Its two major agency networks dominate media's first-ever ranking of agency groups in Asia-Pacific, with Ogilvy & Mather in pole position and J. Walter Thompson bearing down on its sibling.
O&M's top ranking is hardly a surprise. It's an agency behemoth, with a sprawl and depth of operations that few other agency groups can match.
O&M dominates the rankings largely on the strength of its creative prowess and - to a lesser extent - its market share, although JWT is far stronger on the business activity front.
With an enviable client list - IBM, Motorola, Coca-Cola and American Express, all of whom are firm believers in brand-building - O&M is in a seemingly blessed place to give its creative talent full flight. On this score, a point to consider though is the year-end departure of O&M's global creative chief Neil French, and whether his creative legacy to the agency will be carried to loftier heights by the next generation, which includes Tham Khai Meng in Singapore and Piyush Pandey in India.
Beyond O&M's achievements, it's J. Walter Thompson's second placing which is a revelation. Two years ago, JWT was languishing, even as O&M made 360 degree marketing part of the global marketing jargon. But the agency, under its Asia-Pacific president Kevin Ramsey, has been putting its house in order, allowing JWT to deliver a solid turnaround. The effort is particularly noticeable in Taiwan where for the first time ever, it knocked O&M off the top of the totem pole as the market's most-admired agency, according to a recent poll of marketers.
The past year has seen JWT scoop a series of prestigious accounts, including Philips in India, Standard Chartered in the region, Nestle Confectionary and Kellogg's in Japan, Orange in Thailand, and make headway with local corporations such as TCL and 999 in China. Crucially, JWT is strong in markets that will matter more to an agency's financial health in the coming years - China, India and Korea (where WPP acquired local operator AdVenture, putting JWT in fourth spot in the country). Few have figured out how to move forward in Korea and if JWT succeeds, it will enjoy an edge as far as its regional strength is concerned.
In making a belated move to establish a branded direct operation, JWT has not simply recognised the pitfalls of competing offers, it's put a more pragmatic financial model in place. "We are not building ThompsonConnect with its own P&L. We will maintain a virtual P&L, says Ramsey, convinced the model will engender cooperation and minimise competition across disciplines and offices.
Ramsey says that the resuscitation of the agency's fortunes is due to "a four-tiered strategy based on improving the creative product, upgrading the talent base, improving integrated communications and improving strategic capabilities".
Similarly, Leo Burnett under its regional chief of the past year-and-a-half, Richard Pinder, has been particularly aggressive on the business front to improve its pitch batting average. Only a small margin separates Burnett from JWT; Burnett's business activity score is in fact stronger than O&M. Major accounts wins include LG Electronics in Indonesia, President Food in Taiwan (alongside O&M on the roster), and Thailand's Nautilus canned food. Burnett has had better luck with wins on a market-by-market than on a regional basis.
Although Burnett's creative ranking was well below O&M and the fourth-placed Saatchi & Saatchi, it did outgun JWT, giving it the third-highest creative score. The investment it has made in running a quarterly assessment of creative work through a Global Product Committee is paying off.
Pinder has also been shoring up gaps in the agency's offer, with acquisitions in digital and design operations in Singapore and the Philippines, as well as overhauling its management line-up in China to better capitalise on the market's undeniable growth prospects.
Even so, it's JWT that will keep the industry riveted, in particular wondering how the future will pan out if two WPP agencies take control of the lion's share of lucrative accounts, as they are already doing.
That plus the fact that the pair are served by media colossus MindShare, along with two second-tier media agencies, Media Edge/CIA (though still a work in progress) and Maximize, is a fact that is not lost on the industry.
But agencies operating a network of offices from India to Japan and China to the Philippines and Indonesia are likely to be more engrossed in day-to-day challenges as margins are squeezed and clients demand greater accountability and returns on their marketing expenditure.
The sheer size, cultural and business diversity of markets and the region's differing development stages will bedevil networks as they attempt to mirror client company expansion and service demands while grappling with bottomline pressures.
Even as they seize cultural and business opportunities and plug gaps in each market, the bigger dilemma will be to decide how to divide resources across a far-flung network of offices, made all the more trickier in these trying times when margins are being squeezed. What will carry the day - especially as globalisation takes root - is for regional networks to deliver on their promises - consistency, cost efficiencies, increased buying power and greater access to better quality resources.
As such, media's ranking exercise attempts to determine who is the strongest on a regional basis.
