That’s the question on the industry’s mind as the once iconic creative shop enters a do-or-die battle to defend its 34-year grip on the Singapore Girl. The brand the agency single-handedly created has finally put its creative business up for pitch.
Without the S$100 million business (US$65 million), Batey may be nothing more than a footnote going forward. Fairnington said as much himself in an interview with Media following his appointment in mid-2006: “If SIA disappeared today, then Batey would be consumed by another WPP company.”
Few are surprised by Singapore Airlines’ decision. While founder and respected adman Ian Batey held the reins, the carrier was comfortable keeping its business locked up with the agency, an anomaly in a city where Government contracts are reviewed at regular intervals.
Clearly the Singapore Girl has been good to Batey and the agency has been good to the flag carrier.
But the playing field changed with Batey’s decision to sell his remaining stake in the agency he founded in 1972 to parent company WPP in 2005.
If anything, the surprise is really in the time it has taken SIA to finally put the business up for pitch — a good 15 months after Batey’s final stake sale in September 2005.
Could this suggest some hesitation on SIA’s part to end what has been a fruitful union for a new bedmate?
It’s not as if the Singapore Girl hasn’t found love elsewhere before. Back in 2001, the client hived off its consumer promotion-based advertising business to Bates.
Agencies that have tried wooing SIA in the past say the carrier can be loyal to a fault. Batey’s campaigns may not bring home Lions, but SIA’s financial spreadsheets show a healthy company despite the turbulence that crops up with increasing regularity.
Whether SIA goes or stays, the bigger question is how the once high-flying Batey could lose so much altitude, not to mention attitude.
Some point a finger at the agency’s decision to focus its business on a handful of accounts, labeling it as misguided. In theory, the strategy looked to be a winner — quality service and attention for the clients who paid the bills. Sadly, the execution of the strategy didn’t match client expectations. One by one, blue-chip clients such as Singapore Tourism Board, StarHub and OCBC headed for the exit.
At a time when agencies were rounding off their product to offer a range of marketing support services, Batey looked like it was stuck in the late ’80s halcyon era of advertising. Hence SIA’s decision to detach its below-the-line business, now handled by Tequila.
Well aware of the stakes, Fairnington spent the latter part of 2006 repositioning the agency into a through-line-offering. But will his efforts pay off?
Or will Batey, which since last year has been merged with JWT’s Contract in most markets except Singapore, also go the way of many of the industry’s great independents? If it does, it will be a sad day indeed for Asian advertising.
To outsiders, Dentsu is a mighty fortress, a master of client conflict — one with international ambitions that has the agency on a mission to replicate its domestic success in China.
But the formidable agency now finds itself reckoning with cultural issues in a market that is still prickly about Japan. In typical Dentsu fashion, details of the incident have been closely guarded.
Reports, however, point to a strike in Beijing, where angry staff have demanded the resignation of their Japanese GM. Clients, however, are likely to have little patience for such dramas, and Dentsu must act quickly to resolve internal issues.
