Oliver Further Expands with New Office in Singapore

OLIVER, the agency specialising in providing integrated on-site agencies for clients such as Starbucks, AXA and KPMG, today announces the opening of a new Asian office in Singapore, giving OLIVER the ability to service clients across region.

OLIVER Asia will be led by Nick George as managing director who has long experience of the region, having been managing director of Tag Asia for nearly 10 years. He is joined by Geri Tay, recently regional business director of Tag (Singapore) Pte Ltd, who assumes the role of regional business and operations director. The company plans to have 100+ staff in the region by the middle of 2015.

Headquartered in London, OLIVER places creative teams, including strategists, creative technologists, web builders, designers and writers, within client companies to facilitate real-time marketing. The Asia move follows closely behind OLIVER’s venture into the US last year, when it located a team in Miami for Britvic, as part of the soft drinks giant’s expansion in North America.

Simon Martin, OLIVER’s founder and chief executive, said: ‘We have demand for our services from Asian companies as well as clients in Europe who can see the benefit of what we can do for their in-country operations. This demand is driven by advertisers’ need for more effective and faster ways of creating compelling content, campaigns, and brand communications, which deliver truly relevant messages for their audiences.’

Nick George said that increasing demand for local, culturally relevant marketing campaigns, as well as adaptation services for globally created campaigns, inspired the agency’s move into the region.

‘The OLIVER model of enabling clients to have a team adapted to their requirements, and scalable to fit changing marketing directions, is appealing regardless which part of the world you are in,’ George said. ‘But we argue the model applies more so in Asia, where cultures are more diverse in language and consumer behaviour, which demands either local creative or cleverly adapted work that touches local audiences.’

George added that Singapore is the first of multiple hubs OLIVER is building across the region. ‘We still have western brands entering into the Asia markets and whom, by default, seem to launch from either Singapore or Hong Kong. However Singapore, followed closely by Hong Kong, is just the start. We aim to have geographical presence to support all of our clients in whichever markets they operate.’