Bates is rumoured to be interested in the Asia-Pacific Peninsula Hotel
account, after the hotel group dropped Saatchi & Saatchi as its AOR of
14 years.
The rumours were given credence after Bates resigned the Mandarin
Oriental below-the-line account. However, Bates Asia president Jeffrey
Yu denied his agency was actively trying to obtain the business although
he did say, "we would pitch if asked to."
He added he resigned the Mandarin account because he wanted to "marshall
the agency's strengths to focus on what it does best, which is
advertising".
Saatchis blamed the Peninsula loss on what it called "the classic, new
marketing director's syndrome". Saatchis regional CEO Patrick Pitcher
said that over the past three years, the hotel changed marketing
directors three times and reduced its spend because of the economic
downturn.
"The Peninsula has been a fantastic client and the parting of ways has
been amicable, but the new marketing director feels they need a change
and need to build a new team," he said.
The Peninsula Group's brand manager Rolf Heidrich responded by saying:
"Given that the business and consumer environments - particularly within
the luxury services sector - is changing and evolving more rapidly, we
were keen to support our own internal marketing strategy development
efforts with fresh perspectives from external business
competencies".
He added that in light of this, "we feel a smaller agency may be
appropriate to our company needs at this time".
Meanwhile, Mandarin's above-the-line agency M&C Saatchi is believed to
have picked up where Bates left off. It recently hired Bates account
director Alice Wu.
Ms Wu, who joins M&C this month, spent a significant amount of time on
the Mandarin account during her seven years with Bates.
TOP TEN TV RECALL
Saatchi.
Data on TV ads scoring the highest recall among consumers polled was
collected by NFO WORLDGROUP - Hong Kong www.nfow.com.hk on behalf of
MEDIA.
(February 5-16, 2001).
