XM Asia Pacific snaps up Thai agency

XM Asia Pacific, a JWT company, has acquired a majority stake in one of Thailand's leading digital and interactive media agencies, Thomas Idea.Thomas Idea, founded in 1995, offers a full range of digital services, from online strategy planning to user experience design, large-scale application development and the full suite of digital and social media marketing services.Thomas Idea's co-founders CEO Uraiporn Cholsirirungskul and chief creative officer Araya Choutgrajank will remain on in their current leadership roles. Clients for the agency include Beiersdorf, Reckitt Benckiser, Abbott Laboratories, SB Furniture and Pruksa Real Estate.XM Asia currently has operations in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong, and last year, acquired Magnivate, one of Indonesia's largest digital agency."Thomas Idea is a key acquisition for us as we are preparing ourselves for the further opening of markets through the ASEAN Economic Community 2015 agreement," Paul Soon (pictured), CEO of XM Asia Pacific said.Soon added that the agencies share a similar vision of wanting to work with "brands that are willing to transform in order to fully capitalise on the fundamental benefits of being more digital"."Digital is not only becoming the core communication for many brands, but is fast becoming the heart of business. The digital wave is now sweeping Thailand, and this deal positions us, and XM, to ride the very edge of that wave," added Choutgrajank.Thailand's social media scene has reached a tipping point where the number of Thais on Facebook, for example, hit 18 million in December 2012, up sharply from 13 million the same period a year before.Overall spending on digital advertising grew 48% in 2012, according to GroupM.Michael Maedel, JWT's Asia Pacific chairman, added there are ambitious plans for XM Asia with more acquisitions on the horizon.In addition to XM Asia's acquisition of Magnivate, JWT acquired Hungama Digital Services, India's leading digital agency, and took a stake in Converge, in Pakistan.