MEDIA CAREERS: Bates to address imbalance in Internet knowledge with massive training manouevre

Bates Asia will be training all its staff across the region about cyberspace, what its advertising potential is and how it can be used in a traditional media plan. About 1,000 people will be involved in the effort in what could be the biggest, single training exercise among agencies in Asia-Pacific. Bates Asia regional president Jeffrey Yu said it was important to teach everyone this knowledge because the current set-up - even among other agencies - was too cumbersome. "What we have right now is the client goes to the traditional agency people for traditional advertising but when they ask about the Internet, they are directed to the interactive guys. "This is inefficient and cumbersome and it unnecessarily splits things up," he told MEDIA. Part of the problem, Mr Yu said, was the myth that only the techno-geeks understood the Internet. "Take away all of the hype surrounding the Internet, take a clear look and you will find it is a simple medium to understand ... Although you might need the techno-geeks to execute the advertising strategy." He also said that while the technology driving the Internet was still rapidly developing, the cyberspace point-and-click concept was generally understood by most computer-savvy consumers. In the early days of the Internet, surfers talked about "cool sites, but now they are talking more about how they can benefit from going to certain sites", Mr Yu said. "This is now the era of content and business strategy; without them, the dot-oms are nothing. The Internet war will be fought on content and marketing strategies - not on technology." Bates Asia has won a slew of new accounts, half of them dot-coms. Since the beginning of the year, the agency has won US$12 million in new business including 2cube.com, a stock trading joint venture between Jardine Fleming and Cable & Wireless HKT; chinaren.com; and Asiaone.com, which is part of Singapore Press Holdings. Other account wins, not dot-coms, were Avon in Thailand and Parke-Davis pharmaceutical brand Gelusil in Taiwan.

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