Hot favourite TBWA wins SIA account

Singapore - TBWA has won the lucrative Singapore Airlines account beating DDB and Publicis in the process.

"Our evaluation process took the time we needed to satisfy ourselves that TBWA's creative concepts suited where we think the brand should be positioned in future years," Singapore Airlines VP marketing and the Regions Huang Cheng Eng said in a statement. Singapore Airlines said the recent creative agency appointment will not affect the airline's media buying agency relationship, with MEC, at this point in time.

The news brings to an end the account review that started at the beginning of this year, and which saw Batey, SIA's agency of 35 years, being sent off the in second last stage of the process.

Philip Brett, chairman of TBWA Group Singapore said the agency was "over the moon". "All I can say is we're very much true ourselves and played to our strengths in the best way it could and hope it would it good enough and it seemed to work," Brett said.

"Our creative work was a collaboration of our network creativity who, guided by Graham Kelly, worked to bring some international flavour to what we did, but it was a truly homegrown pitch led and driven by the creative team here."

Brett declined to comment on when TBWA's first campaign for SIA would materialise as it is early days yet, and said though the agency was currently more than capable at the moment to take on the business, there "may be certain areas of the business we may need to bolster and staff up going forward".

Jorg Dietzel, principal at Jorg Dietzel Consultants said the appointment came as no surprise. "When they were looking for an agency that offers them both a global network and creative ideas and excellence, TBWA was an almost natural choice. It was a widely held view in the industry that everybody was saying out of the three, TBWA was going to get it," Dietzel said.

Agreeing, Palani Pillai MD of Crush Advertising said he had "always had my buck on TBWA once the shortlist was announced because they work with really exciting brands globally and their office is big enough to handle the account".

Pillai cautioned though that as the account would always under tremendous competitive pressures, the agency cannot rest on its laurels for long -- there might even be a probability that the account would come under review every five years.

Against its contenders, there were four reasons that gave TBWA an edge over Publicis and DDB: creativity, a global network,that Tequila was already working on SIA's BTL business, and size.

"In terms of network, they built one with Batey and that was kind of a painful process because they had to go country by country and in every country they had to do a pitch, so they were really looking for somebody who already had that in place and TBWA could offer that," Dietzel said.

"Size-wise it's also one that isn't too big -- with big agencies, everyone thinks $50 million is a lot of money but it's not, if you think about it that has to cover not only Singapore but some of the other markets and they have so many destinations where they go too. So going with some of the really big guys would've made SIA a small fish in a big pond, but going with TBWA who are a bit smaller but still have a lot of network capabilities, makes sense because it gives them the importance that they want."