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FOR THE first time, the Media category at Cannes was to be judged on results as well as creativity.

And the winner? JWT Japan, with a campaign for Kit Kat Mail that

created a new product and a new distribution channel for Nestlé, as well as a new business opportunity for the Japanese postal system.

The award capped another successful year for WPP at the world’s pre-eminent advertising festival in which WPP agencies across all disciplines won a total of 109 Lions, beating the 104 gained in 2008.

JWT Japan’s campaign for Kit Kat was inspired by the Japanese translation ‘Kitto Katsu’, which means “surely win” and was seized upon by the JWT team to create ‘edible postcards’ that could be posted to children to wish them success in their exams.

The agency negotiated with Japan Post to offer the product in 22,000 post offices, creating an entirely new channel in which there was no confectionery competition.

So successful did it prove that Japan Post has retained the product as a permanent offering alongside traditional stamps and postcards. Nick Brien, chairman of the Media jury at Cannes described it as a “wonderful idea” and said the campaign “demonstrated through tremendous innovation and tre-mendous, flawless execution that it could deliver outstanding business results in a groundbreaking way”.

WPP agencies also won Gold Lions in the Film, Press, Outdoor, Cyber and Design categories of the competition, as well as many Silver and Bronze Lions.

And among the highlights of contributions by WPP companies to the events program at Cannes, Young & Rubicam introduced The Who’s Roger Daltrey and music promoter Harvey Goldsmith, Grey presented on music in advertising, and CEO Martin Sorrell chaired the Cannes Debate on the recession and the future of the industry.

The Works 4New Offers 4People 5Digital 7Inside WPP 15What’s the buzz in... 16

Interview

Hands-onexperienceBig challenges don’tfaze Fitch’s new CEO, p5

Essay

Shaking the kaleidoscopeJeremy Bullmore on re-thinking marketing, p6

Experts

Out ofEast AfricaScangroup has plans to conquer the continent, p10

Retail

Putting storeson screensRed Dot Square’s virtual supermarket, p11

New business

A winning experimentHow Team Chemistry came out on top in J&J pitch, p13

Read WIRE online at insidewpp.com

PUBLISHED FOR 135,000 WPP PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD • ISSUE 33 LACP Gold Overall and

Platinum for Best Narrative

Brand alchemyJWT’s seven-minute film for Unilever’s Lux shampoo, featuring Hollywood superstar Catherine Zeta-Jones (right), is cuttingthrough the clutterin Asia. Read more about therise and rise ofbranded contenton page 12.

IR magazine has once again rated WPP’s online annual report No.1 in its yearly study, beating major corporations such as Procter & Gamble, Thomson Reuters, Berkshire Hathaway and China Mobile. The study tests which websites allow the quickest access to a company’s story and key pieces of financial data; each site has just three minutes to make its mark on the judges.

The magazine remarked, “some websites rely on content,

others on style. WPP excels at both and combines them exceptionally well.” WPP’s site was the only one to receive two 10-out-of-10 scores from the judges, who called the site “a masterful agglomeration of technique, style, thoughtfulness and strategic use of the channel.” The site has finished first and second in previous studies.

Read the report at www.wpp.com/annualreports/2008.

WPP tops website poll

Staff ReporterGLOBAL advertising spend will drop by 5.5 per cent in 2009, with a mild recovery expected next year, according to the latest worldwide forecast by GroupM, which shows the full impact of the recession on the media and advertising industry.

The BRIC countries – Brazil, Russia, India and China – will lead the recovery; while ad spending in the US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the UK is expected to lag behind.

The predictions come from GroupM’s latest This Year, Next Year study, and are drawn from data supplied by WPP’s worldwide resources in advertising, PR, market research and specialist communications across 70 countries.

The region hardest hit in 2009 will be Europe, with spending down 11.1 per cent in Western Europe and 16.3 per cent in emerging Europe; while North America will

suffer most in 2010, with this year’s 4.3 per cent fall followed by a further drop of 6.5 per cent next year.

But prospects for a global recovery are improving, said GroupM, with 33 countries expected to see a growth in advertising investment next year, compared to just 15 in 2009.

Adam Smith, GroupM futures director, said: “China’s economic stimulus has already bolstered confidence, and the demand for advertising in Russia will recover quickly if $70-a-barrel oil prices are here to stay.”

On the US market, GroupM chief investment officer Rino Scanzoni commented: “We expect a bottoming out on local media spend in 2009 with more stability into 2010. However, we are expecting further contraction on national media particularly television as clients adjust budgets to reflect a continued pessimistic consumer spending forecast.”

Separate data from TNS Media Intelligence showed the full extent of the actual decline in the US market during the first quarter of 2009, with advertising down 14.2 per cent on the same period a year earlier.

In sponsorship the picture is brighter. WPP specialist IEG has revised its previous growth forecasts downwards, but still predicts that in North America, sponsorship expenditure will be up by 1.1 per cent in 2009, while globally the estimate is for 3.1 per cent growth.

“The good news is that sponsorship is one of the few forms of marketing where spending figures remain in positive territory,” said Jim Andrews, IEG senior vice president and editorial director.

Media: 2009 grim, 2010 a little better

FORECAST Research from WPP companies highlights the steep decline in advertising expenditure in this year and prospects for recovery

AWARDS Agency takes Media Grand Prix with campaign lauded for business results as well as “wonderful idea”

To obtain the full This Year, Next Year report, contact [email protected]. www.groupm.com www.tnsglobal.comwww.sponsorship.com

Winners inside! See page 3.

Lucky token: JWT Japan’s Grand Prix

winner. Cannes Golds in full,pages 8-9.

Schematic’s wonder wallONE OF the stars of the show at Cannes was the giant intelligent Touchwall installed by WPP digital interface specialist Schematic. The 12ft by 5ft interactive display, seen being delivered (top) served as the festival’s information hub, covering the full program, 3D maps and details of bars and restaurants.See page 9.

JWT’s Kit Kat Mail triumphs at Cannes

The views expressed are personal to the writer concerned. Published on behalf of WPP, 27 Farm Street, London W1J 5RJ. Printed in England on 100% recycled paper by St Ives Westerham Press Ltd.

Upcoming WIRE issues

All WIRE issues are online at www.insidewpp.com

The next issue of The WIRE will be published in January 2010. In the meantime, look out for the latest news stories online at www.insidewpp.com.

THE WIRE • July 2009

Why media revolution spells opportunity

EDITORIAL Structural change caused by technology has combined with the economic downturn to create a perfect storm for media owners, says WPP CEO Martin Sorrell. It’s time for many players – including brands – to collaborate in creating new types of content

THE recession is changing the basis of the industry that we operate in – nowhere more so than when it comes to investing in media.

If I was a media owner in one medium in one country, I would be extremely nervous right now. Clients are looking for bargains and there is a lot of inventory washing around in traditional media; that has put pricing under pressure in a number of media such as free-to-air TV, newspapers and magazines. Media owners are caught between a cyclical recession and structural change. The preoccupation our clients have with cost permeates the content industry. Newspapers have already come under severe threat, and it is likely that in TV, too, the current production and distribution models will be seen as too expensive and will have to change as a result of what we are going through at the minute.

Production costs have also got out of hand, causing the cost of network television to our clients to escalate faster than general price inflation. That’s been the case even in recent years when inflation was generally under control. If you are a car manufacturer and the cost of steel goes up above inflation you either use less of it or you find an alternative – and this thinking has already driven clients to explore alternative media.

Today new media is 25 per cent of our business, and our clients will spend on average this year about 12 per cent of their budgets online, compared to 10 per cent last year.

Yet we know, if we look at consumption of media, that as consumers we spend about 20 per cent of our time online. So clients are about half underweighted in this area, and areas of PC, mobile and video content – the third being the most significant revolution we’ve seen – are becoming more significant. But the problem is: how do you develop profit models, how do you monetize these companies, these new ideas in an effective way?

Understanding the way the consumer is consuming media is critically important. And addressability – targeting – especially so. The investments that we made in Invidi and Visible World, two of the three most prominent targeted TV platforms, reflect the way we think things are going.

Just as the quality of content which will become increasingly important, so will effective distribution, and targeting – addressability – will play a crucial role in that.

Network free-to-air TV will not die; if you were going to launch a packaged goods company today, network TV still represents the most effective way of reaching the largest number of people in the shortest time at the lowest cost per thousand. But the domination of TV in the old sense will not continue.

The balance of media spending is going to shift, with new media accounting for up to one third of

the total, and PC, video and mobile all becoming important platforms for content.

Given the revolution that has already taken place in print media, we can expect to see a similar revolution for other media as well. Agencies will increasingly be media agnostic, and so long as they can distribute or invest their clients’ funds across the board, they will not be allied to particular media.

One thing this means is that there’s a big oppor-tunity for media owners, content producers, the people who control the talent, and us agencies – creative and media – to work together, to develop content that is attractive for the new platforms.

The role of branded media is also going to be critical. There’s a major opportunity for creative agencies and media agencies to work together with these other players and build branded content, with product placement a smaller subset of that. The difference between editorial and advertising is going to be blurred; it already has been in print, and it’s going to be increasingly blurred in the visual media too.

As a Group, we’ve already been involved in productions like October Road in the US and Ugly Betty for Unilever in China (see page 16). I am frustrated that we haven’t done more Ugly Bettys or October Road or Sears Home Makeovers, though.

Part of the reason is that many clients find it difficult to evaluate this area, and have been scalded or have made mistakes in the past, and that’s put them off. But it’s an area that’s critically important and that we have to continue to build on.

We buy $60-70 billion of media through GroupM around the world. In many markets that gives us between 20 and 30 per cent market share. There is a major opportunity to use that leverage – not just us – to work together with the content providers, with the media owners, to build more engaging, attractive, creative content in a world where cost has become of prime importance, and where fragmentation has made the consumer more difficult to engage.

Adapted from a keynote address given by Martin Sorrell at MIP TV in Cannes on 31 March 2009. See branded content round-up, page 12.

Agencies will increasingly be media agnostic, and so long as they can distribute or invest their clients’ funds across the board, they will not be allied to particular media

THE WIRE 27 Farm Street, London W1J 5RJTel: +44 (0)20 7408 2204Fax: +44 (0)20 7491 1913E-mail: [email protected] Feona McEwanEditor Alexander GarrettArt & Production Director Malcolm MolyneuxManaging Editor Sarah Ritchie CalderContributions to [email protected]

Contents

WPP companies in this issue

EditorialMartin Sorrell on the changing media landscape 2

NewsBates 141 Singapore wins Atticus Grand Prix Plus: full list of Atticus winners 3Launch of OgilvyEarth 14BMRB confidence tracker 15Ogilvy’s new Guangzhou office 15PeclersParis launches latest macrotrend report 15Team Detroit shapes Ford reputation online 16Chinese Ugly Betty extended 16JWT launches Microsoft search engine 16

FeaturesFitch’s Lois Jacobs interviewed 5Life in the lens…with Luis Vieira, Luvi Ogilvy 5Jeremy Bullmore on what recession means for marketing 6The outlook for mobile marketing 7David Spitz on Moneyball marketing 7WPP’s Cannes Gold winners 8-9Experts: Scangroup in Kenya 10Why face-to-face should replace Facebook 10Red Dot Square’s virtual store/Kantar Retail 11Latest on branded content 12Team Chemistry J&J win 13What’s the buzz in … Ho Chi Minh City 16

Useful stuffWho’s who in Kantar Retail 11BrandZ Top 100 launch 12Healthcare round up 13WPP’s Healthcare Navigator 13New CR Report 14Carbon reports 14New Group-wide videoconferencing facility 14

RegularsBulletin 3The Works 4People Watch 4New Offers 6New in Digital 7CR Matters 14Get Connected! 15

B to D Group 5Bates 141 3Batey 3Brandamp 3BMRB 15BrandAsset Consulting 3Bridge Worldwide 8, 13Burson-Marsteller 13Cannondale Associates 11Cohn & Wolfe 4CommonHealth 6, 13Fitch 5FitchLive 5G2 3ghg 3, 13Glendinning 11Grey 3, 8, 9, 13, 14GroupM 1, 2, 3, 7, 15Hill & Knowlton 9, 10, 13iconmobile 7, 12IEG 1Johannes Leonardo 4JWT 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10 12, 13, 14, 16Kang & Lee Advertising 4Kantar 4, 7, 11, 13KnowledgeBase Marketing 13Lambie-Nairn 12Landor 3LiveWorld 13Mattson Jack 13MEC Access 3

MediaCom 4, 9, 14, 15Mediaedge:cia 4, 6Millward Brown 3, 10, 12, 13, 15Mindshare 4, 7, 12, 14, 15, 16MJM 13MVI 11, 12Ogilvy & Mather 3, 4, 5, 8 14, 15, 16Ogilvy Healthworld 13Ogilvy PR 3, 7, 14OgilvyAction 3, 14OgilvyOne 3, 7, 14PBN 3PeclersParis 15Red Dot Square Solutions 11Retail Forward 11RMG Connect 13Scangroup 10Schematic 1, 9, 13Sudler & Hennessey 13Syzygy 4Team Detroit 4, 16The Brand Union 3The Futures Company 3The Partners 6, 8The Store 12TNS 1, 3, 7, 16Visible Technologies 13VML 4Wunderman 3, 7, 16Y&R 1, 3, 4, 8, 14, 16ZAAZ 3, 7

THE WIRE • July 2009 NEWS 3

Bulletin

Chamber championPBN, WPP’s strategic communica-tions firm specializing in Russia and Eastern Europe, has been named Small Business of the Year by the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia (AmCham). PBN has been in Russia for 19 years, and has been a member of AmCham for 15 years. AmCham’s president Andrew Somers said: “In its nearly two decades in Russia, PBN has been a leader in developing the country’s PR industry, including establishing international standards of ethical business practice and transparency.”

