KUALA LUMPUR: Government-owned Telekom Malaysia has appointed
TBWA-ISC to handle marketing for its cellular division, TM Touch, as
competition in the mobile telephone sector intensifies.
Twelve agencies made the long pitch list - including Grey Worldwide,
Bates, Spider D'Arcy, Spencer Azizul and the incumbent FCB - before
three were short-listed for a creative pitch.
Since Telekom Malaysia is the dominant fixed line player, most of its
advertising goes to promote TM Touch, which has three competitors
Celcom, DiGi and Maxis.
TBWA-ISC has relevant experience having worked for Celcom many years
ago.
Austen Zecha, chief executive officer of TBWA-ISC, said: "I think we won
because of our totally integrated approach which involved advertising
creative, customer relationship management and public relations".
The agency pitched with its direct marketing agency Hype and PR firm
TQPR. "As far as I know we were the only ones that pitched that way,"
said Zecha. "In the pitch we went big on branding and then showed how it
would then follow through with customer relationship management and
public relations."
Mohamed Khir bin Abdul Rahman, chief executive of Telekom Malaysia, said
CRM was an important consideration in the pitch because it wanted "to
put in place the essential tenets of CRM to manage our combined customer
base of 6.5 million in fixed, cellular and multimedia sectors".
"This will provide an opportunity to cross sell our group's products. We
will leverage on our large fixed line customer base to push mobile and
web-based multimedia products on a larger scale," said Mohamed.
TM Touch had 1.27 million mobile customers and 18.1 per cent of
Malaysia's cellular market as of June, according to its annual
report.
The deal follows the agency's win of Malaysia National Insurance (MNI)
from Ismail & Associates in a pitch against FCB and Asatsu, said the
agency's spokesman.
