2000 was a critical year for us. Optimum Media Direction was
launched around the Asia-Pacific region in 1998 and 1999 so 2000 was the
year that we were expecting to mature into a real media network.
We have come through that process extremely well, ending the past year
significantly ahead of budget and have won over USdollars 130 million in
new business both with the three Omnicom agency networks and
independently.
Perhaps more importantly, at our recent management meeting in Kuala
Lumpur, OMD Asia-Pacific really had the look and feel of a true
network.
We have come a long way in the last few years!
The OMD Asia research programme also made significant progress this
year.
We expanded Optimum Impression, our pioneering print survey, into
Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand in addition to the original markets of
Hong Kong and China.
Web Direction, our Internet usage survey, was rolled out into Thailand
and Malaysia.
We continued our involvement in the highly successful New GenerAsians
survey and laid the groundwork for our biggest ever project ROAR, which
will be launched early this year.
In another critical area, we continued to put as much emphasis as we can
on creative use of media.
I believe that this will increasingly be an area that clients will use
to compare one media specialist with another.
We followed up the work that we did last year for Virgin Atlantic and
Sunday, most noticeably with some great ideas for McDonald's and
Sunday's sponsorship of Saltimbanco.
I would expect almost everyone to have had a strong year in the Year
2000.
Asian markets have been recovering aggressively and the dotcom windfall
must have brought better results universally.
