TBWA Tequila Malaysia to shed 25 staff in voluntary separation scheme

The agency has confirmed the news, stating that the exercise was undertaken in the “most magnanimous, generous and staff-conscious manner”.

According to statement from the agency released exclusively to Media, the agency “had to trim itself down to prepare for 2010 by becoming a 'leaner and meaner' team as it was in mid-2008” and needed an across-the-board reduction of 25 per cent, with all staff from all departments given an opportunity to apply for the voluntary separation Scheme.”

The statement also says that TBWA Tequila’s 2009 business has been about the same as 2008 because of new business wins in the first half, but because of clients' under-spending organic growth has been tough. 

Each staff member will be paid the contracted termination period in full, all unutilised leave paid in full along with two months salary for every year served.

A total of 76 per cent of TBWA Tequila's staff applied, but only about one-third (25) had their applications accepted.

TBWA Tequila president Austen Zecha (pictured) commented: "Most other voluntary separation schemes would attract staff applications by offering only about a month's salary for every year served, at best maybe a month and a half, but we decided on two full months' pay for every year served because we want to protect our reputation as a magnanimous, if not generous, place of work because we surely will be hiring again as we resume our growth after this difficult period." 

Zecha said that TBWA Tequila had won, among others, the Panasonic Malaysia and Intermark accounts as well as Haagen-Dazs' regional business during the first half of 2009, and has just pitched or is readying itself to pitch for five significant new accounts to start in the fourth quarter of this year or the first quarter of 2010.

"Hopefully, our current new business activities mean that the world's economic woes are bottoming out and that we'll be seeing an upturn in business before the second quarter or by the middle of next year", he added. "But these financial ups and downs are simply cyclical, seemingly part of almost every decade, and requiring companies sometimes to trim down their sails before letting them out again to move forward faster again".

In November 2008, TBWA made a series of redundancies in Hong Kong.