Rapp Collins beefs up presence in Asia

SINGAPORE: Rapp Collins is putting a regional management structure

in place and opening new offices in a drive to win regional

accounts.

The agency will promote Paul Gotham, managing director of its Singapore

office, to a newly-created regional position, covering Southeast

Asia.

He will continue to manage the Singapore office but will now spend time

in the customer relationship marketing agency's other offices. Gotham

said having regional managers ensures Rapp Collins can better

co-ordinate its offices when pitching for regional accounts, while the

planned offices will enable the agency to better service regional

clients across Asia.

New offices will include Manila, a start-up that becomes operational in

the coming weeks. A managing director has yet to be appointed but the

Manila office does have a founding client - local telecommunications

company Smart.

Rapp Collins is also looking to either acquire a local agency in Jakarta

or establish itself in that market early next year as a fully-owned

subsidiary of Fortune Indonesia DDB. "Finding such an agency is hard

because Indonesia is quite an immature market," said Gotham.

Rapp Collins is relatively new to the region, having only opened its

Singapore office in early 2000.

In February this year, it bought a minority stake in Bangkok agency DM

Vision and moved into Kuala Lumpur in August by taking over Naga DDB's

interactive agency Guava, which was rebranded Rapp Collins. Asia-Pacific

has been earmarked as the region offering the best opportunity for

revenue growth for Rapp Collins. It now provides less than five per cent

of global revenue.