Search resultsWPP agencies are linking up with Microsoft Advertising in a new research project that aims to explore the dynamics between search engine marketing and brand building, following the launch of Microsoft’s ‘next generation’ search engine, Bing (see p16). Wunderman, BrandAsset Consulting and ZAAZ are leading the project, with a report to be published in late September.

Batey on boardAd agency Batey is joining Grey Group Singapore, as part of a strategic alignment with its sister WPP company. The integration will boost Grey Group’s presence in Singapore and extend the group’s total communications offering, strengthening its advertising, branding and design, and direct marketing capabilities; other group members are Grey (brand advertising), G2 (activation marketing) and ghg (healthcare communications).

Take your partnersMEC Access, WPP’s partnership marketing agency specialising in sport, entertainment and cause, has published a report advising brand owners on how to create successful and winning partnerships. The report provides recommendations ranging from contract negotiation and sponsorship activation through to what this means for global brands and global partnerships to make them both effective and accountable. The report can be downloaded at www.mecaccess.com/feature/21/.

Eye siteGrey Asia Pacific has launched its 2009 Eye on Asia study, with a dedi-cated website, www.greyeyeon.asia. The proprietary research examines three areas of life for Asians: Lifestyle, Present & Future Aspirations, and Consumerism & Communications. This year, Grey has identified a series of ‘eye-sights’ – critical focus points for businesses and marketers. The agency has also carried out an in-depth ethnographic retail study to show how current sentiments drive shopping behaviour.

Staff ReporterBATES 141 Singapore’s Guillaume Pagnoux and Frederique Covington have taken the Grand Prix in this year’s Atticus awards for their inventive publication Dictionary of Change – described as “an annual handbook to inspire new ideas on how brands can engage with people”.

The Bates publication, winner of the Market Research and Insights category, was voted unanimously as the Grand Prix winner from a record 275 entries, whittled down to a shortlist of 25. It came out narrowly ahead of the blog written for Campaign magazine by Rory Sutherland of Ogilvy London, which was the winner of the Advertising category and was lavishly praised for the quality of its writing.

Bates’ Dictionary of Change is a collection of 137 ‘change words’ that were chosen from thousands of suggestions, and were each selected to capture an irreversible shift in the market place, which could be harnessed by businesses. At the time it was published, Covington, who is regional executive planning director for Bates 141, said: “While trends have become a commodity and are rarely actionable, we distil our tracking of change into ChangePoints – insights to inspire new ideas on how brands and people can engage differ-ently, via new products, new experiences, new

distribution avenues or simply a new language.”And Jeffrey Yu, chairman of Bates 141

explained: “Language is one of the richest areas where change can be spotted and this is why we chose to publish the first Dictionary of Change.” The book will be published each year, and Bates 141 is currently compiling terms for the 2009 edition.

The Atticus judges this year were Simon Clift, global chief marketing officer of Unilever; Rik Kirkland, director of publishing at McKinsey & Co; and Judie Lannon, editor of Market Leader magazine. All said that the standard of shortlisted entries had been highly impressive and had exceeded their expectations.

Three books were among the other winners:

Rohit Bhargava’s Personality Not Included in the Branding and Identity category; Allen Adamson’s Brand Digital in the Digital Communications category; and John Gerzema’s Brand Bubble in Strategy. Ogilvy dominated the awards, winning four categories in all; while Landor took the Digital, Corporate and Under-30 Essay prizes. Between them, the winners will share $55,000 in cash prizes, and edited versions of the winning entries will be published in the Atticus Journal later this year, while highlights of Atticus will also be shared with the wider world online at WPP’s Reading Room and through WARC, one of the world’s premier providers of information and insight to the global marketing, advertising, media and research industries.

Change is the winner

The Grand Prix at this year’s Atticus awards has been scooped by a dictionary designed to capture “irreversible shifts in the marketplace” that businesses can take on board

AWARDS

ADVERTISINGWinner

Rory SutherlandOgilvy, London

Rory Sutherland’s Campaign Blog

Highly CommendedFrederique Covington and Desiree Lim, with

David Meredith, Dheeraj Sinha,

Fareeda Jia, Guillaume Pagnoux,

Basheera Indorewala, Bernice Neo, Ian Velasco,

Jimmy Lim, Roop Mukhopadhyay and Sharon Sarinas

Bates 141, Hong Kong; Bates 141, Mumbai; Bates 141, Beijing

From Fame Whores to Social Activists: The Fundamental

Disconnect Between Marketers’ Use of Co-creation and

The Dreams and Aspirations of Asian Youth

MeritWilliam Charnock

JWT, New York

We Can Be Rock Stars

BRANDING AND IDENTITY

WinnerRohit Bhargava

Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, Washington DC

Personality Not Included: Why Companies Lose Their

Authenticity – And How Great Brands Get it Back

Highly CommendedNigel Hollis with Dominic Twose,

Joanna Seddon and Matthew Angus

Millward Brown, Fairfield; Millward Brown, UK; Millward Brown Optimor, New York; Millward

Brown, Nairobi

The Global Brand

MeritAndrew Welch

Landor Associates, London

Who is the Brand Daddy? Adding a Chief Brand Officer

to Your C-Suite

Terry TyrrellThe Brand Union, London

What Doesn’t Kill You…

DIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS

WinnerAllen Adamson

Landor Associates, New York

BrandDigital: Simple Ways Top Brands Succeed in the

Digital World

Highly CommendedAnn Mack

JWT, New York

Privacy in the Digital Age

MeritJohn Bell

Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, Washington DC

Digital Influence Mapping Project

MARKET RESEARCH AND INSIGHTS

WinnerGuillaume Pagnoux and Frederique Covington

Bates 141, Singapore

Bates 141 Dictionary of Change

Highly CommendedSimon SilvesterY&R EMEA, London

Day of the Clones

Fabrice Carrasco with Ralf Matthaes

TNS, Ho Chi Minh City

The TNS Vietnam Marketing Book - Pink Pages

Giulio BruniniBrandamp, London

Bands and Brands: How Music Communicates With People

Lee Ryan and Bernice Klaassen

TNS, Singapore

Mapping the Emerging Digital Frontier

Ann MackJWT, New York

Enterprise 2.0

MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS

PLANNINGWinner

Tim Jones and Tom Baxter

Ogilvy Advertising, London

TV is Dead, Long Live TV: TV Advertising in the UK

Highly CommendedJaydeep Chaudhuri

GroupM, Jakarta

Talking to Slumdog Millionaires

PUBLIC RELATIONS AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS

WinnerTim Broadbent, Kent Wertime,

Christopher Graves, Jeff Froud, Jerry Smith,

Soames Hines and David Young

Ogilvy & Mather, Beijing; OgilvyOne Worldwide, Bangkok;

Ogilvy Public Relations, Hong Kong; OgilvyAction, New York;

OgilvyOne Worldwide, Hong Kong; Ogilvy & Mather, Hong Kong;

OgilvyAction, Hong Kong

Ogilvy on Recession

Highly CommendedKunal Sinha with Michael Darragh,

Kim Wang and Sandeep Budhiraja

Ogilvy & Mather Shanghai; Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, Shanghai; Millward Brown ACSR,

Shanghai

Chinese Nationalism and its Impact on Brands

STRATEGYWinner

John Gerzema with Edward Lebar

Y&R, New York; BrandAsset Consulting Group, New York

The Brand Bubble: The Looming Crisis in Brand Value and How to Avoid It

Highly CommendedJ. Walker Smith

The Futures Company, Chapel Hill

Looking Up (The Yankelovich Economic Edge POV)

MeritMartin Bishop

Landor Associates, San Francisco

Join ‘Em, Fight ‘Em, or Move Away From ‘Em:

Three Approaches to Beating Low-price Competitors at

Their Own Game

Alessandro Panella with Gordon Euchler and

Richard DolphinGrey Worldwide, Dusseldorf

How to Successfully Manoeuvre Your Brand out of the Recession

Yael Cesarkas and Joseph Rivas

Young & Rubicam New York

Are You Irresistible? Understanding the Laws of

Attraction and Putting Them to Work for Brands

CORPORATEWinner

Landor Associates, San FranciscoPerspectives 2008

Highly CommendedOgilvyOne Worldwide,

New YorkViewpoint #11: The Rebirth of

Marketing

UNDER-30 ESSAYWinner

Josey DuncanLandor Associates, San Francisco

GRAND PRIX

Guillaume Pagnoux (above left) and

Frederique Covington(from the Market Research

and Insights category)Bates 141, Singapore

Bates 141 Dictionary of Change(cover shown below)

Changing language: terms like 23andMe can provide an action point around which brands and people can engage differently

THE WIRE • July 20094 NEWS

People Watch

The WorksIf you have a great piece of client work that you would like to propose for this column, please e-mail a jpeg and short caption to [email protected].

Share your creativity!

Women on topRosemarie Ryan (top right), president of JWT New York, has won one of the prestigious Chang-ing the Game awards presented by Adweek with Advertising Women of New York. The Quantum Leap award is presented for women who’ve taken a risk to spur internal change. And in Romania, Manuela Necula (above), CEO Ogilvy Group Romania, has received the ‘CEO of the Year’ award from prestigious Romanian business press group The Marketer. She was described as a source of inspiration for all Romania’s businesswomen.

MediaCom’s got talent MediaCom Worldwide has appointed Helen Brown as its first ever worldwide chief talent director. Brown’s remit is to align the business and people strategies to facilitate an increase in the potential and performance of MediaCom talent around the world. She will be working alongside CEO Stephen Allan from MediaCom’s London office.

American dutyPhil Cowdell has been named as head of Mind-share North America, the agency’s largest market, to replace Scott Neslund. Cowdell is a Mindshare veteran who has served as global head of planning, led the media operation of Team Detroit, and has most recently been one of Mindshare’s Global Client Leaders, based in Chicago. He recently spearheaded Mindshare’s global pitch for Intercon-tinental Hotels Group, the world’s largest hotel company, which awarded Mindshare its account in March.

Kantar grabs P&G starKim Dedeker has joined Kantar in a new role as chair, Americas. She recently retired from Procter & Gamble after spending 29 years in a variety of senior roles, most recently as VP, Consumer and Market Knowledge External Capability. Prior to that, she served as VP, Global Consumer and Market Knowledge for seven years. Dedeker will report to Kantar CEO Eric Salama, and will be based in Kantar’s Cincinnati office.

New blood at OgilvyOgilvy & Mather has announced a string of new appointments to the company’s global board of directors designed to include a younger and more diverse group of agency leadership. New board members include Gaston Bigio, regional creative director Latina; Eugene Cheong, regional creative director of Asia/Pacific; Paul Heath, CEO Asia/Pacific; Nasreen Madhany, Global CEO Neo@Ogilvy; Colin Mitchell, chief strategy officer North America; John Shaw, regional planning director EAME; and Ken Wright, worldwide managing director for Unilever. Ogilvy has also appointed Beijing-based Tim Broadbent, currently president of planning, Asia-Pacific, to the newly created role of global effectiveness director.

Welcome aboard: Multicultural marketing experts Kang & Lee Advertising has created North America’s first cruise industry microsite specifically targetting Asian immigrant travellers. The site, for Royal Caribbean International, is part of K&L’s larger integrated communications program using Chinese-language print, radio, online and PR to promote its cruises to Chinese Americans.www.kanglee.com

Team effort: Colgate’s innovative new ‘tooth cleaning on the go’ product, Colgate® WispTM, was launched in the US this spring with an integrated campaign developed by Group companies Y&R, Cohn & Wolfe, Mediaedge:cia and VML. The campaign married traditional TV, print and outdoor media with digital media channels, including websites (VML’s work pictured left), social networks and online communities.www.yandrbrands.comwww.colgatewisp.com

Craft work: A collaboration between iconic brands Mercedes-Benz and Disney demanded precision and imagination from Syzygy Hamburg. The agency created an online

communication platform for the Mercedes Viano and Disney’s The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian where the visitor experiences fantastic adventures while travelling with the Viano. The breathtaking and highly-detailed work has picked up 18 international accolades for targeting, 3D animation, design and sound.www.syzygy.net

Hidden assets: In a TV ad for Movistar’s 10 cents-a-minute mobile phone service, Y&R Lima shines a light on Peru’s often-forgotten and unwanted 10 cent coin. The agency also uncovered valuable new talent for the commercial, using a local shopkeeper for the voiceover and a young filmmaker to shoot the reportage-style, high-definition footage. Sister company Mindshare booked the TV spots.www.yandr.com

Scent and the city: The world’s most famous fragrance and its best known shopping street fused on 5 May this year for the US launch of CHANEL’s latest short film, starring Audrey Tautou. It was designated No 5 Day in New York City and, as part of the celebrations, WPP hotshop Johannes Leonardo’s creative idea was for CHANEL to rename the world’s most famous high end shopping street, New York’s fabled Fifth Avenue: ‘Avenue No.5’.www.johannesleonardo.com

Brand facelift: Team Detroit has given sports brand Brine a new creative edge with a TV/print/digital campaign based on tribal masks made out of the company’s lacrosse equipment. Players and fans can create their own masks online.www.teamdetroit.comwww.brine.com

Looking good: JWT Bangkok’s digital arm, JWT Connect, has got the blogosphere talking about the website it created for the launch of Oriental Princess’ new range of cosmetics, AVATAR. The site features a product recommender based on birth date and personality and drew 125,000 visitors in its launch month.www.jwtbkk.comwww.orientalprincess.com/avatar

THE WIRE • July 2009 PEOPLE 5

Life in the Lens

What was your childhood ambition?When I was in primary school I wanted to be a clown, an astronaut and a fighter pilot. Little did I know I would land up being all three when I got into the advertising business.