Looking back at the 'best business' pronouncements of the 1980s, the formula of consistency, buying power and quality resources work at its best when business partners operate similarly centralised infrastructures and are culturally aligned with each other. Not surprisingly, it is at its worst when infrastructural and cultural alignments exist in theory but fail to materialise in practice. This, insiders say, is most often the backdrop to the suggestion that marketers would do better to develop local relationships with local independent agencies and so cut out costly errors due to regional mismanagement.
Discounting this as they plough ahead to demonstrate why big is best, multinational agencies have at least been developing their own, distinct culture - all the better to help clients differentiate one offer from the next. Among these are O&M's Quotations of David Ogilvy; Burnett's 100 Leo's; D'Arcy's D'Bible and D'Work; and JWT's twice-yearly regional creative selection.
But it takes more than inspirational words to keep agencies at the top of their game. In order to live up to the key benefits of being able to deliver consistency and pricing advantages, networks must perform strongly in as many markets as possible. This is where their competitive edge against smaller sub-regional or local rivals is greatest.
Miles Young, O&M's regional chairman, says: "It's not only false economy, it's also unfeasible in terms of presenting brand consistency" for Asian brands with global aspirations or global brands seeking a local voice to turn to a local independent.
With the exception of Korea and Japan, where local agencies dominate, the efficacy of managing regional and global brand consistency across a portfolio of non-aligned independents is questionable. The costs involved in establishing a central department to manage these relationships are prohibitive and bar three notable exceptions - Tug Boat in Japan, Results in Taiwan and 10am Communications in Singapore - independent agencies of any value either fell victim to the economic crises of the past five years or have been bought by the multinationals.
But it is possible, says Young, to be "big and beautiful if networks understand that their multinational strengths should be deployed to support local relevance.
If Ogilvy-stewarded brands President Foods from Taiwan and Konimex from Indonesia are anything to go by, the constant refrain of globalisation is clearly not going to go away. Local Asian products are increasingly moving into pan regional markets and local marketers are casting their eyes over multinational agency offerings with renewed interest.
Other major brand steward-style work of this type which was noted in this ranking were: Saatchi & Saatchi's launch of Priceline; TBWA's ads for Chivas Regal and Martell; D'Arcy's work for Philips Lighting; O&M's Asia-Pacific initiative for Volvo; Lowe's global campaign for HSBC; and McCann-Erickson's series of commercials and print campaign for Cathay Pacific.
The ranking also noted major account wins, including D'Arcy taking the Alba regional rebranding work; FCB snaring China's largest sanitary napkin brief; JWT being awarded the entire Kellogg's account in Japan; and Saatchis picking up Beck's beer in Taiwan.
But for agencies to continue to perform strongly in the future, they must stay vigilant to the myriad threats and opportunities that will come their way. One of the ways to fend off attacks and grab opportunities is to continually innovate to meet the clients' needs today and tomorrow.
TBWA Asia-Pacific chairman Keith Smith says: "Advertising agencies in general are quite bad in this area. Quite often they lag behind clients in terms of where they could be taking the brand."
Which is why two years ago, the agency rolled out Disruption, a process aimed at challenging the norm to try to come up with cut-through ideas.
Recently, it began to implement Beyond Disruption along with Connections Planning, the latter of which Smith describes as "a media-neutral planning tool to deliver truly integrated planning".
Other agencies have different methods of achieving that breakthrough idea. Saatchis has put together a team of the agency's 10 best creatives from Asia-Pacific who fly around the region to bolster the work of local creatives and share knowledge.
According to Burnett's Pinder, knowledge management is one of the essential ingredients in being able to offer clients consistently high standards across many different markets.
"The structured way is through Leo Burnett City, a global intranet through which people can look at news pages and share data and ideas. We also have a commercials library in the US in which is stored the best ads from the advertising industry and these ads can be digitally sent anywhere in the world.
"Informally, senior executives like the country MDs and FDs meet regularly to get to know each other so that they can work together on a regional level much more effectively, Pinder says.
The idea of constantly pushing the envelope was summed up by Pinder when he said that agencies must be thinking holistically to cover as many marketing communications tools, processes and systems as possible.
Pinder adds: "You must have the ability to deliver through-the line solutions these days (including advertising, event marketing, DM, interactive and point of sale). Because if you cannot offer a meaningful service beyond advertising, you will not be a key player in the future."
