2007: In the fast track

The year Google zoomed into town, marketers ramped up their learning of web 2.0, and everyone else geared up for the ride of their lives.

If I were to use one phrase to describe 2007, it would be "the bigger, faster, better".

Singaporeans started the year still all pumped up from late 2006 over the announcement that Singapore would soon be home to two Integrated Resorts. The news saw 19 international MICE, resorts and entertainment teams fall over each other and fork out a $60 million deposit to submit a bid for the rights to develop the IRs.

On the marketing front, everyone wanted a piece of the action - from agencies clamouring to help bidders to submit insanely high quality proposals on expensive paper (what do the environmentalists say?) to schools promoting new hospitality and tourism programmes to businesses big and small thinking up ways to positively benefit from the hype of the two new giants. This will go on till 2009 when the Resorts are built and after.

The country's attention then turned to the news that the Formula 1 Grand Prix will be coming to Singapore in 2008, and speculation was rife on whether the powers that be will approve the proposal for the race to take part at night.

Magdalene Ew, who had only served about three months as country marketing manager for Nike Singapore, was lured by the deafening roar of the Formula 1 cars and joined race promoter Singapore GP as sales and marketing director. Singapore GP also appointed Mediaedge:cia as media agency, Fulford as PR agency, Kinetic Singapore as advertising agency, and The Bonsey Design Partnership as graphic design agency.

More recently, SingTel put down major moolah top clinch title sponsorship for the event, with the aim to use the event to elevate its brand message in the international space.

Amidst the racing hype, Singaporeans were also occupied with the launch of the world's first A380 plane by Airbus - a long overdue delivery to its first client Singapore Airlines.

Marketing the A380 may not seem like a difficult task considering anything that is new in its category usually attracts buzz on its own, but the task was made more challenging for the logistics behind it - contractually, Airbus only expected to inform its client of the expected delivery date for the plane about two months before, and the actually date of delivery is only given one month ahead. Imagine organising everything from catering food for the launch event to inviting the prime minister to attend, all in a month!

Despite the hard work, everything paid off in the end because the amount of PR and brand awareness generated for SIA was phenomenal and the inaugural flight was filled to capacity. The most exclusive package on the flight was sold for a whopping US$100,380 (S$145,481)! All profits went to charity so it was also a powerful CSR initiative by the airline.

Inspired by these three heavyweight events in 2007, here's a list of what we think was the best, the worst and the most entertaining happenings in the marketing and adverting business this year.

Major brand entry of the year:

Google came to Singapore

Months before Google put its rent money down on a sparse little executive suite in the newly minted One Raffles Quay, those keeping their eye on the recruitment pages would have noticed its ads for locally-based staff. True to Google's practice of putting candidates through a vigorous selection process spanning more than five interview sessions, it was not until May this year when the official announcement for the launch of the office came through.

To see Google in these parts, where Yahoo had first mover advantage, was a sure sign of the online and search advertising business heading for real, positive growth. According to head of sales for Singapore Lori Sobel, APAC online ad growth figures are expected to increase at a rate of 28%, and the company's strategy is to partner with ad agencies to educate them on how to leverage on Google's products and services to provide measurable, scalable and accountable campaigns.

About six months after the announcement, the SE Asian hub for Google has beefed up both its offerings and staff strength here, signing up new clients mainly for Google AdWords and Google AdSense, and appointing a head of communications for SE Asia, Dickson Seow. Some Singapore companies which have already partnered up with Google include MediaCorp, The Straits Times, Hardware Zone, streetdirectory.com, AsiaOne, Bezurk and SingTel.

Scandal of the year:

Brandz Group

No points for expecting that the most highly read article on Marketing magazine's website Marketing Interactive this past year was also the biggest scandal to rock our pages. On 4 September, we reported major staff departures at homegrown branding firm Brandz Group. Staff claimed unpaid wages as the reason for leaving while management claimed payment delays were due to staff underperformance.