How did you get into advertising as well as consulting?I was a struggling cartoonist living in Lisbon. In 1985 during a trip to Paris, an advertising agency made me an offer I couldn’t refuse; the opportunity to struggle a little less for a little more money. The rest, as they say, is history.

Which achievement are you most proud of?My two young daughters come to mind first. And on a daily basis, being part of the Ogilvy Africa family is something I feel very proud of and happy about.

How is working in Réunion different from elsewhere?Working in Réunion is not very different from elsewhere in the world, but living here is. Our beautiful, green island is a big cocktail of 850,000 people from three different continents, Africa, Europe and Asia, living in perfect harmony. We have three local TV channels, three daily newspapers, about 15 different magazines, 20 or so local radio stations; more than 12 ad agencies; and various hotshops, studios, design, production, video and photo facilities. Réunion is bursting with business, and yet it’s still a paradise – for now.

Describe your typical working day at Luvi Ogilvy? In a recent day I met with my creative team to plan urgent work and brainstorm sessions; met with the general director of our mobile client, SFR; enjoyed a business lunch with our client director Steven Potet washing down some ‘bouchons’ local snacks (my client brand) with a cold Dodo beer (my client brand); called Ato Afful, managing director of Ogilvy Africa, to update him on Indian Ocean Region; met with the client service team to discuss a pro bono campaign we’re doing for child protection association Enfance et Partage with our client, U-stores; and had various other meetings and calls with clients and colleagues.

What have you been reading/watching/listening to recently?I’m reading a simple book I bought at an airport duty-free shop called The Rules of Management by Richard Templar. My weekends are spent listening to my golf instructor’s tips on how to improve my game.

How do you relax?Relax, what’s that?

www.luvi-ogilvy.com

Luis Vieirafounder of Luvi Ogilvy, Réunion Island

Running the show at Fitch

INTERVIEW After orchestrating G8 summits and Olympic ceremonies, Lois Jacobs faces a different set of challenges at the helm of Fitch. Alexander Garrett reports

AS BRAND experiences go,you don’t get a bigger opportunity than the opening and closing cere-monies of the Olympic

Games. With the message from the host city reaching a global TV audience of more than four billion, every tiny glitch, any small imperfection will be amplified and relayed around the world. Yet Lois Jacobs, who produced the Athens 2004 ceremony – as well consulting last year in Beijing – says: “It’s wonderful when it goes right. Of course it is absolutely terrifying, but there is literally no bigger communication opportunity and so it provides a huge adrenalin boost.”

As the new global CEO of Fitch, WPP’s multi-discipline design consultancy, Jacobs is preparing to face a different set of challenges. After a career spent in experiential marketing, most latterly as inter-national president of Jack Morton Worldwide, she will be involved in a different offer, embracing branding and design with a strong specialisation in retail, alongside a continued interest in live or experiential marketing – through FitchLive.

It’s a challenge she is ready and eager to take on. “I left Jack Morton because I decided I had done all I could there,” she explains. “I was looking for a global CEO job and when this came up I was

immediately

attracted, because Fitch is a brand name of such resonance. This agency has produced some stunning creative work for clients like Harrods in Heathrow Terminal 5, Vodafone, Marks & Spencer, Asian Paints in India, Dell everywhere and the Asian Games in Doha. The thing that’s special about Fitch alongside its strong retail credentials is the ability to work seamlessly in 2-D as well as in 3-D: to translate thinking and strategy to print, on screen or within a controlled environment.”

Jacobs’ route to the top has not been the most conventional career path. Growing up in North London, she left school at 17 and travelled to Italy, to become a DJ where she was known as Lolo di Londra. She came back to London after two years – via North Africa – and became PA to the managing director of Fiat in the UK, thanks to her new-found Italian language skills. When they hired a live marketing company to launch a new model to several thousand dealers from all over the world, it opened her eyes to the potential of event marketing – known at the time as ‘industrial theatre’ – and she left for a job as a production assistant with one of the agencies involved in that business, Purchasepoint, learning the ropes from scratch.

Within four years Jacobs had gained sufficient experience to become a founding partner of agency HP:ICM, where she continued to work after it was sold to Saatchi & Saatchi. She then switched to another leading

experiential marketing player, Caribiner, in 1997, before it was

snapped up by Interpublic-owned Jack Morton World-wide. “What I liked about the business was that whereas advertising seemed to be very delineated, and you were either a creative or a suit, in our less evolved business you could be everything,” she says. Although she was producing live communication for employee, B2B and consumer audiences all over the world she

also squeezed in a dip-loma in marketing at night school to comp-

lement her hands-on experience.

At Jack Morton she

was responsible for offices in Europe and Asia Pacific with billings

exceeding $100 million a year, from opera-

tional and finan-cial management

to establishing new offices

in Shanghai, Beijing and Singapore.At Fitch, there is obvious scope

to expand in that region: “We’re not in China at the moment, but we’re doing work there from our Singapore studio, so we’re looking at how we can grow our business in the region,” says Jacobs. Her pressing strategic priority, though, is to ensure that Fitch works better as a global organisation. “We’re increasingly working for the same clients in different geographies and there is an opportunity to make processes and ways of working more consistent throughout the world, and also the expertise that Fitch offers.”

She adds: “Each of our studios has particular strengths, for example London has the longest history in retail, Paris is superb in fashion and style (see page 15), while Seattle is expert in packaging. In Dubai we have the strongest hospitality and leisure credentials. We don’t need to have a full practice for every type of service everywhere, but we do need to be able to offer everything everywhere, so we can deploy our expertise when it is needed.” Part of the same picture, she says, is making the transition from a localized project-based business to one that develops longer-term relationships with global clients. “It’s already happening without much focus being applied, so I’m excited by the possibilities if we concentrate more closely on this,” says Jacobs.

Another challenge, especially in recessionary times, is to develop measurement tools so that Fitch can demonstrate the value it is delivering to clients. And while her experience in live communication will certainly be a bonus to FitchLive, she plans to give equal attention to all the company’s businesses.

Since her arrival, Jacobs has been busy meeting as many people as possible around the world, and says she has been overwhelmed by the welcome she has received at Fitch. Her early impression is that WPP has a more collaborative culture than in the two other parent companies of her previous experience; within WPP, Fitch is part of WPP’s B to D Group of branding and design companies and she has enjoyed meeting with her peers in that grouping.

Jacobs has a wider interest in management: she lectures regularly at the Judge Business School in Cambridge on working in diverse international cultures; and she is also on the Executive Committee of AIM (the Advanced Institute of Management Research).

And beyond her working life, Jacobs cites travel, theatre, soaps and the Argentinian tango among her interests, while her escape is a second home on an island near Bangkok. Building Fitch’s global credentials will present no shortage of opportunities for clocking up air miles – and her experience of running major events should ensure that she puts her feet in the

right place. www.fitchww.com

We’re increasingly working for the same clients in different geographies and there is an opportunity to make processes and ways of working more consistent throughout the world


A round-up of the latest new service offerings and additions to the Group

New Offers

The Partners

Design/New YorkThe Partners, WPP’s strategy and design consultancy headquartered in the UK, has opened a New York studio. The expansion is designed to allow the company to better service its international accounts. Managing director Steven Gilliatt and creative director Stewart Devlin head up the New York studio. The Partners recently won Gold Awards at the New York Festival and the New York Art Directors for its work for The National Gallery, London. www.The-Partners.com

Valos

Pharmaceutical strategy/ North AmericaCommonHealth, WPP’s healthcare-communications network, has launched Valos, the organization’s second full-service managed markets communications unit.

Organically grown from sister agency, Solara, Valos was created to provide strategic and tactical solutions to the pharmaceutical industry in the managed markets arena. Valos will help its clients define and promote the value of brands across their life cycle from pre-launch through patent expiration. www.commonhealth.com/valos

The Cube

Channel planning/ThailandJWT Bangkok has launched a communications channel-planning unit, called The Cube, to help boost engagement with consumers and provide research for the agency and its clients. The Cube aims to get a better understanding of the communications landscape, whether through new channels in traditional media or online, while driving engagement, activation programs and research for the agency. www.jwtbkk.com/TheCube/index.htm

MEC Retail

In-store programming/USMEC Retail, Mediaedge:cia’s retail practice, is launching an innovative in-store video network designed to enhance the customer experience through engaging, informative content and promotional material. Initially launched on behalf of Pizza Hut, it claims to be the first in-store network developed, built and implemented by a media planning and buying company.www.mecretail.com

Keep up to date with new offers from the Group by subscribing to e.wire.See back page for details.

6 MARKETING

2008 may be remembered as the year when numbers finally lost their capacity to shock. At the beginning of the year, two billion dollars was a lot of money. By the end of it, two trillion dollars was rather less: or so it seemed. Logically, the fact of a corporation facing losses of 100 billion should be four times more chilling than one facing losses of 25 billion – but logic doesn’t come into it. There comes a moment when numbers so distance themselves from personal experience that comprehension snaps. And when comprehension goes, so, more worryingly, does any sense of personal involvement. Unimaginable vastness is so remote from anything we’ve ever seen or touched that it simply doesn’t connect. It’s like being told that Planet Earth is just one of several million other planets out there. I’m sorry: you’ve lost me. If we were told that we were one of just five, that would be a different matter altogether. As it is, we shrug – and think of something else.

Children may get their heads round money by relating it to their pocket money or to the price of a candy bar. Their parents may try to keep one foot on the ground by mentally relating money to salaries or house prices. But three trillion? How many houses could you buy for three trillion? How much R&D could you finance?

I’m sorry: you’ve lost me. As governments around the world

finally and grudgingly acknowledged the existence of recession – and in most cases many months earlier – companies everywhere began ransacking their records, their lofts and their memories: what were the secrets of weathering recessions – even of coming out of them with greater strength? There are more than 150 published papers on the subject, spanning more than 70 years.

Most analyses agree. Tough times make people think more. When people think more, they re-assess their behaviour. Those companies who’ve confused customer habit with customer loyalty quickly discover that they’re not the same. Price:value relationships slither about a bit: price, which is both objective and quantifiable, becomes a lot easier to hang on to than something called value, which is neither. Unless underpinned by intrinsic quality, ‘added value’ begins to seem little more than fancy packaging.

In times of recession, the kaleidoscope is given a mighty shake.

The point of all this, and demonstrated over those last 70 years, is that the most successful recession marketers are those astute enough and nimble enough to find new patterns amid the confusion and seize the new chances. Every brand’s new chances will be slightly different and all gains made will be at someone else’s expense.

But probably the biggest single risk facing recession marketers is exactly the same as the biggest single risk that faces successful companies at all times – but with a frighteningly higher level of intensity: and that’s the risk of losing touch with their ultimate users. Success brings growth; greater size demands delegation and the introduction of departments; and real people stop being real people and become demographics. It needn’t happen but it does. Brands – and the companies behind those brands – slowly and imperceptibly come to seem as remote from reality as trillions of dollars do. And the ultimate consumer response is exactly the same: I’m sorry – you’ve lost me.

As many of those published papers demonstrate, it’s easier to lose users in times of recession than at any other time. Tough times make people

think more. When people think more, they re-assess their behaviour. And if their brands have drifted away from them into some de-personalised stratosphere, it’s now that they’ll notice – and do something about it.

Suddenly, they’re lost; and as everyone has always known, to retrieve a lost user takes a great deal of time and a great deal of money.

However, there’s some surpri-singly good news. Despite the continuing growth of marketing companies and their brands, it’s more possible now for them to keep in sensitive touch with their ultimate users – and to close any gaps that may have developed – than during any previous recession. Not simpler, certainly, and no cheaper; just more possible.

Two great interlocking things have happened to marketing com-munications since the last reces-sion of this scale. We seem to have developed a rather deeper under-standing of how the most persuasive marketing communications work. And there are now many more ways to engage with any given audience.

To simplify perhaps unfairly: there was a time when mass communication was thought to be something of a monologue. Transmitters transmitted and receivers received. The ability to transmit was limited to those in the possession of relatively few transmission facilities: just media owners – and advertisers who could afford to rent those facilities. The receiving public, that overwhelming majority, had little choice but to receive – and remain silent.

Unfortunately, their enforced silence was interpreted by many as passivity. A style of mass commercial communication developed that was often didactic, at times almost hec-toring. Claims of product superiority were repeatedly asserted and con-sumers were instructed to consume.

Defendants of this style point to its effectiveness. Sales went up, they rightly say. Of course theydid. Paid-for brand publicity has always contributed to brand fame. And brand fame has a simple competitive value.

