2012 was the most active new business year in the last decade as measured by global marketing consultancy R3 and Campaign’s New Business Performance League, a monthly tracker of wins and losses across Asia Pacific. “In total, more than $655m of revenue for both creative and media agencies was reviewed, a 99 per cent increase on 2011 results” says Greg Paull (left), principal of R3. “There’s no doubt there’s both more pressure on agencies to perform, as well as more clients moving to a ‘project based’ mentality.
R3 and Campaign collaborated in 2012 to track more than 5,000 individual wins from more than thirty multinational agencies covering fourteen markets of Asia Pacific. As expected, China led the way – “China represented 26% of the businesses that were reviewed , in terms of revenue, followed by Australia with 17 per cent, then India (16 per cent)” says Paull. “We’re increasingly seeing more clients and agencies hubbed out of China as each year goes by.”
WPP led both the Asia Pacific and China Holding Company Leagues for New Business won and lost, with Ogilvy and Mindshare the star performers. In Asia Pacific, WPP won 33 per cent of all new business (US$213m), ahead of Omnicom (US$155m) and a much-improved Interpublic Group ($113m), driven by strong results from McCann Erickson in select markets
In China, WPP returned to the number one position in the Holding Company League, with a strong performance from Ogilvy, JWT and their media agencies. The group collected 38 per cent of all new business (RMB419m in new business revenue) followed by last year’s leader, Publicis Groupe (RMB239m), Omnicom (RMB175m) and Aegis ((RMB153m). “It was a strong year overall for Aegis, whose media agencies outperformed all the others, winning 34 per cent of all media agency activity” says R3.
Of the ten largest accounts to be reviewed in 2012, Australia dominated with seven of the top ten creative agency wins – with Westpac, Commonwealth Bank, Optus, Arnotts, Vodafone, Honda and Telstra all reviewing in the year. According to R3: “This reflects the maturity of the Australian market to appoint more AOR relationships, while more and more Asian marketers are working with creative agencies on a project basis – as high as 51 per cent of all relationships in China.”
Despite these Australian reviews, the global Visa/BBDO and Philips/Ogilvy wins are the year’s two largest in the region.
Amongst media agency wins, Unilever, P&G and JNJ reviews represented five of the top ten, led by PHD’s retention in Greater China of Unilever. Other major wins included Mindshare China’s Yili and OMD’s HTC Asia Pacific win.