At the time of writing, it is understood the Group had received letters from the Subordinate Courts demanding payment of CPF to staff from six of its registered companies.

Account move of the year:

SIA

After 35 years of ‘dating' the same partner, Singapore Airlines finally put its business up for pitch and left Batey for worldly new girl TBWA, which out shone DDB and Publicis. The $50 million move did not come as much of a shock to industry watchers and was even referred to as a "natural choice"- as TBWA has creativity, a global network, previous experience with the client through Tequila, and the capacity to handle the work.

SIA had its eye on the future when appointing the agency, making sure the creative concepts proposed were in line with the vision for the brand. Chairman of TBWA Group Singapore Philip Brett said the credit for the work was due to the local team with international flavour brought about by creative integrator Graham Kelly.

According to SIA EVP for marketing and regions Huang Cheng Eng, the appointment came at a time when the company was preparing to launch the A380 so TBWA's first brief was to concentrate on introducing the new plane with a bang.

Job Shuffle:

Ng Tian It, ECD, left McCann Erickson Singapore late last year for Batey and shortly after departed for Lowe China.
Ken Mandel, former Neo@Ogilvy CEO and OgilvyOne VP of digital for APAC, left for Yahoo SE Asia as VP and regional MD.
Michael Maedel, president of JWT, relocated to Singapore in April.
Jean-Paul Burge, managing director for BBDO Singapore moved here from Hong Kong in January where he was regional business development director.
Danny Searle, chief creative officer for BBDO, is based in Singapore as of July this year.
Alice Tan, chief marketing officer, leaves MediaCorp, current job status unknown.
Jopa Malantic, country marketing manager for P&G, relocated to Geneva to head global branding for Lacoste Fine Fragrances as brand manager.
Eric Van Vulpen, assistant general manager for marketing for Asia Pacific Breweries, left to become a private marketing consultant. Van Vulpen was the latest in a list three AGMs in about as many years to take up and then leave the role. The others were Dorit Grueber, who left for JetStar Asia, and Lester Tan, who is now MD of MCS-Asia Pacific Brewery, Mongolia. What's going on at APB? The organisation attributed Van Vulpen's departure to a restructuring of its marketing and sales departments - which is rather overdue considering the brand messages put out by Tiger Beer, for example, in the past few years have seemingly missed the mark.
Benoit Nadeau, MD and market leader, Burson-Marsteller Singapore, was removed from his role barely four months into his Asian stint. The PR agency promoted Allison Lim internally to fill the space.
Chris Steward, EVP for VBS and SE Asia departed in June, David Sulzman, VP brand solutions, pan regional at MTV Networks resigned around July, while Toby Hayward, EVP advertising sales, pan regional group MTV Networks left to join CNBC as SVP of advertising sales - replacing Adrian New -  in August. Most recently, Yvonne Tey, ex-MSN regional marketing director joined MTV Asia as director of marketing partnerships and client services in September. These are just some of the major changes in MTV in the past year, as the youth-targeted channel works hard to find its feet again.
Jeffrey Seah officially took the reins of MindShare and Maxus Singapore in March as CEO in March and was previously regional director for Starcom Mediavest Group Asia diversified services. Starcom in June also farewelled CEO Jaswinder Kaur who left to head MediaCom as managing director, replacing VR Padmanabhan. To fill the gap, Starcom looked to OMD Singapore's MD Gan Boon Guan. Meanwhile in May, Carat MD Sony Wong departed the agency and resurfaced at Maxus in early September to work with Seah as MD. Carat Hong Kong CEO Richard Leong saw his portfolio expand to include Singapore as a result.

Magazine launch of the year:

Vanilla

MediaCorp Publishing launched a new women's lifestyle magazine, Vanilla, in July, to reflect the changes in women's roles in society. The title breathed its first as six-year-old parenting title Family faded into history - MediaCorp calls it "expanding the editorial depth" as staff on Family transitioned to work on Vanilla instead.