But what this style of commu-nication never managed to achieve, and never will, is that willing complicity between sender and receiver that’s the mark of all the most effective persuasion. In the words of Arthur Koestler, ‘The artist rules his subjects by turning them into accomplices.’

Receivers have never been passive. No receiving brain accepts claims and assertions without challenge. Every receiving brain filters such messages through its own experience and its own prejudices – and reaches its own conclusions.

And just as this long overdue insight (always intuitively understood by the best natural communicators) became more generally understood and legitimised, along came the internet. And suddenly, hallelujah, it wasn’t just media owners and advertisers who had access to transmission facilities. Anyone with a computer and internet access was now a potential publisher. And publish they did, in their millions –and so they will for evermore.

The myth of the passive obedient consumer, however attractive to a certain kind of marketing mind, has been blown for good. And in its place is an infinitely more complicated but altogether healthier state of affairs. For companies deeply concerned not to lose touch with their users – wherever they may be and however disparate – things have never looked better. Through one set of lenses, the fragmentation of media is an advertiser’s nightmare; and so is the ability of lowly consumers to answer back. Through another set of lenses, both developments offer an amazing new potential. After a century during which corporations got bigger and bigger, more and more global, and almost inevitably more and more remote from their ultimate users, the trend has begun to turn.

The pattern is far from fixed and even the vocabulary seems still to be in development stage. We’ll probably look back on this time and realise that ‘old’ media and ‘new’ media had more in common than we realised and that ‘digital’ was a curious word to have emerged as the name for a form of mass communication that gets closer to conversation than anything before it. And we’ll maybe even come to see that interactive media, with their ability to involve real people with real things and real ideas, have much in common with those most primitive of communications devices: demonstrations. Whether in market squares or jungle clearings, showing, involving, achieving participation and responding to feedback remain as powerful a way of keeping in touch with those all-important people out there as they ever have.

It won’t be tidy. But there really shouldn’t be any excuses, during recessionary times or not, for brands to lose their followers through becoming too remote.

“I’m sorry - you’ve lost me” Five words no brand should ever have to hear

PERSPECTIVE The recession offers marketers an opportunity to re-assess their strategy and re-connect with their customers, argues Jeremy Bullmore

This essay was first published in WPP’s 2008 Annual Report. Read the report online at www.wpp.com/annualreports.

The myth of the passive obedient consumer, however attractive to a certain kind of marketing mind, has been blown for good

Tough times make people think more. When people think more, they re-assess their behaviour


New in Digital

From cell phone to sell phone

WIRELESS Mobile marketing needs to make the transition from one-offcampaigns to a serious channel for brands, says iconmobile’s Thomas Fellger

Staff ReporterIT HAS been a busy few months for iconmobile Group, the Berlin-based mobile marketing company that is 40 per cent owned by WPP. The company has recently opened a new office in New York City, to add to a network that already includes Berlin, Beijing, London, Los Angeles, Shanghai, Sydney and Tokyo. The new office will spearhead its move into mobile media buying and planning as well as providing a presence on America’s East Coast. In December iconmobile unveiled a joint venture with OgilvyOne in China; and in April it announced an international rollout for Xbox.mobi, the iconmobile mobile portal designed for Xbox fans which uses iconmobile’s content management system. Iconmobile has also designed the new iPhone application for BrandZ, WPP’s global brand study (see page 10).

But Thomas Fellger, iconmobile’s LA-based CEO and co-founder, says that mobile has barely begun to scratch the surface of its true potential in the marketing sphere. “Most brands are only just beginning to understand what you can do with mobile. If the industry had a soundtrack, it would be Lost in Translation,” says Fellger. And mobile carriers have failed to create the user-friendly products that enable brands to realise the potential of mobile, he says, as they remain intent on controlling their own proprietary environment. The consequence is that iconmobile and other developers must work 10 times as hard to get a brand working in mobile compared to other channels.

Much early mobile marketing consisted of one-off campaigns, but Fellger is concerned to

build ‘infrastructure’. “To really get the mobile channel up and running, it needs to be built into their system, so their CRM and retail databases are embedded,” he explains. Even the iPhone, with its leap forward in mobile browsing ability, only goes so far. “The real key is to focus on mobile’s special attributes, its ability to make use of your location, to track your personal behaviour, and connectivity to peers.”

He cites recent applications that have leveraged some of mobile’s true power. For BMW in Germany, iconmobile built a CRM-based application that enabled dealers to reach out to their customers, inviting them to make an appointment to fit snow tyres when the weather changed. Customers were sent a picture of their car to their phone and of 10,000 targeted, 30 per cent ordered.

For Visa in the UK, iconmobile has built a ‘mobile wallet’ which is currently being tested by 5,000 consumers. “The phone becomes a tool – you can use it to pay for tickets, or send money to your kids’ phones,” says Fellger.

And for T-Mobile in the US, iconmobile developed a ‘Green Perks’ campaign. The company wanted to save money by encouraging customers to manage their accounts online rather than being mailed statements. Those who sign up can

download an application to their handset which enables them to receive coupons for green brands, which can be redeemed in-store. The application can track redemption patterns by coupon, by city and so on.

Fellger cut his teeth on mobile working with NTT on its hugely successful i-mode products a decade ago, and says that although Asia is still leading in mobile tools, Europe is now at the forefront of innovation in mobile marketing. He sees the mobile device as “a remote control to all the other channels”, for example by scanning a product in a magazine then looking up where to buy it on the web.

For iconmobile, its own products including the icmsp service platform now account for 35 percent of revenues through licensing, with BMW, Mini, Heineken and Microsoft among prominent clients. As well as its joint venture with OgilvyOne, the company has collaborated closely with Wunder-man on Microsoft, and Fellger is keen to reach out to other WPP companies. “We can help them build mobile into campaigns right from the start, so it really is an equal channel,” he says.

Road test: iconmobile’s in-car digital cluster developed with Nvidia

Xbox mobi: the mobile portal for Xbox fans offers a catalogue of games titles using iconmobile’s content management system

DIGITAL 7

• Offline, onlineKantar Group is partnering with analytics software company Omniture to bring together online analytics and a number of Kantar’s strategic research offerings under a single marketing platform. The partnership will enable clients to gain a more holistic view of how their online and offline initiatives and branding efforts affect one another. Omniture will integrate several Kantar offerings including: online advertising effectiveness and brand measurement from Dynamic Logic; competitive intelligence, audience demographics and behavioral profiling from TNS Media Compete; and attitudinal and lifestyle insights from Kantar’s consumer panels, the world’s largest online/offline panel collective. These new offers will be delivered to clients through Omniture’s Genesis platform.www.kantargroup.comwww.omniture.com

• China talkingOgilvyOne and Ogilvy Public Relations have jointly developed OBuzz – an internet Word of Mouth tracking system designed to monitor and measure online conversations across Chinese social media. The proprietary technology solution, which has already been deployed for clients in China including adidas and GSK, crawls thousands of blogs and social media sites to give marketers a view of discussions around their own brands and those of competitors. OgilvyOne China has also opened its first Ogilvy Digital Lab in Beijing.www.obuzz.com.cn

• Social serviceMindshare has formed a joint venture with another WPP company, SocialMedia8, which claims to be the world’s first social media agency. The new unit, dubbed Mindshare SocialMedia8, will provide Mindshare’s clients with a suite of social media marketing tools which can be integrated into the agency’s existing media services, both traditional and digital. The new entity will be headed by Ciaran Norris, previously head of search and social marketing at Altogether Digital, who will report to Norm Johnson, Mindshare’s global digital chief. SocialMedia8 has previously worked with clients such as Nike, Nokia, LG and Heineken, with offices based out of Amsterdam, London and Milan.www.mindshareworld.com

• Raising the gameIn-game advertising will reach $1 billion in worldwide revenues by 2014, according to new research by media analyst Screen Digest, in conjunction with GroupM. The study, which involved a survey of digital planners from GroupM’s global network, predicts that in-game ads will account for one and a half percent of all annual advertising spending in 2014, as video games’ rising share of audience consumption and reach makes the new medium impossible for brands to ignore. Adam Smith, futures director at GroupM, adds: “Games are proven recession-beaters with an ad-funded online model that actually works.”www.groupm.com

MEASUREMENT WPP launched the Analytics Task Force in January

2008 to foster the growth of data-driven marketing practices

across all Group companies and disciplines. David Spitz explains

how these techniques allow brands to box above their weight

Chasing the moneyballIn Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, the journalist Michael Lewis followed Billy Beane, the manager of a professional baseball franchise with a budget less than half that of some of its rivals, as he sought to gain competitive advantage through the application of advanced data modeling techniques.

The book is set in 2002, when most baseball managers governed by ‘gut feel’. And those metrics that were used during the decision-making process were relics from an earlier era (before desktop computers had made it possible to record, access and analyze large volumes of information in ‘real-time’). Beane and others like him changed all of this.

Of course, in sport, as in marketing, math is never a substitute for strategy. Like the golfer who said, “The harder I work, the luckier

I get”, analytics creates the basis for good decision-making, it does not replace it. We will always need people who can:

• Determine what to measure and develop proprietary metrics.

• Connect the dots across multiple data sources.

• Glean insights from the data and socialize and ‘story-tell’ their meaning.

• Act upon insights and improve them over time.

But particularly now – in a time when we are economically constrained for resources but with more data to analyze than ever before – the intelligent application of analytics can significantly improve your chances of winning.

Stephen DiMarco, CMO of

Compete (a division of TNS), has coined the term ‘Moneyball marketer’ to refer to the new breed of marketer who, like Billy Beane, uses data to create strategic advantage. “The determining factor is knowing what to measure,” says DiMarco. “Depending on your objectives, conventional metrics like impressions, clicks or purchase intent (collected via surveys) may not be the best predictor. You need to determine what is and maximize that before your competitors do.” As an example, he cites how WPP companies such as ZAAZ, Mindshare and Compete have constructed models for clients in the auto industry, linking discrete marketing tactics across paid and unpaid channels to new vehicle sales.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of ‘Moneyball marketers’

at WPP, resident across many different operating companies.

To foster the growth of data-driven practices across all disciplines, and at every stage of the marketing funnel, WPP established the Analytics Task Force in January 2008. The group meets quarterly to share trends and research practices and evaluate new technologies and partnership opportunities. In our first year, we hosted an Analytics Day in New York and developed a strategic partnership with Omniture, a leading technology platform for web marketers.

To learn more about ‘Moneyball marketing’, WPP’s partnership with Omniture and the Analytics Task Force, visit http://bitly.com/wppdigital.

Contact: Thomas Fellger, CEO, [email protected]

THE WIRE • July 2009 THE WIRE • July 20098 CANNES CANNES 9

Tim MellorsChief creative officerGrey

Weather lovely. Half as many people here but more famous faces on the bill. Price of drink scandalous as ever. Went to see that nice Spike Lee. He seemed a bit angry. “The client kills the best work...they won’t do brave so they do vanilla.”

Roger Daltrey of the Who and Little Stevie van Zandt of the Sopranos and E Street Band both seemed like people you’d want to go on holiday with. Amazing how the music biz seems just like advertising.

Kofi Annan wasn’t as good as David Plouffe. Enjoyed the session on Twitter by co-founder Biz Stone. All but 10 people in the audience were on Twitter. Borne out the same eveningwhen Twitter created a forest fire in Cannes on Jacko’s death long before French TV got the first spark.

Martin Sorrell grilled four of the biggest marketeers in the world, none of whom were on Twitter so that now makes 14. All seemed a lot gutsier than Spike Lee would have them.

All in all a lovely week’s conference. I’ll definitely be booking next year. Recession permitting.

Wish you were here,TimPS There were also some

awards, Grey won twice as many Lions as last year, WPP won a zoo full. Why didn’t they get Kofi to give out the film awards rather than the Mayor of Cannes?

Dale HerigstadChief creative officerSchematic

My first time at Cannes Lions, I can’t make comparisons. However, the tone seemed quiet for obvious reasons. Talk of changes in the future of media and advertising was frequent. So, how do we connect the great creative talent with emerging digital trends? That’s the question.

Y&R’s presentation of a dialogue between Roger Daltrey and Harvey Goldsmith was a lesson in great branding, and how audacity and perseverance and great talent lead to something that lasts.

I’ll add a shameless plug for Schematic’s very large interactive wall near the entrance to the Palais on Level One which was hard to miss. Touch gestures allowed connections with other attendees and information. The most popular bit seemed to be the magical appearance of your name as you approached.

It is clear that connected media systems (also referred to as cloud computing) is the future, as described by Bob Greenberg. The migrating audience is no longer attached to devices. Big technical challenges, but certainly rewarding. Social media was a common theme, and connected media allows for ongoing virtual social experiences.

In the background, Big Technology is moving to find new and better ways to enable all of this.

John O’KeeffeWorldwide creative directorWPP

Despite widespread predictions of a recession-led creative downturn, WPP

increased its tally of Lions. We also increased our lead over the third-placed group and, more importantly, closed the gap significantly on our chief rival. A ‘top two’ appears to be emerging. So we have a clear target in sight and we know what we have to do.

