This article is the first in a monthly installment on global PR and marketing. This week, we focus on an American firm's venture into Singapore. Next month, we'll bring you coverage of the PR marketplace in England.
When his clients increasingly began requesting PR pushes in Singapore, Gavin Anderson of Gavin Anderson & Company, New York, began to set his sights on opening an office in that republic. Outsourcing projects overseas, he found, often generated more work than profits. And for Anderson, it meant ceding about $350,000 in annual business to other PR firms.
Before opening his Singapore office, his fifth overseas location, Anderson spent at least two years developing the plans to compete in what is estimated to be a $150 million PR market. Anderson opened a 1,200-square-foot office in the prestigious Raffles Hotel between the hodgepodge of the old and new business corridors. The Raffles area is a high-rent district, with leasing running about double the typical New York rate, which is about $35 to $40 per square foot.
Singapore is widely recognized as a major economic gateway to the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and Myanmar. Although sources say there are now only about 40 PR houses in Sing-apore, it is a base for such heavyweights as Motorola, Dell Computers, Dupont and Phillip Morris. And it is a market where PR is gaining a foothold.
"Prior to opening up, we were sending about $300,000-$400,000 in annual business to other firms in Singapore," Gavin recalled last week. "We were looking at the growth of other nations, for instance, Indonesia and Malaysia, in this booming market as well as its ties to the Indian subcontinent and we knew we had to be there."
Anderson said he spent months recruiting a managing director, Basskaran Nair, former senior VP of DBS Bank, the largest, government-owned investment house in Singapore, clearing $594.6 million in net profits in 1995.
"Whatever markets you go into, you have to have a solid understanding of the culture and the key PR players," said Anderson, from his company's 31-person office in New York. "I have visited Singapore about 25 or 30 times in the past 20 years. I networked with competitors and I researched firms and PR professionals over the years."
So far, the agency has nine clients in Singapore, including Northern Trust, Chicago; Boral, a building materials manufacturer in Australia; Scor, a French re-insurance company; and Solomon Brothers, the Hong Kong branch of the large investment banking firm. Anderson's U.S. clients include Reuters, Matsushita and New York investment bank Lazard Freres.
"We knew for seven years that we needed to be in Singapore for two reasons -- one, because the Asian market is divided into north and south Asia and Singapore is the center of the southern market. And two, because we had been approached for years by clients who needed work done in Singapore and we had to rely on others through outsourcing," said Anderson, chairman and CEO of Gavin Anderson and its offices in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Sydney and Melbourne.
Other PR agencies made their move into Singapore based partly on clients' urgings. Peter Kingsbury, president/CEO of Burson-Marsteller's 55-person office in Singapore, said his business in that office has grown 10 to 20 percent annually since the company opened a shop there in 1973.
Burson-Marsteller is one of the top four U.S.-based firms with offices in Singapore, according to Nair. The list is rounded out by Hill & Knowlton, Ogilvy & Mather; and Singapore PR operation i.Mage, which is headed by national Elaine Lim.
The way the Anderson office is staffed in Singapore illustrates how crucial it is to have the right personnel mix (all three staffers, including one secretary, are bilingual) -- especially when you're embarking on an endeavor in an arena where the political and cultural mood is exceedingly different from that of the U.S.
Anderson said he needed someone like Nair -- someone with professional alliances (Nair is president of the Public Relations Institute of Singapore), and someone who knows the ins and outs of PR in Singapore, an environment where billing is handled as it is in the U.S.-- hourly or on a contractual basis -- but where loyalty is key.
PR in Singapore is dominated by IPOs and those raising funds through the stock market and other financial investments. Other leading PR areas include cross-border corporate positioning; technology, which represents a 16 percent slice of the economy; real estate and infrastructure development; and national equity issues.
But Anderson also needed someone with "a sense of the corporate culture," someone who understands how Gavin Anderson & Company operates. So Anderson pulled in as its director Christopher Salt, who had worked in the company's Sydney office for three years and in Japan as well.
For companies expanding into global PR markets, having connections is everything. In fact, it's much of the logic behind networks such as The WorldCom Group Inc., which has 92 partners with 113 office locations in 36 countries -- including the iMage PR house in Singapore, which Nair identified as one of the republic's top agencies.
"International PR is a growing area. Our gross net fee income in 1995 was $115 million, up 15 percent over '94's figure of $99 million," said Daisy Guthin, COO of The WorldCom Group. "We had a big surge in Europe, but we expect the Asian market to grow also and we are prospecting now in Singapore. We anticipate that there will be a slow, steady growth in the Asian pacific and Latin American markets."
To help promote the office's opening, Anderson turned to the media. He knew that by selecting Nair, someone who had worked for 25 years in the private and public PR sectors in Singapore, that he could generate press.
And on Jan. 24, The Business Times, Singapore's leading business newspaper, ran a piece on Nair, highlighting Nair's involvement in Singapore's government affairs, including his work on national campaigns and events and his intervention as a communications specialist handling crises.
"The PR market in Singapore is very different from what I understand it is like in the United States," Nair said in a telephone interview last week. "Here, everybody can find a place and the business you generally get isn't from people bidding for clients but rather people walking through your doors and asking you: "Can you do this for me?'
"In Singapore (compared to the United States) there is a stronger sensitivity to the political environment and we don't lobby," Nair added. "There also is a stronger focus on relationship building -- on striking a personal accord and working as partners versus having to pitch to a client all the time."
(Gavin Anderson, 212/373-0242, Basskaran Nair, (65)339-9110; BM, Peter Kingsbury, (65)336-6266; WorldCom, Daisy Guthin, 212/286-9550)
Top 10 PR Firms in Singapore
1. Burson-Marsteller
2. Hill & Knowlton
3. Edelman
4. Ogilvy & Mather
5. Image
6. Shandwick
7. Fleishman Hillard Hickson
8. Scotchbrook
9. Huntington
10. Mileage