Langton takes over from Margaret Lim who becomes executive chairperson of Carat Malaysia. Carat Singapore's regional business director on the Philips account, Margaret Foo, has taken over his role in the city state.
According to Langton, revenue at Carat Singapore was up 67 per cent last calendar year and his task is to achieve similar results for Carat Malaysia.
Langton said Carat Singapore boosted growth by taking on expanding work it does for existing clients in the area of communications channel planning and interactive marketing.
He also claimed that his Singapore experience would help Carat Malaysia since a number of senior marketers work across both markets, creating opportunities for the agency to leverage client relationships to win business in both markets.
Although Langton has moved to Malaysia, he remains an outspoken critic of Carat's competitors in Singapore, especially the ones that discount services to win new business.
Singapore media agencies should move up the value chain instead of cutting rates to secure business.
"My sense of Singapore is that it is very stagnant and media agencies are not adding value," he said.
"Media agencies are 'lowering their pants' and trying to sell things cheaper and cheaper," added Langton, who is quite new to the media planning and buying business. Carat is the first media agency he has worked for and he only started there about 13 months ago.
Prior to that, he spent a year as a management consultant and completed a management course in California at Insead.
Between 1997 and 2000, he was CEO of 141 Asia Pacific, Cordiant Group's marketing services arm at a time when the agency opened numerous offices across the region including Thailand, India, Korea and the Philippines.
During his last year in that job, he also started Cordiant's interactive agency in Singapore Bates Interactive, which is now CCG.XM.