The results, based on the Cannes judging system (10 for Grand Prix, 7 for Gold, 5 for Silver, 3 for Bronze and 1 for all shortlists) are as follows:

1st. Omnicom - 1,205 points (148 statues)2nd. WPP - 911 points (109 statues)3rd. Publicis - 843 points (101 statues)

We accumulated a total of 109 Cannes Lions across all the Cannes categories, including the Media Grand Prix for JWT Japan for Kit Kat.We were represented by over 124 offices from all over the world.

Congratulations to all our winners. Good luck everyone for 2010.

Gold MediaMediaCom, Mumbai, IndiaProcter & Gamble/Gillette

Grand Prix MediaJWT, Tokyo, JapanNestlé Confectionery/Kit Kat Mail 2009

Gold PressJWT, SingaporeWWF

Gold PressGrey, Paris, FranceSASCH/SHS Team Clothes

Gold CyberBridge Worldwide, Cincinnati, USProcter & Gamble/Pringles

Gold DesignThe Partners, London, UKRichard House Children’s Hospice/Office Games

Gold CyberOgilvy & Mather, Düsseldorf, GermanyDüsseldorfer Tafel EV/Free food distribution

Gold FilmJWT, New York, USAMTV/Choose or lose voting awareness

Gold DesignJWT, Mumbai, IndiaMaharashtra Janavikas Kendra/Balwadi Night School

Gold OutdoorOgilvy, Stockholm, SwedenFundraising to support the war victims of Georgia

Gold FilmY&R, Auckland, New ZealandBreast Cancer Research Trust

2 x Gold FilmJWT, Mumbai, IndiaThe Times of India

The Gold standard

AWARDS A Gold Lion from Cannes is the

pre-eminent currency in the world of ideas and

creativity. Here are WPP’s Gold winners from

this year’s festival, across all categories

MaryLee SachsWorldwide director marketing communicationsHill & Knowlton

After 55 years, PR was finally included in the Cannes Lions this year. Did PR finally come of age? Or has the advertising industry deemed PR-originated ideas as more viable in today’s challenged market? It must be the latter given how many PR Lions were coveted by ad agencies in the first-ever awards.

The PR jury wrestled with setting the bar high. Prelim judging across 431 cases from 48 countries left 320 cases to review in Cannes. The UK with 55 entries and the US with just 46 entries were both under-represented given the size of the PR business in those markets while China and India were hardly present. Clearly there’s a job to do in promoting the Cannes PR Lions around the world.

For the most part though, entries were rock solid, and winning attributes across the jury were originality, engagement, influence, relevance, and achieving critical outcomes. It was remarkable how aligned the 15 judges were, despite coming from 13 countries.

Overall, the jury was tough, and our chair, Lord Tim Bell, was a formidable challenger on some of the debates. It won’t go unnoticed that the PR shortlist was unusually short with just 37 campaigns. Cannes Lions organizers coaxed for a longer list of 50 or more, equivalent to 12-14 per cent of the total entries submitted. I look forward to 2010 when hopefully the PR profession takes the Cannes Lions just as seriously as the 2009 PR Jury did.

Postcards from Cannes...


“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.” –Mark Twain.

Facebook is everywhere. You’d have to be a cryogenically frozen amoeba trapped under a rock on Mars not to have heard of it. So, what’s the big deal? Does Facebook really deserve to be hailed as the greatest product of Web 2.0 or is it only a matter of time before all the hoopla becomes a thing of the past?

Many joined Facebook hoping it would bring them closer to the people in their lives, especially those they hadn’t seen since the good old days of school. But then the reality set in. For some, getting in touch with said blasts from the past made them remember why they weren’t that chummy to begin with. For others, it’s reached the point where they’re dealing with an addiction; staying up into the wee hours of the morning, showing up late for work, and messaging colleagues in

adjacent cubicles (assuming access hasn’t been entirely blocked).

I have received many requests to join Facebook, some from people I’d only ever said “hi” to once or twice. That didn’t make much sense. Why was I being hassled by people I either saw in class everyday or who weren’t even that fond of me in the first place? Why could they not take the hint (i.e. my express “no thanks”) and move on? And why couldn’t anyone come up with a valid reason to sign up that didn’t involve some degree of peer pressure? This definitely went beyond the desire to get a little closer.

The social networking craze seems to me to be more about reaffirming ourselves than about connecting with other people. Our entire sense of self is now based on how many “friends” we have on our profiles. Whether or not we know (or like) these people doesn’t matter. As long as we can claim to be popular, that’s all that counts. As long as we’re connected,

we exist. The world will have no choice but to acknowledge that.

To those of you who are happy with Facebook, what I have to say shouldn’t bother you. If it does, maybe that’s something you need to think about. In any case, all I can do is offer some advice. Be reasonable about how much you share online because the last thing you want is to have your identity stolen (or wind up being stalked). And now that companies are using Facebook to investigate prospective employees, a little common sense (and censorship) will come in handy.

To those of you who have managed to resist the lure of Facebook and other social networking sites up to now, congratulations are in order. Your willpower is admirable! Technology may profess to be bringing us closer together, but one of the things it is doing (other than creating an entire generation who can’t spell) is tearing us further apart. We’re forgetting what it’s like to interact with each

other on an organic level. Nowadays, it’s near impossible to have a conversation without the person you’re trying to talk to keeping at least one earphone still plugged in and/or constantly reaching for their phone. What ever happened to undivided attention and good old-fashioned eye contact?

The fact is, you really don’t need a website to stay in touch with your family and friends. Why not write them a letter, give them a phone call, or (insert gasp here) meet them in person? We’re not meant to spend our lives sitting in front of computer screens, thinking we’re connecting with others when we’re actually not. We’re meant to be out there living our lives. And even though the online experience may seem real, it can never come close to interaction in the flesh. So, what are you waiting for?

A guide for Africa’s marketsEXPERTS Scangroup is the leading advertising group in East Africa, and has ambitions to expand across

the continent, with the help of investment and expertise from WPP. By Alexander Garrett

IF AFRICA is the last great untapped region of the world for marketers, then few are better placed than Scangroup to make the connection with its emerging population of consumers. The Nairobi-based company has already established a strong position in East Africa, and with WPP backing it nurtures ambitions to become one of the leading players across the continent.

With most of the world’s major markets reeling from the global recession, it seems only a matter of time before eyes turn increasingly to Africa’s potential, which has so often been overlooked. Already the leading player in marketing services in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, Scangroup has plans to expand into other key countries over the next few years, as well as diversifying from its traditional focus on advertising and media.

The company was founded as Scan Ad Marketing in 1982, by its CEO and former McCann-Erickson executive Bharat Thakrar, with the vision of putting advertising on a more professional footing. It opened offices in Tanzania in 1990 and in Uganda in 1992, then in 1995 Thakrar set up a separate agency with JWT. Starting out

as a non-affiliated agency, Scan subsequently metamorphosed into a multi-agency group by forming a series of affiliations with the likes of JWT, McCanns and Grey, driven principally by the needs of multinational clients such as Unilever, Ford and Coca-Cola. In 1997/98 it diversified with the formation of a media independent agency, Media Interactive, and then into experiential marketing with the formation of Roundtrip Limited. Today it has some 360 people in more than a dozen separate companies.

Thakrar says: “Africa is unique in a number of ways. The markets are generally small in terms of the value they represent, opportunities to buy existing agencies are limited, and so agency groups tend to be pragmatic and do what they can do. Multinationals don’t feel they need to be present in every country – they may use distributors – and they cluster countries together for practical purposes.”

Last year, WPP became the biggest single investor in Scan, buying more than 60 million shares to take a 27.5 per cent stake in the company, in spite of the fact that some of its agencies are affiliated with those owned by some of WPP’s biggest

competitors. Yet Thakrar points out: “WPP’s deal is with the Scan holding company, and there are no financial relationships with any other agency groups. We will become more and more WPP as time goes on.”

That deal gave Scan access to capital and to WPP’s know-how, while for WPP it provided a valuable presence with a leading player in sub-Saharan Africa. “It was a meeting of minds,” says Thakrar.

Scan plans to grow through a combination of acquisitions, joint ventures with other WPP countries – it already has two with Millward Brown and Hill & Knowlton – as well as start-ups. Key markets for ex-pansion are likely to include Ghana, Nigeria, Angola and Mozambique.

As a region, Africa is enormously diverse; its four key points are Egypt in the north; South Africa in the south; Kenya in the east; and Nigeria in the West, but as well as spanning great geographical and cultural distances, marketers have to contend with three European languages – English, French and Portuguese – as well as a long list of African ones. Already, Scan buys media in markets such as Ethiopia, Rwanda, Burundi, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Angola, Gabon, DR Congo and

Mauritius, as well as its three core East Africa markets. “There are definite cultural variations, for example Angolans are more Latino in their outlook,” says Thakrar. Scan agencies typically adapt a pan-African campaign for each market, using local agencies to develop local insights.

Even so, one challenge is the range

of expectation and sophistication that has to be bridged. “In Nairobi, there is a very sophisticated internet-savvy urban population – if you went to their clubs and restaurants you wouldn’t think you were in a developing country at all,” says Thakrar. “And then there’s the old woman in the village who hasn’t even been exposed to television.” The solution: campaigns that embrace digital marketing at one end of the spectrum, and use radio to reach the rural population at the other.

Scan is keen to learn from WPP, and to raise the game of marketing in Africa. “We are talking to WPP companies in digital, field marketing, branding and identity,” says Thakrar.

This is an exciting time for the region, he believes. “Democracy is making a comeback, there is a middle class emerging, and the cellular revolution is connecting people like never before.” Africa’s per capita consumption may be very low, but importantly, the region’s economies will continue to grow this year. “Multinationals are looking at Africa as the next big thing,” says Thakrar, “and that means a step change in the way we do marketing.”

The character of Peter Marangi (Peter the Paint Guy in Swahili) has become one of Kenya’s favourite advertising icons, increasing sales of the Duracoat brand as well as helping to bridge socio-economic, gender and tribal divides

www.scangroup.biz

Founded: 1982

Offices: Agencies in Kenya,

Tanzania and Uganda

Services: Advertising, media,

experiential marketing,

research, public relations.

In WPP: Scangroup is 27.5 per

cent owned by WPP.

Contact: Bharat Thakrar, CEO

[email protected]

10 AFRICA

Thinking aloud

Social networking sites like Facebook are billed as the new way to connect with others, yet in reality they have become a poor substitute for interacting in person, argues Eugene Yiga. In his personal point of view, it’s time we went back to talking face to face

Eugene Yiga is a junior research executive at Millward Brown South Africa. [email protected]


YOU cross the forecourt, go through the automatic doors, and enter a large Wal-Mart store that could be anywhere in North America. The layout of aisles with packed shelves,

deli counters and fresh produce stalls is instantly familiar. Except it isn’t a real store and you’re sitting in a darkened theatre – the ‘ice lab’ – in Milton Keynes, in the middle of England, watching a picture projected onto a 30 foot-wide screen. The image on the screen doesn’t come from the lens of a camera: it is virtual reality, a digital simulation of a store that is so realistic you have to pinch yourself to remember that you’re not there in person.

“Turn left,” commands Mark Edwards, president of the company behind this, Red Dot Square Solutions, and we’re browsing through cereals. Alight on a particular pack and it springs into the foreground. You can turn it round, flip it upside down, study the on-pack offers and the nutritional information. Look up at the screen, he urges, and we’re watching the promotion on the in-store video at the end of the next aisle.

The party tricks are endless: with a few deft manoeuvres, Andy Mellish, co-inventor of the system and the man at the controls, can strip the shelves of products or shuffle them around, move an aisle, change the look of the store, show a heat map of where the highest footfall has taken place.

Except that these are much more than party tricks: Red Dot Square’s VR software, first developed to create golf simulations for the BBC, has already won favour from some of the world’s biggest retailers and manufacturers including Wal-Mart, Tesco, Kimberly-Clark, General Mills and Unilever. Their main interest so far has been to conduct consumer research. Arm a research subject with a joystick – actually the handle of a supermarket trolley – and you can see where they go around the store. But that’s just the beginning. “What if we powered the store to look at you?” asks Edwards. An eyeball sensor records where the shopper’s eye is looking 50 times every second within a quarter of an inch on the screen. A bio-sensor on your forehead, meanwhile, (relying on technology developed at MIT) measures your emotion and cognition. So it can feel your disappointment when you reach the beer aisle and your favourite brand is sold out. Red Dot Square can even present the simulation in 3D – an experience so disturbingly real that you feel the store rail you’re approaching is about to impale you; and scent and sound are further enhancements that can be added.

It might look like an extremely sophisti-cated computer game, but the difference is its resilience and ability to handle vast amounts of data. Most video formats are “pretty but dumb” says Edwards. “This is based on a mili-tary simulator, which has to be mission critical, rather than gaming software,” he explains.

The applications are many: retailers can try out new store layouts and new store designs, while manufacturers can test new products and experiment with the positioning of their pack. But Red Dot Square’s software can equally be used as a data visualiser: it can draw upon transactional data to show instantly which products are selling well, the ‘hot spots’ where customers stand in each aisle.

And it’s not just the technology that’s innovative; so is the business model. There are more than 35,000 products programmed into Red Dot Square’s library. Kimberly-Clark, General Mills and Unilever have commissioned their own ‘ice labs’ while Red Dot Square operates its own facilities in Arkansas, Chicago and Minneapolis which clients pay to use. In essence, it’s a platform that aspires to become the industry standard, and Red Dot Square owns the library as well as the context. “These companies are now doing their new product development in virtual reality,” says Keith Dickens, Red Dot Square’s CEO, who worked for 30 years at Procter & Gamble. “It can cut the time and cost in half.”

