Opinion

The week in review: KFC moves Singapore creative | IAB leadership unveiled | Unilever assigns Cambodia media | Coke quotes Hitler | Al Jazeera journalist freed | BBH MD leaves Asia | Telenor’s ad debut in Myanmar

Mumbrella Asia logoIn a week in which the MD of one of Asia’s best agencies, BBH, left for LA, Singapore Airlines turned to Instagram to tease its customers about the launch of its premium economy class, KFC moved its creative account in Singapore, MediaCom’s e-commerce head went to McDonald’s, Telenor launched its first ad in Myanmar, and agencies with local bosses won the Singapore50 pitch.

Story of the week

Chris ChiuAt the start of the week, the industry watched in awe as millions were spent on 30 second spots that ranged from amusing to plain depressing. Here were the best ads from probably the only media event in the world where it is effective to run an ad just the once.

At the end of the week, Mumbrella revealed that the creative account of KFC is moving from independent agency Ren Partnership to Ogilvy, casting doubt over the future of the agency started by popular local creative Chris Chiu three years ago. Rumour has it, he’s moving back to Leo Burnett, the agency he left to start his own venture in 2012, which has been looking for a new creative chief for some time following the exit of chief creative officer Tim Green and ECD Clarence Chiew.

Quotes of the week

Mondelez marketer Pete Mitchell, formerly of media agencies UM, Mindshare and Neo@Ogilvy, responded to a question from Mumbrella at an IAB Singapore event about whether the reason spend on newer media such as online and mobile is out of whack with media consumption is because agencies make higher margins on traditional media. He said:

If there is an issue of more money being made [by agencies] from traditional media, this is more because creative agencies are not recommending to spend on new channels. Media agencies are more agnostic in their recommendations.

In response to Darren Woolley’s piece recounting numerous ways agencies and clients screw up pitches, “The Truth” had a few of his or her own:

1. The time where a egotistic CD spent tweaking the visuals on the Mac until the morning of the submission, missing the deadline and having months of work disqualified.
2. The time the pitch leader thought it was a good idea to turn up at the client’s boss’s home on the morning of the pitch with banners and cheerleaders proclaiming how ‘passionate’ they were about this brand.
3. The time the expat pitch leader kept mixing up the name (same initials but arranged differently) of the client and its competitor, much to the chagrin of the locals.
4. The time the expat pitch leader and all expat team kept calling the RSAF, The Royal Air Force.
5. The time when an expat pitch doctor spent the night before at Top Ten instead of rehearsing the presentation.

Good piece in Contently, which argued why real-time Super Bowl Marketing is a waste of money. It picked on the hackneyed example of the Oreo ‘Dunk in the dark’ tweet, which is now two years old but still trotted out at conferences as if it’s the cure for cancer.

Oreo’s agency got blogs to write about how clever it was, and got news sites to write about how many blogs had written about it, and got Cannes to give them an award based on how many news sites had written about that. It was a very clever exercise in PR momentum. Now the Oreo tweet—with its “millions of impressions” to the stories about it—is gold standard for brands seeking social media attention.

Nationwide’s statement about running a”buzzkill” ad during the Super Bowl that featured a dead boy talking about the things he could have done during his life.

The sole purpose of this message was to start a conversation, not sell insurance.

On Twitter, Oliver Woods had a word to say about Singtel and other large Singaporean corporates and their apparent fondness for imitation:

Singapore has smart people, amazing infrastructure and great tech ecosystem. No excuse for copycats.

Best work

Nescafe Singapore. A rather cheesy execution of a great campaign, Nescafe’s Creating friendships idea.

Tic Tac. A colourful piece on content built around redesigning a box of the famous mints.

Telenor. A charming first effort for one of the most exciting advertisers in Myanmar.

Best-read story on Mumbrella

Agencies with local bosses win SG50 pitch

Good week for…

Riverorchid. The Indochina specialist agency retained the Cambodia media business after a pitch with Phibious and Cream Communications.

Tobias Wilson, Neal MooreSonal PatelSu-Lin Tan, Joanna FlintJoe Nguyen and Keith Timimi. These were the executives selected for IAB Singapore’s leadership council, announced this morning.

DDB and UM Singapore. The two agencies, which are led by David Tang and Pat Lim respectively, won a pitch of major significance as Singapore prepares to celebrate its 50th birthday.

Media measurement in Asia. The news that Nielsen would be setting up an innovation centre in Singapore was good news for those frustrated with reliable ways to measure advertising effectiveness across multiple platforms.

Peter Greste. The Australian Al Jazeera journalist was released from captivity after 400 days held in Egypt. However, his two colleagues at Al-Jazeera English, Baher Mohamed and Mohamed Fahmy, are still in jail.

Bad week for…

BBH. Not really bad, but certainly sad for the agency and for Asia. BBH APAC’s MD Frances Great is to leave Singapore for a job at the network’s office in Los Angeles.

Coke HitlerCoca-Cola. The fizzy drinks brand has been trying to turn messages of hate in social media into something happier, but pulled the campaign after it discovered that it had been quoting passages from Mein Kampf, a book written by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, in the form of cartoon animals.

MediaCom. The media agency lost long-serving head of e-commerce Josephine Tan to McDonald’s.

Prediction for next week

Could Chris Chiu be re-joining his old friends at Leo Burnett?

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