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.