WPP bought Red Dot Square in February, positioning it within Kantar, and providing immense new opportunities for collaboration, say Edwards and Dickens. Perhaps ironically, the company doesn’t even have a functioning website; they believe the only way anyone can really appreciate what they do is to see it in action.

There’s one further intriguing possibility: that Red Dot Square’s simulation becomes the basis for the ultimate online shopping experience.

Red hot: the new Ice Lab in Arkansas is one of three operated by Red Dot Square, while some manufacturers, such as Kimberly-Clark and General Mills, have bought their own

Reality unchecked: the view inside Red Dot Square’s virtual store is so lifelike you have to remind yourself you’re not there

Shopping in Sim City

Who’s who in Kantar Retail

VIRTUAL REALITY It’s the store that watches you. Alexander Garrett takes a peek at Red Dot Square Solutions’ futuristic

environment where retailers and manufacturers are plotting the battle for shoppers on a giant cinematic screen

RETAIL 11

Kantar Retail is the new organisation formed from the restructuring of Kantar and TNS companies in February. The group is made up of five companies: Cannondale, Glendinning, Management Ventures Inc, Retail Forward and Red Dot Square Solutions. Its leadership team comprises: Alastair Cochrane, chairman; Jack Ryder, chairman, Americas; and Wayne Levings, CEO. The focus of the business is on deepening and rolling out digitally-delivered intelligence on retailers, extending shopper insights and consulting capability.

Retail ForwardRetail Forward is a US-based strategic consulting firm focused exclusively on retailers, their shoppers and their suppliers. The firm offers a one-stop resource for retail industry analy-sis and shopper insights, including Retail Forward Intelligence System, its syndicated industry research ($2.5 million invested annually), comprehensive shopper insights (50,000 shoppers surveyed annu-ally) and custom research and strategy consulting solutions. Clients include more than 150 retail chains, branded suppliers and retail services companies through-out the world. The firm has been established for more than 30 years and its head office is in Columbus, Ohio.

www.retailforward.com

An experience so disturbingly real that you feel the store rail you’re approaching is about to impale you

Cannondale AssociatesUS-based Cannondale Associates offers marketing and sales management consulting, and software solutions, with offices in Wilton, CT and Evanston, IL. The firm’s primary client base is packaged goods manufacturers, whom Cannondale helps to deal more effectively with their retail customers, including grocery chains, mass merchandisers, drug stores, and convenience stores. All Cannondale’s managing directors and consultants have extensive experience in marketing or sales management positions for major packaged goods companies, and have earned MBAs from top business schools such as Wharton, Tuck, Harvard and Kellogg.

www.cannondaleassoc.com

Glendinning Management ConsultantsGlendinning is an expert “Go To Market” consultancy specialising in the creation, development and implementation of winning sales and marketing solutions. The company helps clients to develop pragmatic 360 degree propositions across their Consumer, Shopper and Customer teams through its three core practices. Glendinning was established in the UK in the 1960s and has offices in Bangkok, Dubai, Johannesburg, LA, Madrid, New York, Paris, Shanghai, Sydney and Tokyo with its global head office in London.

www.glendinning.com

MVI Management Ventures, Inc. – is a global leader in supplying strategic insight, thought leadership and education on the world’s top retailers to its clients. MVI’s analysts track more than 1,000 retailers worldwide, and their analysis is designed to help clients work with retailers and grow their own profits. MVI has research teams located in Cambridge, MA in the US, and London, with expanding capabilities in India and Latin America. Clients can access data through two online gateways: MVI-Insights.com in North America and MVI-Insights.eu in Europe. In addition, MVI runs a wide range of events, training programs and publications as well as offering consulting services.

www.mvi-worldwide.com

Red Dot Square SolutionsRed Dot Square Solutions (see above) is a virtual reality research company which helps retailers and manufacturers to better predict consumer behaviour in-store through use of intelligent, real-time store simulation technologies. Red Dot Square’s clients include Safeway, Tesco, Walgreens and Wal-Mart, working in collaboration with global marketers such as General Mills, Kimberly-Clark, Kraft, MillerCoors, Sara Lee and Unilever. Established in 2006 by founder and president Mark Edwards and employing 60 people, Red Dot Square is based at Milton Keynes in the UK with a US office in Chicago.

www.reddotsquare.com

Contact: Keith Dickens, CEO, [email protected]


Staff ReporterWITH the established models of TV content production and distribution under pressure, media owners and advertisers are increasingly exploring new avenues for funding and generating content, from sponsored programmes to internet-broadcast webisodes, or product placement. As Martin Sorrell, WPP CEO, put it at the recent MIP TV conference (see page 2): “There’s a big opportunity for media owners, content producers, the people who control the talent, and us agencies – creative and media – to work together, to develop content that is attractive for the new platforms.”

WPP companies have already been instrumental in the making of productions like Unilever-sponsored Ugly Betty in China (see back page) and the ABC television series October Road.

Here are three new initiatives in which WPP is backing branded content.

Hong Kong JWT is behind Alchemist, a seven-minute film made for Unilever to promote its Lux shampoo, which stars Catherine Zeta-Jones and is being aired on TV in China and Japan.

The film is based on an original screenplay by Jeffrey Caine, who wrote the screenplays for the James Bond movie Goldeneye and box-office hit The Constant Gardener. The story is about a motorcycle chase to a laboratory where a secret elixir – Unilever’s Lux shampoo – is being produced. Zeta-Jones is later seen at a red-carpet ball with shimmering hair from the new formula.

Unilever has been airing the film on TV channels including China Central Television and Fox this summer. In addition, more than 6.5 million people watched it online in its first six weeks, and an edited version will also be played in cinemas.

The new film is designed by Unilever to break through the clutter encountered by conventional 30-second slots. Unilever says Japanese women are exposed to about 1,000 ads in an average week.

“The means of interacting with consumers has dramatically changed,” Enzo Devoto, Unilever’s vice president of hair products in North Asia and Greater China told The Wall Street Journal. “A film seemed the perfect solution – by getting into the world of movies, rather than just having movie stars in our ads, which our competitors do too, we can draw consumers closer to the brand.”

New York Mindshare Entertainment has created a series of webisodes starring 30 Rock star Jane Krakowski to promote Breyers’ Smooth and Dreamy ice cream brand. The webisodes feature Krakowski in modern takes on two of Hollywood’s most iconic romance films – Gone with the Wind and King Kong – in which technology enables Krakowski to come face-to-face with Rhett Butler and King Kong. In the webisodes, which can be seen at www.SmoothandDreamy.com, Krakowski engages in a dreamlike conversation incorporating both original and new dialogue.

“We know America loves Breyers,” said Wendy Franks, senior brand manager for Breyers. “In these unique webisodes, Jane explores whether or not Rhett Butler and

12 BRANDING

THE launch of the BrandZ Top 100 this year was a groundbreaking event in a variety of different ways, bringing the WPP brand research data to a wider audience than ever before. Technology played a key role in the unveiling, showing the way for future events to be hosted online.

“Our main objective was to ensure that our people were the first to find out about it,” said David Roth, joint CEO of The Store, who was responsible for launching the report. “We also wanted to make the main information and reports available immediately as downloads.”

The success of the launch, said Roth, can be measured by the fact that “we had every country and every one of our operating countries participating – that has never happened before with any event”. He added that 99.9 per cent of those surveyed wanted WPP to do more such cross-country knowledge sharing, while clients also gave it a thumbs-up and many commented that this showed the value of being part of the WPP network.

Millward Brown’s study of the top 100 global brands was publicized with a major supplement in the Financial Times on 29 April. Key innovations connected with the launch were: • Hosting a series of web seminars around the globe which brought in an audience of around 3,500 people. • Development of an iApp – iPhone application – for BrandZ by WPP associate company iconmobile (see picture above). “This was the first time in the world that a research program has been communicated by an iPhone program,” said Roth. “It was extremely popular and became the eleventh most downloaded iPhone business application in the world.” The iApp was offered as a free product available on iTunes, and generated additional noise in the Twitter community. • WPP design company Lambie-Nairn restyled the report to make it more user friendly. • The report was customised for JWT so that it could present its own version to clients. A second custom version was produced for the retail sector highlighting the top 25 retail brands with analysis provided by WPP retail specialists MVI.

Overall, BrandZ and the Top 100 report provide a range of benefits to WPP and its companies, says Roth. “It’s something that gets us talked about, and it’s important that we do this to be competitive. More than that, our people build brands 365 days a year, so this is an important toolkit for us as an organisation.”

The full report and iPhone application are downloadable from www.brandz.com. The iApp is also available via iTunes. David Roth, [email protected].

Participants in a Purefold pilot season will be announced soon. Anyone interested in discussing the project can contact Tom Himpe, [email protected] or David Bausola, [email protected].

Innovation to watchMEDIA Branded content has become a hot topic. The WIRE reports on some recent initiatives

involving WPP companies and their clients bringing brands and programming together.

BrandZ gears up for global audience

King Kong are smooth and dreamy enough to prove there’s a love greater than ice cream.”

For the webisodes, Mindshare Entertainment assembled an A-list comedy crew, including Tony Award and Screen Actors Guild Award winner Krakowski and Gail Mancuso, one of the most prominent comedy directors working in series television today. Mancuso has directed many of the most recognizable comedy series including Roseanne, Friends, Two and a Half Men, Scrubs and 30 Rock, which most recently won the 2008 Emmy award for Outstanding Comedy Series. Experts from several

Mindshare divisions also played key roles in the initiative, said Mindshare Entertainment president David Lang.

“We had a great team on this project and I believe the end result illustrates all the hard work that went into it,” said, Lang, who is also co-head of the agency’s Invention unit.

LondonA number of WPP companies have been in discussions with independent studio Ag8 and Ridley and Tony Scott’s company Free Scott about participating in a series of innovative webisodes loosely based on the cult

sci-fi thriller Blade Runner. Called Purefold, the series is described as “an open media franchise designed for brands, platforms, filmmakers, product developers and communities to collaboratively imagine our near future.”

The franchise contains infinite interlinked story lines, turned into short-format episodes by Ridley Scott Associate Films’ global talent pool of directors, and informed by real-time online conversations from the audience, which are harvested through FriendFeed, a ‘life streaming’ technology.

Ag8 says that Purefold “enables participating brands to take an alternative route to brand integration than traditional product placement and embrace invention within a narrative framework.”

WPP is one of a small number of companies who are working on bringing in advertisers to fund the series.

Hollywood A-lister Catherine Zeta-Jones stars in JWT’s seven minute film, called Alchemist, promoting Lux shampoo to TV audiences in China and Japan


Staff ReporterIT WAS billed as one of the most important wins of 2008, and it couldn’t have come at a more significant moment. In late October, as the world’s financial system was in crisis and recession loomed, a WPP cross-company team, known as Team Chemistry, was appointed by Johnson & Johnson to handle the lion’s share of its pharmaceutical business in the US, which includes more than 25 brands. The win – in which Team Chemistry took the majority of the spoils alongside Interpublic Group – came at the end of a pitch among six leading holding companies, and consolidated work that was previously shared among more than 200 agencies.

At the end of the intensely competitive process, Team Chemistry was left with around two thirds of J&J’s pharma business including most of its important new drugs. It catapaulted J&J into the top five of WPP’s global clients and leaves the Group well positioned if J&J decides to consolidate more of its worldwide marketing business.

Team Chemistry’s win also provides some excellent lessons in how WPP teams can win pitches in future.

The review began last summer, when WPP was invited to pitch alongside IPG, Omnicom, Publicis, Havas and Inventiv, each of which had a slice of the business. Howard Courtemanche, CEO of JWT’s specialist unit Health@JWT was chosen to lead the pitch, as JWT is also J&J’s biggest consumer agency. He says: “J&J made it clear there were no favourites. They wanted stronger marketing, the best talent, and to make some cost savings, at a time when patents on two of

their major drugs were expiring.”After an initial briefing,

Courtemanche pulled together a team comprising all of WPP’s main healthcare communications companies: CommonHealth, ghg, Sudler & Hennessey and Ogilvy Healthworld alongside JWT. Also involved in the first round team were non-healthcare specialists: John Zweig, head of WPP’s Special-ist Communications; Satish Korde, WPP’s global client director; Rick Brooks, WPP Finance; and David Spitz, WPP business development director. For CommonHealth, which handled a raft of J&J;’s antibiotic and oncology brands, the stakes were particularly high. As CEO Matt Giegerich points out: “For us, J&J was – and remains our single largest client.” WPP Digital also played an intrinsic part in the successful campaign: J&J felt that it had fallen behind in digital technology and catching up was a priority.

Courtemanche says that inclusivity within WPP was at the heart of the team’s approach. “We had everyone around the table, we listened to everyone’s opinions, and then a small team went away to write things up.” And Giegerich adds: “Everyone had to be willing to check their individual agenda at the door; this was a Group mission.”

The concept of Team Chemistry was designed both to refer to the pharmaceutical nature of the client, and also to the chemistry between team members. Before the first stage of presentation, the team leadership identified the key benefit that the client was seeking from the pitch as ‘time’. “One of the client team told me: we’re so busy running 200 agencies we don’t have time to run our own business,” says Courtemanche. “He said: if you can give me one extra day a week to think about our business and brands you will have delivered.”

