Opinion

The week in review: BBDO Singapore’s Lion-winning Guinness ads ran once in I-S | Brand blunders around MH17 crash | CEO of Myanmar’s first social network exits | Mindshare boss slams ad agency ‘ego’ | Agency surprised ‘I want Germany to win’ ad went viral

Mumbrella Asia logoIn a week in which the lid was lifted on ‘scam advertising’ in Australia, it emerged that a multi-award winning campaign for Guinness in Singapore may also have been created purely with awards in mind, although the campaign was vouched for by the client. We also saw the abrupt exit of the CEO of Squar, Myanmar’s first social network, Ogilvy launch a behavioural sciences unit in Singapore, Twitter and Facebook set social media records thanks to the World Cup, and the Singapore agency behind that ‘I want Germany to win’ anti-gambling ad voice surprise that the video went viral.

Story of the week

'Uncanny 7' The New PaperMore disaster for the Malaysia Airlines brand as another tragedy hits the airline, with more terrible PR to follow – including for an Australian insurer that bought the Google keyword ‘Malaysia Airlines’ in the wake of the disaster, and a Singapore newspaper that went with the headline ‘Uncanny’ for its cover story on the crash. Putting the advertising world in perspective was the revelation that a campaign by BBDO Singapore for client Guinness that won three silver Lions at Cannes only ran once in free listings magazine, I-S, a publication well known to be popular with agencies looking to legitimise their work with international awards juries.

Quotes of the week

Asia Pacific Breweries’ marketer René de Monchy, who oversees the Guinness brand in Singapore, defended his agency’s Cannes Lions-winning campaign, telling Mumbrella:

No, this was not an agency initiative. The agency was briefed by us in the last quarter of 2013 to create a follow-up campaign to ‘GDIB [Guinness Draught in a bottle] Smoothest Launch’.

One poster on Twitter expressed her distaste at The New Paper‘s ‘Uncanny 7’ headline for its cover story on the MH17 jet, which was shot down over Eastern Ukraine.

The New Paper epitomizes everything that’s wrong with state-controlled media in Singapore.

JWT Australia‘s reason given for why its Cannes-shortlisted ad ran in only one place, a local baby parenting magazine, was that the media strategy was:

Extremely targeted to ensure maximum ROI.

Rory Sutherland talks about the benefits of behavioural science for brands at the launch of Ogilvy’s behavioural sciences unit, #ogilvychange, in Singapore:

You don’t need to be perfect; you just need to be less stupid than your competitors.

In an interview with Mumbrella, Ashutosh Srivastava, Mindshare’s APAC chairman, shared the one thing he’d change about media agencies:

It’s quite ironic that we work with clients to help strengthen the value of their brands to consumers, but are woefully inadequate at establishing the value of our own brands. In general the ad agencies do a better job than us and we would like to at least catch up with them.

Srivastava also said:

The biggest missed opportunity for ad agencies is that they continue to see media agencies as people who are just meant to execute their strategy and buy the media.

Best work

The Economist camper vanThe Economist made a play to increase digital subscriptions in Hong Kong this week with a camper van serving coffee and a free one-month trial of the famous magazine’s mobile and online products.

WeChat took its popular stickers on a tour of Asia in a series of animated videos.

TBWA’s work for Martell Noblige celebrated four years of ‘New Elegance’ in China with a series of short films, this one featuring Lei Hao.

Best-read story on Mumbrella

Singapore’s red-faced anti-gambling body runs new ad copy after Germany win World Cup

Good week for…

Twitter World Cup heat map during the final

Twitter World Cup heat map during the final

Twitter and Facebook. On Facebook, 88 million users made a record 280m interactions – posts, likes and comments – during the World Cup final, breaking the previous record for the Super Bowl. More than 32.1 million tweets were sent during the Germany Vs Argentina final and a record was set of 618,725 tweets per minute at the final whistle. Indonesia was among the top five most active countries in the world globally on Facebook during the final.

Adidas. Took on kit sponsorship of the world’s most high profile sporting team, Manchester United, from archrival Nike.

Cohn & Wolfe. The WPP-owned PR agency expanded its presence in Asia with a new office in Bangkok.

Bad week for…

Malaysia Airlines. Another disaster, another PR blow for an already troubled company struggling in the wake of the missing MH370 jet saga.

Squar. Myanmar’s first homegrown social network abruptly lost its CEO and co-founder Rita Nguyen after just a year.

Outdoor advertising in the Philippines. Billboards had to be taken down this week in preparation for incoming Typhoon Glenda.

Edelman. TV anchor Rui Chenggang was detained over connections with Pegasus, an Edelman-owned company he allegedly had shares in while working for his current employer, CCTV.

Prediction for next week

Surely not another revelation about scam from the Cannes Lions?

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