PHILIPPINES – On his recent visit to Manila, Ogilvy & Mather Asia-Pacific Chairman Tim Isaac revealed an interesting tidbit about their Manila operations: "Our Manila office has been forging away and setting the trend and the standards for us. OgilvyOne and digital now represent 35 percent of our total business in Manila."
"This happened almost quietly without anybody noticing. I think it happened because of the passion of the agency leadership," he continued. "I’d like to thank the vision of the leadership of [Country Head] Randy Aquino and also the commitment and enormous energy of [former OgilvyOne Philippines Managing Director, now MD for OgilvyOne Kuala Lumpur] Elly Puyat for having achieved this for us."
At the get-together with the press at Ogilvy’s new Piccadilly Star office in Taguig City, Isaac acknowledged that the agency still needs to make clients comfortable marketing their brand as digital and traditional media evolve and become more integrated. Content is now more participative and engaging to consumers, thus the need to exploit emotional engagement. Print remains resilient.
Isaac also shared updates about Ogilvy’s work in the region, noting the improvement of business in Southeast Asia in the year so far versus 2009 figures. The challenges Ogilvy faces today are similar across other industries, such as dropped rates. "We need strong business tools and analytics," said Isaac. "We need to better track our spending. We need to figure out more deeply how to spend money on marketing."
Aside from the Philippines, which is an aggressive growth market, other areas show great potential, such as Red Works in Singapore. Competing on price, quality and speed, the production house now makes up 11 percent of regional revenues.
To cap the get-together, Isaac handed out copies of the book The Eternal Pursuit of Unhappiness, which sets down the Eight Habits of Highly Creative Communities in a slim red volume.