The key line adopted for the first pitch was “It’s about time” addressing this need and also the sense that it was time for change.

In Team Chemistry, J&J was promised a new organisation that would offer a portal to the complete range of US talent in WPP. The approach was to build agency-neutral teams for each brand, with no personal conflicts and co-located wherever possible.

Team Chemistry also promised to build an online talent database for J&J dubbed Chembook and modelled on Facebook.

The first pitch was successful: Team Chemistry learned that it was on the shortlist for the second round of presentations on October 15.

“In the second round, they wanted to feel and see what we could deliver and meet the people who would make it happen,” says Giegerich. “They wanted to be thrilled by what we could do, and to see all our innovation, talent and creativity.”

Unlike the other agency groups competing, it was decided to host the

four-hour event in-house at JWT’s New York head office. WPP’s events company MJM provided support in hosting the presentation.

The 28-strong client team was initially divided in two, with one room hosting a presentation and roundtable discussion on the future of healthcare, including digital communications and the Obama presidency; and the other on future agency models, including a presentation on Team Detroit, demonstrating WPP’s experience in cross-agency team working. “That was important because it made them comfortable that WPP had done this before and knew the pratfalls,” says Courtemanche.

There followed ‘speed dating’

sessions in which groups of five clients were seated at a kiosk and given a rapid five minute walk through a case study. WPP CEO Martin Sorrell was among those taking part.

And the climax was a Science Fair-style exhibition of some 30 exhibits held in JWT’s Town Hall space. Exhibits ranged from individual WPP companies such as LiveWorld and Schematic showcasing their abilities, to leading edge technologies such as Microsoft’s tabletop screen Surface.

“The room was buzzing,” says Courtemanche, “and afterwards Brian Perkins, VP of corporate affairs at J&J, said it was the best pitch he’d ever seen.”

Six months in, Team Chemistry has built 16 teams for J&J Pharma, incorporating over 30 WPP companies, including a number who haven’t worked in healthcare before, such as Schematic. Each team is led by a Team Chemist and reports to the Nucleus – the WPP central team. Kantar is also talking to J&J and there is the possibility of further consolidation that would leave WPP ideally positioned to win new business. Giegerich concludes: “To win a pitch like this you’ve got to go way above and beyond what is asked. Meeting the client’s request is just the table stakes, and by the end we knew we had done every thing we could to win that business.”

CLIENT FOCUS When J&J put its US pharmaceuticals business up for review, WPP’s cross-company team came up with some brilliant innovations to win the majority of the business. Here’s how it happened

Chemistry lessons

Need the lowdown on the Group’s experts in healthcare marketing?

WPP has recently issued the Healthcare Navigator, a guide to healthcare communications services within the Group. The guide can be downloaded from the WPP intranet at https://inside.wpp.com/InsideWPP/Communities/Healthcare/.

HEALTHCARE 13

Everyone had to be willing to check their individual agenda at the door; this was a Group mission

Ogilvy Healthworld

Burson-Marsteller

LiveWorld

Visible Technologies

KnowledgeBase Marketing

Hill & Knowlton

Schematic

Bridge Worldwide

Millward Brown

Team Chemistry agencies

CommonHealth

Sudler & Hennessey

Grey

JWT

• CommonHealth• MBS/Vox • Solara • Altum • Qi

• Carbon • HLS • ProCom • Ferguson

• S&H • S&H Digital

• Precept

• ghg • Summit Grey • Hurd Studios • Phase V • IMSci • Osprey

• WG • BrandEdge • Vogel Farina • OnCall • Newton Grey

• JWT • RMG Connect

Chinese remedySudler & Hennessey is taking a 60 per cent stake in MDS, a leading healthcare agency in China. Founded in 2007, MDS operates in both Shanghai and Beijing. The agency employs 50 people and its clients include Bayer, Pfizer, Sanofi-Aventis, Sanofi-Pasteur and Schering Plough.

Ogilvy honoursTwo Ogilvy Healthworld executives have received industry accolades. Donna Tuths, president of Ogilvy Healthworld North America has been named Advertising Person of the Year by MedAd News, the magazine that has been covering marketing in the pharmaceutical industry for 25 years. Tuths joined the agency as managing director in 2003, and under her leadership it has more than doubled in size, winning more than 75 per cent of its new business pitches in the last year. Meanwhile, Lori Carrabba, executive vice president, director of operations, Ogilvy Healthworld New York, has been slated to receive the 2009 Power of Communications Award in the Advertising category from the US Printing Industries Alliance.

Cancer supportMattson Jack, Kantar Health’s specialist in business analytics and strategic decision support for the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries, has launched CancerMPact Treatment Architecture China 2009, a clinically rich report that focuses on specific cancer tumour types in China. The report is aimed at providing pharmaceutical companies with key information on current standards of care in China, to support strategic investment decisions.

Top rankCommonHealth has been named the No.1 Healthcare Advertising Agency in terms of billings by industry publication Advertising Age for the third consecutive year.

Healthcare Round-up

Team Chemistry’s first major campaign is for a newly-approved rheumatoid arthritis drug

Team Chemistry’s pitch to J&J included roundtable discussions, ‘speed dating’ sessions and a Science Fair-style exhibition (above)

Key winning lessons from Team Chemistry • Be inclusive; involve as many WPP companies early on as is practical and get their input. • Focus on the benefit that issought by the client and how WPP can deliver.• Be innovative, both in how you organise the team and how you present.• Make it exciting for the client to be involved.


CR Matters

Staff ReporterFOR the first time, WPP is sending detailed reports to all its companies outlining their CO2 emissions by region, country and individual office that result from office energy use and air travel.

More than ever, we now under-stand the important role that businesses play in climate change mitigation. These reports will provide WPP companies with a powerful tool to manage expenditure on air travel and office energy, and consequently their impact on the environment.

They will also help companies answer some of the questions about social and environmental policies that both existing and prospective clients are increasingly asking.

The reports were also sent to WPP’s network of Climate Champions, who are taking action to slash energy use in their companies. In April, 30 Champions met at JWT in New York to mark a year of energy saving in the US and to share success stories. 20 UK champions met at JWT in London in May.

Climate Champions have helped to reduce the Group carbon foot-

print by 10.5 per cent since 2006 by implementing simple measures like setting power management on print-ers and turning the lights off at night.

At both meetings, representatives from the Group Energy Action Team presented on what more the Champions can do to help meet the target of a 20 per cent reduction by 2010. Andy Hammond from WPP real estate asked the champions to focus on 100 key sites installed with automatic energy meters. Procurement encouraged the champions to use preferred suppliers to buy sustainable furniture, carpet,

stationery and recycling, and Jonas Hjerpe from WPP IT gave an update on efforts to install high-definition videoconferencing units around the world (see story, above).

Championing a low carbon WPP

Connecting via video

ENERGY Carbon reports issued to Group companies to help reduce emissions

LINKS The Group’s videoconferencing service is gaining momentum. Jonas Hjerpe reports

To find out how you can support the Climate Champions, visit www.inside.wpp.com/insidewpp/about/behave/responsibility/tacklingclimatechange.

If you have any questions regarding the project please email Jonas Hjerpe, [email protected].

• This spring saw a raft of events and pro bono activities by WPP companies around the world to promote WWF’s Earth Day 2009. Among them was a direct action and education program at JWT New York, organised by its Junk Waste Trash grassroots group, a team of volunteers committed to making JWT an environmentally-sustainable working environment.

The group created a dramatic 20ft high mural (above) demonstrating the realities of where energy comes from, introduced a Green Mornings program where office lights are not turned on until noon, and held an Earth Day Fair highlighting the sustainable goods and services its clients make and the sustainability initiatives the company support.

• Showing investors and clients that WPP is a responsible business has never been more important. Since we launched the WPP corporate responsibility (CR) policy in 2002, concerns about climate change and business ethics have moved from the margins to the mainstream.

In April, Vanessa Edwards, WPP head of Corporate Responsibility, held meetings at JWT, Y&R and O&M in New York to discuss what CR means for marketing companies. The agencies discussed many examples of environmental and social issues in their client work and how they are taking action to cut their carbon footprints and increase employee diversity.

• MediaCom has been ranked as one of the UK’s top 10 companies in the recent Sunday Times Best Green Companies report. Judges were impressed with the agency’s environmental policies and energy-reduction and recycling initiatives. They singled out some of the unconventional ways that MediaCom gets its people engaged, including turning the London office balconies into vegetable gardens, with a ‘best-looking tomato’ contest at harvest time.

• WPP’s corporate responsibility programs are best in sector, according to investment research agency, Vigeo. In its annual assessment, the agency recognised the Group’s efforts to prevent corruption, protect human rights and to support charities through pro bono work. WPP also scored points in the environment category as a result of our energy reduction programs and strong climate change strategy.

Leading the field in CR reportingGOVERNANCE The Group’s seventh annual Corporate Responsibility Report (right) was

published in June and carries comment, analysis and hard data on the CR policies, aims, performance and initiatives of WPP and its companies. It reveals encouraging progress

Ogilvy UK for ComfortComfort’s concentra-ted fabric conditioner is good for customers and the environment. Each bottle contains 55 per cent less plastic than regular conditioner – requir-ing less energy to manufacture and transport.

In 2008 Ogilvy UK created a TV and print campaign – Do the Moves – to encourage Comfort customers to switch to the concentrated version. The campaign explained the environmental benefits and reassured customers that they would get the same high quality product.

The campaign helped to increase sales, with a quarter of all UK households now using Comfort Concentrates. It also encouraged people to switch to the concentrated version, which now makes up 86 per cent of sales.

Grey Amsterdam and Mindshare for Becel Pro-activeBefore they reach the menopause, women generally have lower cholesterol levels than men. After the menopause around 50 per cent of women will have higher cholesterol levels and this can have an impact on their health.

Grey Amsterdam and Mindshare developed a communications program to raise awareness of the issue and promote the benefits of Unilever’s Becel Pro-activ dairy products which can help lower cholesterol.

The campaign ran in two phases. In the first phase Grey created TV, radio, print ads and direct mailings using the comedienne Karin Bloemen, to discuss the issue in a sympathetic, tongue-in-cheek

way. The ads encouraged women to visit a website run by Care for Women, an organisation of self-employed nurses focusing on the health of women in the menopause. The site contains information about cholesterol and gives women the chance to book a cholesterol check with a Care for Women consultant. During the second phase, ads emphasised that Becel Pro-activ can help to tackle high cholesterol.

The results were very positive. 80 per cent of Dutch women now know that there is a direct link between the menopause and cholesterol levels, up from 42 per cent at the start of the campaign. Sales of the product grew around 11-12 per cent per month.

14 RESPONSIBILITY

THIS year’s report demonstrates that WPP is well on track to meet our 20 per cent energy reduction target by the end of 2010. The Group has reduced its carbon footprint by 10 per cent, by making our buildings and IT systems more energy-efficient, and saved a further 9 per cent by switching to green energy at many offices.

Marketing has a vital role to play in promoting the new products and services needed to make the transition to a low-carbon economy, and the report profiles some of the sustainability expertise that we are building within the Group.

Pro bono work by Group companies is also showcased in the report. Despite tough operating conditions, our companies contributed £14.6 million in social investment in 2008, equivalent to 2 per cent of pre-tax profit.

The social and environmental impact of the work we undertake for clients is one of our most important CR issues. Below we profile two Unilever campaigns that promote the client’s credentials in these areas.

THE WPP Connect videoconferencing project continues to gather pace. We now have over 20 locations operational and capable of supporting high definition video calls. This includes top travel destinations such as New York, London, Paris, Brussels, Hong Kong, Singapore, Atlanta and Washington DC. For major locations such as New York and London we already have multiple rooms available for booking. We are now actively in our testing stage and are looking to host as many real calls

as possible before our full launch later in the summer. So if you would like to book a videoconference using any of the above cities please email [email protected] with at least 72 hours notice. We can support up to four locations connected at once and we can also connect to audio conference lines for other participants.

Ogilvy spans the planet

GLOBAL PRACTICE New team will place sustainability

as a driver of growth around the world

Staff ReporterMANY clients are moving from ‘green’ as a purely environmental issue to sustainability as a driver of shared, conscientious growth and are looking to identify their own role and opportunities in this space. Ogilvy has responded with the global launch of its multi-disciplinary practice that helps clients use sustainability to drive brand value, long-term growth and profits.

OgilvyEarth is a planet-wide team of planners, consultants and creatives from Ogilvy & Mather, OgilvyOne, Ogilvy Public Relations, OgilvyAc-tion and OgilvyEntertainment, led by Seth Farbman. It offers strategic

consulting, a ‘Lab’ of sustainabil-ity experts and a raft of proprietary tools and processes including Eco Audit, Landscape Audit, Earth-View Software, employee engagement tools and key influencer mapping.

Supporting the global practice is a board of directors consisting of established leaders in sustainability who come from across six continents and represent the business, scientific and government/NGO communities.

Among OgilvyEarth’s current assignments is a project to create an awareness campaign for the landmark United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009.www.ogilvyearth.com

See the CR Report online at www.wpp.com/corporateresponsibilityreports.


