Singapore Airlines, one of Asia’s most coveted advertisers, has renewed its contract with creative agency TBWA Worldwide without a pitch, bringing an end to speculation on the review of account .
TBWA is to handle Singapore Airlines’ global advertising business beyond 2017, although the airline has yet to confirm the exact length of the contract. The account will continue to be run from Singapore.
TBWA won the Singapore Airlines business after one of the most hotly contested pitches in recent memory in Singapore in 2007. Then, the agency was tasked to position Singapore Airlines as ‘The brand for air travel now, and for the next 10 years’ using the long-running slogan ‘A great way to fly’.
TBWA famously saw off competition in a final round of pitching from Publicis Worldwide and Omnicom sibling DDB. Some of TBWA’s pitch-winning team have since moved to agencies against which TBWA competed seven years ago, which has fuelled rumours that the account may move.
Lou dela Pena, who at one time ran the SIA business at TBWA, joined Publicis as Singapore CEO in December last year. Jeff Cheong, who provided TBWA with the digital smarts to help land the SIA account when he was digital creative director there, is now Asia president of DDB’s digital arm, Tribal Worldwide.
However, Singapore Airlines is not known to be a client that likes to change agencies. TBWA is only the second creative agency the conservative carrier has used in more than four decades.
Singapore Airlines’ agency of 35 years was Batey Ads, which helped build the carrier into a revered global brand through the iconic work of founder Ian Batey, who created the Singapore Girl. It was a shock to the market when Batey Ads was dropped from the pitch shortlist in 2007, such was the connection between agency and client. Batey Ads struggled in the years since, until it was folded into WPP sister agency Grey in 2009.
TBWA’s most recent campaign for Singapore Airlines, called ‘The lengths we go to’ was released in September last year. The campaign showed the Singapore Girl travelling the world to source the best for its customers.
The news of TBWA’s re-appointment emerges less than a year after Singapore Airlines appointed Dentsu Möbius as its first social media agency after a ten-agency pitch that included TBWA’s digital arm, Digital Arts Network.