Most noteworthy campaign of the year:

Guinness 9-Ball Tour

The Guinness 9-Ball Tour campaign, created by Saatchi & Saatchi for Asia Pacific Breweries, was the best campaign run this year. It was the first time Guinness had sponsored the pool event and amongst other media, it leveraged on JCDecaux in a four week long campaign to shout this to the public. The roof of a bus shelter on Orchard Road was transformed into a pool table with a giant sized player leaning over the table and posing with cue in hand, about to take shot. The work won Campaign of the Year and Cable TV Campaign of the Year at this year's Hall of Fame awards, amongst other accolades.

Acquisition of the year:

Dow Jones, by News Corporation's Rupert Murdoch

What else is there to say? What Murdoch wants, Murdoch gets. And even though he paid more than top dollar for Dow Jones, the fact remains his US$5 billion offer was too good to refuse and the Bancroft clan released its grip on the business. According to an earlier Marketing interview with Clare Hart, EVP, Dow Jones & Company and president, Dow Jones Enterprise Media Group, Hart said Dow Jones had taken steps to hedge against the future by reducing its dependency on print revenue - the company set a target for revenue from print to be dropped from 70% to 50% by 2009, with revenue from digital to make up for the rest. "That was a deliberate strategy to ensure that while print is growing, we just grow digital faster," Hart said. "Last year when we acquired the remaining 50% of Factiva that Dow Jones didn't own, that already took us down to 60%."

Agency CEO of the year:

Jim Goh

It was a close race between OMD's regional MD Jim Goh and Saatchi & Saatchi Singapore CEO Michael Rebelo, as both led their respective agencies to win Agency of the Year accolades at a number of award shows this year. But what made Goh extra special was that he has single-handedly managed all the SE Asian countries under his charge on top of taking on Singapore MD responsibilities after the departure of his long-time colleague Gan Boon Guan to Starcom. Goh also led the agency to win both the Agency of the Year awards at the Hall of Fame Awards and the Singapore Media Awards this year.

Award judge of the year:

Tay Guan Hin

Being a regional ECD these days is terribly tiring work, especially since the world is a smaller place now and Singaporean advertising has found such a sweet spot in global advertising that local creatives are sought after not just to work overseas but judge major award shows.

Tay has judged almost every major award show in advertising in the world and is has even been reported to be a "veteran judge" in not just Marketing magazine. This past year alone, he has judged at Cannes, Asia Pacific ADFEST, Clio and Asia Outdoor Advertising, and will be president of the Outdoor Lotus jury for ADFEST 2008. Previously, he has judged events such as D&AD, One Show, Kancil Awards, Creative Circle Awards and AWARD and has been featured in The Gunn Report amongst other things. His own wins include Golds at Cannes, D&AD, One Show, Clio, ADFEST and AWARD.

Singapore social networking tool of the year:

Facebook

Ok fine, I relented ok? I signed on to Facebook over the weekend end-November, after conveniently blocking it out of my social vocabulary for the longest time. And if marketers continue to refuse to acknowledge the power of Facebook as a marketing tool, you're living in the Stone Age. Kudos to MD Dan Paris of TBWA who pointed out that in the mere five days between 21 and 26 November 2007, the number of people in the Singapore network rose over 10,500 from 240,349 on the 21^st. That is phenomenal from a population of about four million if you ask me. Now I just need to get used to people giving me virtual hugs and "buying" me...

New Singaporean product/brand of the year:

Whatever and Anything

This has to be the most Singaporean brand I've ever come across, and despite what detractors may say, the campaign really hits at the core of what the product and brand are trying to communicate. It goes to show you don't have to have the word Singapore in the brand to stand for what is Uniquely Singapore, and it also is proof Singaporeans have the ability to laugh at ourselves.

 

As we farewell 2007 and transition into 2008, we know for a fact the next year will be even more fabulous, with more new media inventions thrown into the pit, more calls for measurability in every aspect of marketing, more creative ideas, more fiery pitches, more senior career moves as the economy stays up, and most of all, more good news for our industry.

Thanks for an amazing year and catch you on the other side.