Describing Tag as the "billion-dollar agency you've probably never heard of", Asia-Pacific CEO Todd Handcock explained that the new entity combines the resources of Williams Lea, the world's largest print procurer, and Tag's production, creation and versioning capabilities.
It has taken the company two years to rebrand following the acquisition because it needed to go through an internal "evolutionary process", explained Handcock in an interview with Campaign Asia-Pacific. "When two companies merge, there's always a risk of breaking pieces off one another," he said. "We needed to bring the cultures together, be clear about strengths that both parties bring to the value proposition. This is the first time we've talked about it externally."
The purpose of the rebranding is to make clear the end-to-end integrated service Tag has to offer. "In the traditional marketing supply chain, the brand owner owns brand strategy and works with an agency on the creative, big idea piece," Handcock said. "Historically, brands have left production to the agency, with recreation or adaptation handled on a local level. Print management ends up being handled by agencies or in-house."
This process, said Handcock, runs into challenges around economies of scale, price points, production issues, quality control and brand consistency. "If I'm a creative agency, adaptation and versioning is not my core business. I work with a creative agency because I want to be creative. But if I create and market new ideas every time instead of using, adapting and versioning assets that already exist, I'm going to slow things down and there will be leakages in brand consistency."
Tag offers to drive these three core things by decoupling from the agency set.
While bigger agencies such as McCann have started launching offerings in this space, such as Craft Worldwide, Tag has an ace up its sleeve in the form of its parent company's owner: DHL.
"We're owned by Williams Lea which is 100 per cent owned by DHL," Handcock explained. "Now, if I'm a marketer and I need to do adaptation, print procurement and distribution, no one else can take care of that end-to-end all the way down the marketing supply chain."
Until now, Tag has obtained its clients, which include brands such as Unilever, Jaguar, Canon, Intel and Reebok, through agencies or by word-of-mouth. But with the relaunch, the brand service company aims to come out in its own right.
"Besides the new site and logo, we've appointed Weber Shandwick as a key partner and we've started attending marketing events," Handcock said. "I was at Cannes and will be at Spikes Asia."
In May, Handcock also hired Hina Kotecha as marketing director of Asia-Pacific. Kotecha was previously director of strategy and planning for IBM Growth Markets at George P Johnson.
Currently, Tag's Asia-Pacific offices are in Tokyo, Kobe, Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Melbourne, Sydney, Chennai, Bangalore, Dehli and Taipei. The company will be looking to expand in the countries where it is already present, but expansion to new markets will depend on clients, Handcock said.