 2000 Appointed CEO of CIA Asia-Pacific. CIA wins Singapore Airlines global master-media contract. - 2001 Appointed CEO of Tempus Group Asia-Pacific, CIA's parent company

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