FOCUS: YEAR-END REVIEWS - Euro steers clear of dotcom craze

Last year, I wrote that having heavily invested in all the disciplines of communication and integrated our interactive capabilities at the heart of our operations, we were ready to take up the challenge of the new millennium and should achieve 20 per cent growth in 2000. By the end of this year, I realise how difficult predictions are, particularly when they are about the future. Our organic growth will probably be slightly above 18 per cent, but we will achieve it in a very different way than the one we had envisaged a year ago. The first six months of this year were full of promises, fuelled by the conjunction of a rosy economic outlook and the incredible growth of the dotcom businesses feeding all the traditional channels with the magnificence of their ad budgets. In March, the Nasdaq rose to record heights. In March, our biggest challenge was to stop our top interactive talents from leaving our Sydney, Hong Kong, Seoul and Singapore agencies, and succumb to the stock option plans of startup mermaids promising them initial public offerings, fame and fortune in less than a year. Being a particularly technology-driven network, we had more than our fair share of the new economy and its mermaids, and by July, 70 per cent of our USdollars 80 million new business billings tally was in the new economy. This is when we decided that our mission should be more about applying our integrated interactive ability to help the old economy get up to speed with the new world, and less about contributing to the dotcom craze. Not because of any philanthropic streak in our business model, but because we could see some clouds in this incredibly blue virtual sky. By the end of this year, our new business effort will still be USdollars 80 million worth in billings, but this is real as opposed to virtual, as dotcom businesses represent only 15 per cent of it. And our interactive talents are happy with cash. And the Nasdaq is lower than it was a year ago. Parallel to a return to brick-and-mortar brands, our Hong Kong and Singapore agencies have seen a return on their creative investments of last year in the form of significant creative awards collected at major international events, but also at local events where they finished in the top creative league, reminding everybody that they used to be the Ball Partnership. If 2000 taught me one thing, it is that more than ever we have to be prepared to change the way we think and the way we act. And more than ever, we have to be first at accepting and implementing change.

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