HAVING BEEN a client-side research manager during the last recession, I’m more than familiar with the “we need consumer data, but we don’t have the budget” scenario. Last year we saw some clients increasing their Omnibus Research spend as their budgets for larger projects were cut. So, with these situations in mind, we made a strategic decision to run a Consumer Confidence Tracker on our Online Omnibus survey with the following possible benefits:

• Giving it to existing clients would keep them loyal.• Offering it to new clients might help win new business.• It could provide good PR material for WPP. • Providing it to fellow WPP companies would help their business efforts and keep us front of mind for intra-Group business referrals.

We decided that our questionnaire should reflect consumers’ views of their own circumstances. We structured our questions around topics like; ‘likelihood of spending £3,000 on a single ticket item’, ‘security of employment’, ‘likelihood of moving home’ and ‘perception of value of home’. The survey has now been running monthly to a sample of 1000 GB adults 16-64 on our Online Omnibus since October 2008.

The initiative has proved highly successful and has enabled us to secure tracking studies from McDonald’s and LG Electronics, thus making it economically viable. The response from a mention in WPP’s online news bulletin, e.wire, was excellent and the data has now been used by several WPP companies including, Millward Brown, MediaCom, Mindshare and GroupM, thereby helping BMRB Omnibus’ profile within the Group.

We’re used to other businesses using sales and marketing incentives; our success with the Consumer Confidence Tracker has shown there’s no reason why market research can’t do the same.

Staff Reporter“DOING things differently” sums up almost every aspect of the move and design of a new Ogilvy office after it outgrew its existing building in Guangzhou, Southern China. First was the radical decision to relocate away from the central business district to Liwan district on the city fringes where an arts and culture hub was developing. Among the area’s interesting spaces, the project team singled out a unique warehouse with a five metre-high

ceiling on the ground floor and plenty of natural light throughout the office’s two floors.

Next on the project agenda was a design concept that would help people break free from established ways of thinking. Ogilvy’s vision was “a carnival of ideas” – a fun and interactive space to ease its people into their most creative mode. At the heart of the design is a signature red staircase and a bridge/balcony which link the two floors diagonally and offer different viewpoints and perspectives through glass panes and openings onto quirky visual elements such as carousel horses and life-size toys.

The new space redefined Ogilvy’s presence in Guangzhou and has been pivotal in retaining and attracting top talent. It has also attracted much press coverage, from trend blogs to interiors magazines, and picked up a number of accolades, including China’s Most Successful Designs award from Fortune magazine (China), Hong Kong’s Perspective Award for Best Commercial Office and Interior Design USA’s Best of Year Merit for Midsize Office.

INSIDE WPP 15

If you work for a WPP company, there are valuable Group tools and resources on hand that can bring business advantage your way...

Business development

WPP holds non-confidential information on Group clients and relationships and can be a great resource for new business people. E-mail Richard Hampson, [email protected], if you need to make connections within the Group or want the (non-confidential) lowdown on a client or prospect.

Cross-Group client case studies

WPP’s portfolio of over 60 client-endorsed case studies provides hard evidence of Group companies collaborating across skills and geographies to bring tangible client benefits. These are valuable tools for new business teams to demonstrate effective teamworking. Download from www.insidewpp.com.

e.wireWPP’s free monthly public online news bulletin keeps you up to date with Group news worldwide. This three-minute read gives you headline summaries of company and people news, account wins, new offers and industry trends. Subscribe via www.insidewpp.com or www.wpp.com.

FactFiles WPP produces regular FactFiles profiling individual WPP companies, specific client service offers and specialist skill areas, available at www.insidewpp.com/factfiles. Does your company have something to offer WPP companies and their clients? Get your message out by emailing [email protected].

Communicators’ meetings The WPP communications team holds regular get-togethers in London, New York and China to share information and insights with WPP company professionals responsible for managing the reputation of their companies. Group companies are invited to nominate one in-house representative – contact [email protected] for upcoming dates.

Group events listingsThe Group intranet carries listings of upcoming events of interest to WPP people across the Group. To get your event promoted e-mail Heather Martin, [email protected].

Group intranetAvailable exclusively to people in all WPP companies, the intranet is your interactive gateway to constantly-updated online info, resources, tools and offers. Are you and your company plugged in and profiled? It’s simple to get going at www.insidewpp.com.

WPP publicationsWPP’s publications include the multi award-winning Annual Report; the annual Corporate Responsibility Report; WPP’s Atticus Journal of original thinking in communications services; and WPPED Cream books showcasing outstanding creative work from WPP companies around the world. Most are available in pdf format from www.insidewpp.com or e-mail Harriet Miller, [email protected], for copies.

www.wpp.comWPP’s public website is the front door into WPP and all its activities and initiatives, with links to Group company websites. www.wpp.com.

Get Connected!

For more information contact Colin Nelson, WPP director of real estate Asia Pacific, [email protected].

Details of the survey are at www.bmrb.co.uk.For a full copy of the results or to discuss, contact: Bob Salmons, senior associate director, BMRB Omnibus Research. [email protected]

OFFICE DESIGN A bold relocation for one of Ogilvy China’s offices has attracted plaudits and boosted creativity

Guangzhou’s carnival of ideas

Confidence trick pays off

SURVEY A new downturn-

busting research initiative has

taken off with clients – and

WPP companies – via our online

news bulletin, e.wire. BMRB’s

Bob Salmons explains

TRENDS Fashion and socio-cultural expert PeclersParis launches its latest macrotrend report

The latest volume is being launched in the US in August and Peclers is running immersion events in SF and NY. Contact www.peclersparis.com or Eric Duchamp, president, [email protected].

Cultural immersionFor the lowdown on the latest socio-cultural and lifestyle trends, top brands turn to Futur(s), a seminal publication from PeclersParis, a member of the Fitch global studio. Futur(s) 9 is the ninth edition of a tool that not only identifies and anticipates evolving societal values, demonstrates how they appear through semantic and iconographic references (semiological analysis), but also interprets them as creative scenarios, creative insights for the future. Clients using Peclers’ blend of cultural observation and creative intuition include Nike, P&G, Microsoft, L’Oréal and Samsung.

THE WIRE • July 200916 NEWS

What’s the buzz in...

News to you!Get headline summaries of company and people news, account wins, new offers and industry reports via e.wire, WPP’s monthly online public news bulletin, delivered FREE to subscribers. Register now at www.wpp.com.Get your company’s news out to nearly 50,000 subscribers!If you have non-confidential news to share in e.wire, e-mail [email protected] with details.

TNS’s Ralf Matthaes shares some insights on life in Vietnam’s capital

Ho Chi Minh City

TNS Vietnam is part of the Kantar Group.www.tnsglobal.com

Check out the the latest and best published thinking from professionals around the Group atwww.wpp.com/readingroom

Hot spots? Ho Chi Minh City is a city of 6.5 million officially (and 8 million unofficially). With 60 per cent of the population under 30, the city is fast paced, youthful and energetic. Revellers in the capital have some of the coolest bars and trendy hang-outs in Asia in which to quench their thirst, from Apocalypse Now to The Cage and Lush.

Industry talking points?With all the gloom and doom reporting about the world’s economic downturn, Vietnam is chugging along quite well, thank you very much. At the end of Quarter 1 2009, GDP grew by 3.1 per cent, advertising grew by 7 per cent and FMCG grew by 7.8 per cent.

What’s drawing the audiences?The second most-used media in urban Vietnam today is the internet, super-seding print. Driven by the 15-25 ‘in-gener@tion’, internet is now here to stay. Yahoo Web and Yahoo Messenger have a stranglehold on Vietnamese youth with over 90 per cent market share.

Cool stuff?From 8-tracks to iPods in just a few years – the iPod revolution has hit Ho Chi Minh City. The growth of iPods has coincided with the overall technology boom and the emergence of both Western and Vietnamese pop, driving sales to new heights. Vietnamese pop is seeing a resurgence in the youth market. Gone are the days of gaudy war ballads. Today My Tan, Dan Truong and Cam Ly are filling the airwaves with a new and hot progressive sound.

Brands to watch?2008 saw the beverage market grow in value by over 20 per cent. Beer, a Viet-namese staple, led the charge, growing by over 25 per cent. It’s not that consumers are drinking till they drop. Rather, they are switching to branded beverages such as 333, Hanoi and Heineken Beer, whereas before they drank locally home-made brew, known as Bia Hoi. Prost, or as we say in Vietnam, “Chuc su Khoe”.

The must-have?Mobile phones are now a part of everyday life, with over 80 per cent of urban Vietnamese owning the latest and greatest brands, from Nokia to iPhones.

State of the nation?Despite the global recession, the Vietnamese are still pampering themselves and surrounding themselves with luxury treatments and goods. Most luxury items and activities are of western creation and include dining at five-star hotels like the Park Hyatt, playing golf and shopping for exclu-sive brands such as Louis Vuitton.

City soundbite?Anyone who has ever driven the city streets knows that driving here resembles playing the Formula 1 video game, Crash-Boom-Bang.

Betty gets a boost

BRANDED CONTENT Chinese version of comedy-drama proves perfect platform for Mindshare clients and their brands

Staff ReporterMINDSHARE IS taking branded content to new

levels with China’s highly successful Ugly Betty TV comedy-drama, known locally as Chou Nu Wu Di (Ugly Wudi). Bausch & Lomb and Unilever are extending their commitment to a third, fourth and fifth season of the show and an additional sponsor, Mentos, has been signed up.

The clients’ products – B&L contact lenses, Dove shower cream, Clear anti-dandruff shampoo, Lipton milk tea and Mentos mints – are integrated into the show’s storylines and,

as B&L China’s marketing director, Winifred Chan, comments,

“allows us to communicate the product attributes effectively, in a relatively informal and influential manner.”

The show, which is a collaboration between Mindshare, entertainment broadcast network Hunan Satellite TV and the local program producers, has been a huge ratings success. It recently took silver for Best Use of Branded Content at the Asian Marketing Effectiveness awards and gold for Best Use of Branded Content at the

Valencia Festival of Media.

Staff ReporterJWT has masterminded the launch of Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing, with an innovative TV campaign that positions Bing as “the first ever decision engine”.

The launch of Bing is being seen as a direct challenge to Google in the search space, and is backed by one of the most significant launch budgets of 2009.

The theme of the commercials is that search has become confusing with far too much information presented. JWT’s first commercial, ‘Manifesto’ launched on June 3, with a series of quick cuts and multiple screens designed to illustrate the confusion created by search; the message is that

“search overload is over”. Three further commercials have

since been shown, demonstrating what would happen if people spoke to their partners the way search engines talk to them. The campaign also includes a series of banner ads and outreach into social media.

Danielle Tiedt, Microsoft’s general manager, online audience business group marketing, told AdWeek: “We know from all the data we see from our customers that there is a lot of latent dissatisfaction in the search market. A big part of the challenge is to connect with that latent dissatisfaction.”

JWT’s Bing campaign has launched initially in the US and is expected to be extended to other markets later in the year.

JWT helps Bing take wingADVERTISING WPP agency behind major TV launch

Driving the public agenda

ENGAGEMENT Team Detroit’s innovative website for Ford has played an important role in shaping public opinion as the US auto crisis became a hot political issue

Andrew SextonAS the Detroit auto industry continues to grapple with its biggest-ever crisis, an initiative from Ford has demonstrated how swift action, addressing the issues in a transparent manner, can sway public opinion.

Late last year, as the debateswirled around the merits of government bridge loans to Detroit’s auto makers, Ford saw the opportunity to speak directly to the American people and Congress, and tapped Team Detroit (Wunderman, Y&R, JWT, Ogilvy and Mindshare) to create a dedicated website that could put its case. The main objective of TheFordStory.com was to distinguish Ford from General Motors and Chrysler, and to debunk the myth that all US automakers

are the same. At the same time, it had a secondary purpose: to engage consumers, investors and stakeholders interested in hearing how Ford does things differently.

Visitors to the site can experience videos featuring Alan Mullaly, Ford Motor Company, president and CEO, and other high profile Ford figures, candidly discussing Ford’s business model and how it’s progressing. These segments are designed to help bridge the gap between Ford and the public by speaking pointedly to the public’s concerns. Mullaly has subsequently used TheFordStory.com as a springboard to engage Tweeters for a one-on-one session on the social networking site Twitter. TheFordStory.com also speaks forthrightly to specific consumer

Over one million visitors have logged on to learn how Ford is addressing public concerns

The Chinese version of Ugly Betty is set in an ad agency, where products such as Dove shower cream, Mentos mints and Lipton tea are showcased through the show’s storylines

questions on Ford vehicles. Under titles that mirror Ford’s brand proposition; Smart Technology, Safety, Quality and Green, video ‘spotlights’ demonstrate how Ford is fulfilling those brand values.

Stuart O’Neill, Team Detroit’s web guru, says: “We created the site to reflect the needs and attitude of the consumer as they approached Ford. We know who they are – we needed to demonstrate to them that we could speak to them.” Through TheFordStory.com, Ford is demonstrating its commitment

to being a company that the public wants to do business with, and one they want to see succeed. Already, the site has received over a million visits and climbing and has also earned the praise of blog publisher, Wordpress, which showcased the piece thanks to its “seamless integration of static content, videos, photos and dynamic updates.”

www.TheFordStory.com www.teamdetroit.comAndrew Sexton is VP, NA media relations, Wunderman.

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