FOCUS: 2001 PREVIEW: Good business ... and good fun - FCB prepares to reap the fruits of hard labour of recent years

This year will be challenging for FCB Asia-Pacific and the industry at large. We have a number of countries that are struggling to build stability in their economies and political environment. This is not just restricted to the Asean members - North Asia, Australia and New Zealand have also stumbled with their economic recoveries. On the brighter side, WTO for China - or its anticipation - should bode well for the Greater China region. Despite the above-mentioned turmoil, we expect FCB Asia-Pacific to thrive in 2001. We are forecasting a 32 per cent increase in revenue above 2000 record levels. This is based on existing business alone - not acquisition. Not bad! Key contributors will be India, Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan. FCB will also be looking to strengthen its creative product, our direct capabilities and our media offering. Creative Product: While FCB has developed pockets of creative strength (Sydney, Auckland and Japan), we still have some work to do. In the latter part of 2000, we appointed Chris Kyme to the position of Asian creative director. Chris will be spearheading this effort to beef up our product. Importantly, to complement Chris, we will be revising our system of evaluating and rewarding country management with creative improvement being a key component. Direct/Interactive: In the fourth quarter of last year, we recruited David Crane to head up FCBi in the region. David's mandate is a challenge. We want to exploit and bring focus to the skill sets we already have in the region. Specifically, database management, classical direct and interactive (design and strategy). No easy task. Our objective is that by mid-year, we will be able to produce a number of case studies that demonstrate different ways we use combinations of these techniques for client advantage. Media: In 2000, we experienced tremendous growth with the significant increase in our media billings volume in key markets. We are now ranked as a top 10 media operation in the majority of Asia-Pacific markets. Additionally, we complemented our media servicing capabilities with several new senior media hires, both at the regional and local level, so that we now have very strong full service media operations in all major Asia-Pacific markets and a growing regional media team based in Hong Kong servicing our multi-market clients. Moving forward into next year, we have the platform to launch FCB's own media specialist brand that will help take our media capabilities to the next level. This will be part of a global True North initiative involving our media operations around the world. It is true to say that we will be one of the last major agencies to make this move, however, the benefit of not rushing into this has been that we have been able to observe the different models established by our competitors and learn from their mistakes. In summary, FCB is going to have a good year - with more than a few laughs along the way.

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