Day three agenda looks pretty dull on paper. We're talking about starting the day an hour and a half earlier than normal to meet with DAS, very exciting indeed. For the less informed, DAS is the sub-holding company group under Omnicom, offering housing its marketing services agencies. Hence, we're not anticipating any theatre or creativity.
It's as if they have consulted with the oracle, we were greeted with surprises from the moment we stepped into the elevator. I can't remember the last time we had a professional male lift attendant with dashing good looks pressing the lift button in Asia, so this level of professionalism is enough to make us optimistic.first impression counts. Finally, here's an agency that is treating the meeting as an "activation" and a brand experience. With 11 companies to get through within six hours, you better have a strategy and brilliant execution.
Keen to let the numbers do the talking, Tom Harrison, CEO and chairman of DAS, was not shy about the 20 year old DAS being 60 percent of Omnicom's revenue, and how marketing services have moved from being on the other end of the long table to increasingly being one of the agencies on the round table. Harrison's concise and fact based approach to some of the questions thrown at him was spot on. When asked about what value DAS brings to the companies acquired and to clients, he used the biological concept of symbiosis, instead of synergy, to bring to life the DAS proposition - a community of diverse inter-dependent entities leveraging on each other for scale and value.
So my challenge is to distill the essence of the companies' pitch into one sentence. Bear with me if you violently disagree...I'm just a consumer in an "ad recall" test. Most interesting observation for me was how the PR practice seems to have adapted to the whole social media and "control in the hands of consumer" phenomenon better than the traditional advertising agencies. Afterall, as Porter Novelli put it, they have always had to earn it, as oppose to buying it. With Fleishman Hillard pitching its point of difference not on network per se, but its happy and collaborative culture, and Porter Novelli focused on creating conversations around brand authenticity, it all seems very sensible and smart.
For sure, the most interesting company for me was Beanstalk. A company specializing in licensing. Now, how does that fall into marketing services? Think of them as the specialists who are commercializing a brand's assets in a way that enhance its brand experience through relevant branded products, for example a skype phone licensed under AT&T brand name. If you think that is cool, wait till you hear that they're the only company that writes the client a cheque. Beanstalk operates on a shared revenue model and only gets paid if the products sell. Now, that to me is the future of the ideas business!
On the branding side, there are Interbrand, Siegel+Gale and Wolff Olins in the practice. Alan Siegel, original founder, allegedly still gets actively involved in making complex branding issues simpler. Wolff Olins desire brave clients who want transformation through creativity, like the new Sony Ericcson branding device now seen in all their ATL campaigns.
Perhaps what is most impressive is how eleven companies have managed to tell the DAS story consistently through a dialogue approach with a bunch of disruptive consultants from all over the world. Now that to me was walking the talk on integration...of course nothing to do with their generosity on Red products - a Wolff Olins showcase.
Goh Shu Fen is principal and co-founder of R3 Asia Pacific