Rolls-Royce widens Asia remit for Ogilvy

Rolls-Royce had a strong year in 2005, with Asia-Pacific contributing 14 per cent to its 15-year global sales high. With Ogilvy already handling Rolls- Royce PR in Korea, Japan, China and Hong Kong, the agency's Singapore managing director Andrew Thomas said the extension to Singapore was a logical move. "It is very much about establishing Rolls- Royce as the pinnacle of excellence, both technically and in terms of craftsmanship," said Thomas. "Arguably, it's in a league of its own and it also wants to reinforce the fact that it is still very much a bespoke car manufacturing company. The service it offers is not personalised, but personal." The Extended Wheelbase Phantom is the second model to be built at the company's global HQ at Goodwood, UK. The third will be the new convertible, tentatively slated for a 2007 release. "Rolls-Royce is relatively new here and it hasn't really done a lot, but there is a lot of interest from the Southeast Asian region," said Ogilvy PR's Stefanine Braukmann, who is leading the account. "We're talking about how Rolls-Royce fits into the new concept of affluence." The account comes during a promising period for Ogilvy PR's Singapore operation, which experienced better results in 2005 following a period of instability. At the tail end of the year, the agency secured a corporate retainer from the Singapore Academy of Law to support the launch and rollout of SingaporeLaw -- a multi-market initiative to persuade parties to choose the island state's legal code as the governing law for international commercial transactions. Ogilvy has deployed a media and influencer relations campaign to support the initiative in its four target markets -- Indonesia, India, China and Singapore. The agency has also lured Ben Chong away from CMP Business Media to head its technology and innovation practice. At CMP, Chong built up editorial and circulation for such titles as Network Computing Asia, Teledotcom and Computer Telephony Asia. "The work that companies such as OgilvyPR achieves is attractive, because it provides me a well-rounded, frontline view of the vendors' marketing and communications efforts," said Chong. "It's a refreshing facet of the total comms picture."