The guru speaks

The guru speaks

Rodney Louis Vincent, Contributor, Jakarta

How many top bosses do you know who present junior managers
with reading lists of history, current affairs and literature,
and then hold discussion groups to make sure the reading gets
done.

Miles Young thinks as much like a professor as he does like
the chairman of one of the largest advertising and marketing
companies in Asia.

A family tragedy while completing his last year at Oxford
University put Young on a career path he never dreamed of. The
death of his mother, who battled diabetes all her life, resulted
in Young signing up to meet recruiters visiting his university at
the very last minute. The only slot left was with an advertising
firm.

The well-respected ad professional whose supposed trademark is
colorful shirts finds defining "Asia" far more than a semantic
issue, especially in coordinating a 7,000-plus Asian creative
network that stretches from India to Japan. Young has spent close
to 21 years with the network.

Being the driving force of Ogilvy and Mather Asia (O&M), Young
spends 75 percent of his life traveling with a particular focus
on building a strong commercial business in Asia. Under Young's
leadership, O&M has become the dominant advertising network in
the region.

The chairman of Ogilvy and Mather Asia speaks his mind:

Your focus has been on growing Asia's big five media
communications markets, mainly China, Japan, India, Taiwan and
Korea.

My personal focus has been on growth in Japan, China, India,
Korea, excluding Taiwan. Though this doesn't mean to say our
agency's focus is only on these markets. Tim Isaac looks after
the southern part of Asia. In the future, I think there will be
two huge dynamic economies in Asia -- China and India.

Japan is relatively becoming less important due to cultural
structural reasons. It's a country that has found difficult to
globalize. Japan had its chance during the '70s and '80s to
embrace Asia, but it never did and behaved in a hostile way. I do
think it will increasingly be known as the Switzerland-ization of
Japan. Korea is a very dynamic market, but it's limited by its
size.

Among those, you've got two monsters which are the largest and
the second largest countries in the world. China's had all the
publicity recently. Business there is much more rooted and we're
pretty much ahead, with a workforce of 900 people, partly from
being first in brand, having extremely skillful Chinese
management and treating China as an opportunity instead of a
place to service multinational clients. To build our strength in
depth, 50 percent of the business is local and the local agencies
we've acquired are operating outside of the big three cities.
India is also rising and multinationals are recognizing that it's
not just a one-horse race.

Does Indonesia have the potential to compete with these markets,
in the near future?

Indonesia is now an important market for us. We're growing
very nicely. It's a question of critical mass, the speed of
economic development, when and how fast. Indonesia has China's
characteristics 10 to 15 years ago, possessing an active,
developing, assertive middle class with rising living standards
and an appetite for consumer well-being. Vietnam is somewhere
behind and has the disadvantage of the rigid bureaucratic
communist government. In that perspective, Indonesia's got
everything going for it. Some multinationals are still not sure
how business-friendly Indonesia is and that is an impediment
which holds back foreign investment.

How does a less sophisticated market like Indonesia take itself
to the next level?

It's a developing market and I don't think there's one single
answer. If I compare the business to what it was eight years ago,
there's just no comparison. Eight years ago, Indonesia
advertisements were small and slightly primitive. In my view,
Ogilvy can now stand up against any agency. I was recently having
a conversation with someone and we were commenting on how the
production has improved beyond recognition over two years, and
that's because foreign directors came in and worked with local
production companies, which improves the whole quality cycle. The
talent pool is huge but the skill pool is minute and it needs to
be grown. Many clients want new concepts from the institution and
that has to grow professionally in parallel. Thailand would be an
example, wouldn't it? Twenty years ago, it was probably in a
similar position and it's in the first world market today.

The writer is the editor of ADOI Magazine, an English publication
about advertising and marketing.