March 30, 2007 - by Katie Chatfield
Aussie agencies target Asia and the UAE
This article is posted in AGENCY
March 9, 2007 - by Katie Chatfield
bellamyhayden plots global expansion
SYDNEY: Media strategy and planning agency bellamyhayden has launched its first overseas office just six years after opening its doors in Sydney.
More than 11 months after first pitching for the Pepsico Foods account in Thailand, the agency has announced it has secured the planning component and opened a Bangkok office.
This is the agency's first international base, which will act as a regional hub for further expansion into South East Asia.
The Pepsico Foods account will be managed by Thanasdh Kasemchaiyanandh, who joined the Bangkok division from Initiative Bangkok, and Ceri Reed, who joins from Freud PR in London. bellamyhayden will add an agency manager and continue to build staff numbers as it shifts into new business mode.
Phil Hayden, director of bellamyhayden, said Thailand is the biggest market for Pepsico in South East Asia, and one of only seven markets in the world where Pepsi holds a greater share than Coca-Cola.
In addition, the agency has been awarded the communications planning account for Pepsico Foods in New Zealand, and is planning to establish a presence in Auckland.
"It is fantastic that they have invited us to get involved in other parts of the world, and, ultimately, it is opportunities like this, around our existing client base, on which we will base our geographic expansion," Hayden said.
Pepsico is just one client Hayden believes will allow bellamyhayden to further push into Asia, New York and London. Others include GlaxoSmithKline and National Foods, a wholly owned subsidiary of the San Miguel Corporation and Asia's biggest foods and beverage company.
"Our focus in this regard, in 2007, will be to get ourselves up and running as a fully fledged regional offering in the South East Asia [and] Australasia region," Hayden said.
"What makes it exciting is that we are a genuinely 100% Australian company pushing out into the world. There are very few precedents of this happening from companies and brands from the Australian communications industry."
As well as launching into Bangkok, bellamyhayden has commenced work from its Sydney head office on global communication planning briefs for Pepsico and the Panadol brand for GlaxoSmithKline. The agency is two months into a project with the New York head office of both clients.
Since launching in Sydney in November 2000, bellamyhayden has caused nothing short of a ripple in the media market, snaring a stream of global and local clients, such as Sony Consumer Electronics, Jaguar, AMF Bowling, Sunbeam and Meat & Livestock Australia.
The start to 2007 capped off a big 2006 for the agency, which launched a Melbourne operation on the back of winning the planning business for dairy giant National Foods. The agency's other director, Simon Bellamy, said there would be a lot of focus on growing the Melbourne operation in 2007.
"Clients in Melbourne are waking up to the fact that things are changing," he said.
"We're advancing on all fronts and achieving some pretty aggressive goals."
In response to growth, and the broadening remit of communications planning, bellamyhayden restructured its business in the last quarter of the 2006.
National planning director Matt Perry relocated to head up the Melbourne office, while the Sydney team hired DDB account planner Paul Warwick as brand planning director, Katie Chatfield, previously at Creata, as digital strategy director, and Natalie Musico to head the experiential and PR channels.
The Melbourne office recently picked up the $3 million Melbourne University business, and is currently working on projects for Country Road and earth moving business Cat.
The agency is one of the most high profile companies within the publicly listed Photon group - Photon owns a 40% stake - but Hayden, and partner Simon Bellamy, are not looking to offload the remaining 60%.
Laughing at such a suggestion, Hayden said simply: "We're not for sale."
PATH TO SUCCESS
Launched in Surry Hills, Sydney, in November 2000, bellamyhayden quickly secured the 3M Australia Consumer Products account from MediaCom. The agency then went on to win major accounts for Tourism Tasmania and Johnson & Johnson. bellamyhayden's planning system, realconnections, has developed a number of major projects for Sunbeam, Macquarie Bank's leisure division and Australasian manufacturing and marketing group GUD.
Story by: Matthew Eaton Adnews - 09 Mar 2007