Live Issue... Battered Batey looks for new role in changing times

Unfortunately, there is little positive to write about the recent history of the once iconic creative agency, which closed its Thai operation in November and has just lost key client Audi in Singapore.

Fairnington, a former regional head of JWT who was appointed CEO of Batey in June 2006, hasn’t had much luck in bringing back the Batey glory days. The agency now has 30 staff in Singapore and only one sizeable client remains: Qatar Airways. In Malaysia, Batey has only 15 people working on a handful of mostly PR accounts. 

The agency has struggled to recover from the loss of Singapore Airlines, the brand that it made famous over 34 years of service. The airline decided to pitch six months into Fairnington’s tenure. 

However, Batey’s decline can arguably be traced back to 1997, when the agency was acquired by WPP. Ian Batey (who declined to comment for this article) stepped down and relinquished his shares to WPP in 2005. From then on, the agency “lost its soul”, says one ex-staffer. “Almost as bad as losing Ian was losing his contacts. He knew every senior client in town and key people in Government circles.”

Opinions are many and varied on Batey’s problems since. Matthew Godfrey, the CEO of Publicis Asia, who was involved in a proposed merger of Batey with Bates141 in 2003, says that a big mistake was for the agency to base its business plan on Singapore Airlines’ flight routes. “Batey was setting up offices in Malaysia, Thailand and Sydney when it should have gone into China and India. And when Batey lost Singapore Airlines, it was left with almost nothing.”

Internal power struggles and a lack of clarity over the strategic direction of the agency saw clients such as United Overseas Bank head for the exit. One criticism of the agency is that it has failed to move with the times. In 2001 Singapore Airlines shifted its below-the-line work to Bates141, then Tequila. At a time when the market was moving toward integrated offers, Batey failed to adapt.

Then in 2002, the agency fired 15 of its 20 clients, as it tried to position itself as a creative boutique. “It wanted to be BBH, but didn’t have the work to match the self-vision,” recalls Godfrey.

Batey is now a far smaller operation than in its heyday - outside Singapore it is merged with JWT’s Contract. Since the loss of Singapore Airlines, Fairnington has tried to rebuild Batey as a brand marketing consultancy rather than a creative agency. Going upstream has allowed Batey to cement the sort of relationship with Qatar Airways that it used to enjoy with Singapore Airlines, he says. 

“Batey’s fortunes have not continued to dwindle and in fact our revenues have grown satisfactorily over the past two years in Singapore, Malaysia and across our PR business,” he adds. “We are also exploring options to improve our profit margins, which in a small, competitive market like Singapore are pretty miserable.”

Despite his optimism, the question many are asking now is how long WPP will give Batey to succeed amid a worsening economic outlook. Fairnington insists: “The reason that WPP has continued to support Batey is that it continues to have strong equity in Singapore and other parts of Asia, including the Middle East, where our global campaign for Qatar Airways has received excellent feedback.”

Whatever the year ahead has in store, there are still plenty who hope Fairnington can pull it off. As one rival agency head puts it: “Singapore Airlines was endlessly patient with Batey, but had to walk away in the end. Let’s hope for the sake of an industry icon that WPP is patient too.”

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