Omnicom’s Critical Mass to open for business in Asia in late 2013

The operation will be based in Singapore. Wilkins said the move was led by the needs of global clients, which include Nissan, Infiniti (which recently relocated its global headquarters to Hong Kong), Citi and HP.

Wilkins pointed to the areas of user experience and e-commerce as “a niche we can fill quite nicely” in the region. She said global clients would be the immediate priority, but that the company would be open to taking on regional business once established. She admitted that she and her colleagues in the West were still “learning a lot about Asia”.

She described the philosophy of Critical Mass as being to fit digital and in particular experiential and transactional online concepts into the bigger marketing picture. She added that while CMOs had caught up significantly with technology over the past five years, Critical Mass often also worked directly with clients’ IT or e-business departments.

E-commerce-focused clients were among the only companies to have made user experience (UX) a priority, she said, adding there was major potential for growth in that area. “Companies will come to the realisation that they need to provide an overarching experience for customers, or they’re going to go somewhere else,” she said. “Attention to detail in UX could become quite a coveted skill as e-commerce gets more traction.”

She said investment in experiential marketing as a whole was likely to continue to outstrip that in pure communications. “Consumers are looking for experiences with brands—not just for impressions,” she said. Content marketing is a big part of this, she noted, but conceded that there was already “way too much” content produced by brands.

When it comes to content, she said, having a clearly identified target audience and purpose for targeting them is essential. She claimed passion existed in unexpected places. Clorox, for example, had been successful in engaging online consumers around the topic of bleach. “As a brand, you need to consider what you can talk about with credibility in terms of content creation,” she advised.

Critical Mass has offices in North America, the UK, the Netherlands and Costa Rica.