Advertising conference to focus on Asian consumers

Advertising conference to focus on Asian consumers

LONDON (Reuter): Many of the delegates heading for a big
international advertising conference next week in South Korea
will be searching for an answer to a key question -- how to get a
hold of the increasing amount of cash in the pockets of Asian
consumers.

About 2,000 delegates are expected to attend the 35th World
Advertising Conference in Seoul, organized by the U.S.-based
International Advertising Association.

For global ad agencies which have faced flat to moderate
growth in recent years in many traditional Western markets, Asia
has the magic promise of huge populations and increasingly
affluent consumers.

"An awful lot of people live here and there's a growing amount
of money. That equation is getting more and more favorable for
Asia," says George Singleton, an Asia strategic planner for
McCann-Erickson, the world's second biggest ad agency.

He told Reuters in a telephone interview from Hong Kong that
was why many multinational corporations and the advertising
agencies that marketed their goods were, for example, falling
over one another to reach China's increasingly well-off
consumers.

"It (China) is still the market everyone wants to crack. It's
the sheer size. If you get it right in China, the future earnings
could be quite large," he said.

Glenn Smith, the editor of Asian Advertising and Marketing
magazine in Hong Kong, cited other markets with dizzying growth
in "adspend", the amount of money spent on advertising.

He said adspend rose 46 percent last year in Indonesia
compared to 1994, 25 percent in India, 23 percent in South Korea
and a staggering 62 percent in Vietnam, where it started from a
low base.

Smith told Reuters the proliferation of cable and satellite
television in Asia, along with government deregulation of the
media in some countries, offered advertisers new means of
reaching consumers.

"That's what everyone in Asia is talking about," he said,
referring to the explosion in new cable and satellite channels.

But while Western advertisers and ad agencies may be enticed
by a region where tobacco consumption is on the rise and
consumers are spending increasing amounts on cars, alcohol,
electronics and luxury goods, Asia is not for all newcomers.

Singleton said some Asian governments had recently tightened
restrictions on advertising, including for items like tobacco.

"This is not the Wild West where people can come out here and
slap anything on television," he said.

And Japan, the world's second largest advertising market after
the United States, remains dominated by Japanese agencies and is
largely off-limits to Western competitors.

Speakers at the conference, which will last from June 9 to 12,
will tackle the question of how to reach Asia's consumers.

Martin Sorrell, chairman of WPP Group Plc, the world's biggest
advertising and marketing group, will describe a new environment
for marketing communications.

Michael Bungey, chief executive of Bates, will talk about
reaching newly-empowered consumers and Shinji Fukukawa, president
of the Dentsu Institute for Human Studies, will give a speech
about "Asia's dynamic emergence in the global market".

Ted Turner, the chairman and president of Turner Broadcasting
System Inc will receive an award at the conference for
"outstanding services" in the field of international advertising.