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Can you put a value to a brand? 4A's in collaboration with Interbrand has, and will soon announce Malaysia's top 30 brands. It hopes this will spur companies to spend on brand-building.
THE Association of Accredited Advertising Agents of Malaysia (4A's) has never been so active, according to its president Datuk Vincent Lee.
Among others, 4A's has successfully introduced a pitch fee to the industry, launched a brand valuation exercise to encourage brand- building among local companies, and jump-started the process of reintroducing the made-in-Malaysia (MiM) ruling for advertising content in the country.
Lee is all praise for the current 4A's council members, most ranking among the who's who in the advertising industry. Lee himself is the group executive chairman of Foetus International, which includes Naga DDB and Vizeum Media Services.
`All of them are big-time MDs and they are really intellectual, strategic and hardworking. They are legends themselves. And once you share the work with them, it becomes such a joy and work gets done fast and projects get moving,' Lee tells Malaysian Business.
He says the 4A's creative council, under BBDO managing director Jennifer Chan and J Walter Thompson MD Neal Estavillo, `had done a fantastic job' in terms of further upgrading creative standards in Malaysia.
According to Lee, creativity standards in Malaysia have grown by leaps and bounds over the last few years and that the world is now looking at Malaysia in terms of creativity.
Lee says Tony Savarimuthu of McCann-Erickson is also one of the most active deputy presidents 4A's has ever had. `Under him, 4A's has had knowledge management seminars, brand talks and most excitingly, the forthcoming brand valuation exercise,' he says.
Lee is understandably excited about the brand valuation exercise, an initiative aimed at recognising the top 30 Malaysian brands and thereof to spur more brand-building activities in the country and thus grow the advertising market.
`The top 30 Malaysian brands have been valued at RM56 billion. But prior to this, they had not been recognised,' Lee reveals.
He says 4A's acknowledges that the only way to build brands is to put a value to them, adding that `hopefully this would also be good for the stock market'.
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