these are the slides from grey's case.

1. STRATEGIC REPOSITIONING THROUGH

2. Who is GREY
Worldwide?

3. Grey Group is a
global advertising
and marketing agency with its
16 global partner companies
focused on different
communications discipline
and it’s global partners include:

4. APCO
Worldwide
Beyond
Interactive
Elemental
Interactive
G2 GCI
Grey Direct
GDMI
Alliance
Grey
Interactive
Grey
Worldwide
G WHIZ
J. BrownMediacom
VCG
Grey
Healthcare
Wing Latino
Group

5. These companies are engaged in a wide range of marketing and
communication activities as shown:
Alliance Creating Global Alliances between brand companies
APCO Worldwide Specialises in Public affairs and major corporate issues
Beyond Interactive Customer acquisition and customer retention
Elemental Interactive Global interactive communications firm
 G2 Brand communications
Mediacom Creates media solutions that build business
Grey Direct Business marketing to individuals and other businesses.
Grey Directory Marketing, Inc. Specialises in yellow pages and other specialised directory
media
Grey Healthcare Healthcare marketing
Grey Interactive Interactive marketing services in support of business
Grey Worldwide Highly creative solutions to marketing problems
G WHIZ Understanding the youthful mindset of today’s consumer
J. Brown/LMC Group Helps in companies budgets through retail partnership
GCI Global public relations agencies practising brandmarketing
VCG Specialises in investor and marketing communications
Wing Latino Group provides full-service capabilities in advertising, media

6. The GREY Global group serves:

7. What was GREY
Worldwide Hong Kong and
China?
Who was Viveca Chan?

8. Grey Worldwide Hong Kong and China was
established in 1978 as part of the Grey Global
network, focusing on “communications” as its core
business and following eight principles to
provide client services.
Viveca Chan, CEO
of GREY Hong Kong
and China
Grey Hong Kong started as a small agency, and
delivering integrated marketing expertise was
its core strategy.

9. GREY GLOBAL’S EIGHT PRINCIPLES (PROMISES)
Promise 1: We provide clients with an experienced and consistent team.
Promise 2: We promise true partnership attitude.
Promise 3: We apply strategic knowledge and disciplines to add value.
Promise 4: We consistently deliver high quality services.
Promise 5: We leverage global ‘best practice.’
Promise 6: We fight for the best prices for our clients.
Promise 7: We create ideas that sell.
Promise 8: We turn your brand into a showcase of success.

10. Grey Worldwide’s (or Grey) Asia strategy
focused on building partnerships with
local agencies and developing local
management talent
to allow quick recognition of indigenous
opportunities.

11. This communications strategy proved successful for Grey WW-
HK/China as evident :

12. Grey had already developed a strong brand in the
marketplace; however, it had to build a customer knowledge base
to enable customer relationship management.

13. Why is GREY WW-HK/
China in trouble?
What are the challenges
GREY has to face?

14. A Changing Media Industry
Integrated
marketing
Need of CRM
In the 80s, Grey WW-HK/China concentrated on brand-building
and management by 2001 the focus was not simply brand
management, but now involved customer management as well.
Therefore, Grey WW-HK/China needed to manage brand equity as
well as customer equity. Grey had already developed a strong
brand in the marketplace; however, it had to build a customer
knowledge base to enable customer relationship management.

15. Three overarching trends were pushing communications companies to
focus on improving their client attraction and retention processes :
The Media Market in 2001
Increased competition
New technology
Rising customer expectations

16. Increased competition
1

17. Due to this increase in competition
“Marketing and advertising industry
players were faced with constant margin
squeezes; between 1988 to 2001,
commissions had fallen from
a standard of 15 per cent to as
low as two per cent of sales.”

18. 2
Media and Internet CRM Technologies

19. Advancement in technology led to
some E-MARKETING customisation tools

20. 3

21. A concurrent trend driving industry change was rising
customer expectations; this meant that
agencies had to refine their ability to identify and serve
their “best” customers – and create loyal
customers. As a result, previously ad hoc and fragmented
techniques for dealing effectively with customers were
giving way to a more methodical CRM approach:
identifying, attracting and retaining the most valuable
customers in order to sustain profitable
growth.

22. The changing media industry led to adoption of CRM as shown
Actually what is CRM
Customer relationship
management (CRM) is an approach to
managing a company’s interactions with
current and future customers.
CRM can help companies manage
customers better, and subsequently secure
more new clients

23. The research found that CRM
performance accounted for 50 per cent of
the variance in communications
companies’ return on sales. Therefore,
50 per cent of return on sales could be
directly attributed to CRM activities
(sales, service and marketing), while the
other 50 percent was not related to CRM .

24. EVIDENCE

25. Another big challenge for GREY was
the rise of CRM industry in Asia
“The market size for Asia-Pacific isn’t yet close to growth in the
US. We can say the market size for Asia-Pacific is less than eight
per cent of the US; although its growth rate is almost 200 per cent
– even faster than the growth lines we saw in the US two years
ago.”
- James Vogtle, CRM Industry Expert

27. Asian markets began to understand the importance of
CRM. Primarily, the interest was led by traditional
customer management economics. It cost the industry
five times as much to acquire a new customer than to
retain an existing one ; therefore, building long-term and
sustainable customer relationships was a good strategy,
from the point of view of both building life-time value
relationships and the business cost savings involved
Importance of CRM in Asia pacific

28. EVIDENCE

29. Now, the GREY WW-HK/China and Viveca Chan were facing following challenges:
How to tackle a dramatically changing industry cost structure
where there was downward pressure on profit margins
Management knew Grey had strong brand equity, but it needed a
renewed marketing focus to sustain competitive advantage.
How to attract and retain high-calibre talent, since agencies were
pressured to cut costs

30. How did GREY WW-
HK/China respond to the
present scenario?

31. GREY Worldwide Hong Kong/China adopted two things:
E-Marketing
GREY Relationship Management

32. Grey Worldwide Hong Kong and China: e-Marketing Strategy
Viveca Chan was pushing her Company to identify where its strengths
lay , what traditional business resources it could leverage, and what new
media tools it could use to redefine customer value in the face of dramatically
changing market conditions.

33. Grey Worldwide Hong Kong and China: e-Marketing Strategy
Viveca Chan was pushing her Company to identify where its strengths
lay , what traditional business resources it could leverage, and what new
media tools it could use to redefine customer value in the face of dramatically
changing market conditions.
Since Asians were new to the technology Viveca
Chan felt that certain Asian specificities needed
to be recognized :

34. •Asian consumers needed to be educated in e-
business and enabling technologies
• The Asian market was more fragmented in its
CRM needs
• The strategy, execution and knowledge mix in
Asia would differ

35. •Asian consumers needed to be educated in e-
business and enabling technologies
• The Asian market was more fragmented in its
CRM needs
• The strategy, execution and knowledge mix in
Asia would differ

36. E-Marketing was a new Technology for Asians, so they
needed to be educated about the technology.
For that purpose GREY should conduct campaigns in
which there volunteer shall teach about the Internet and
technology by making people manually use the computers
that has enabled Internet. For a maximum of 5 people,
there should be one GREY’s volunteer. Asians are happy to
learn the things so there will be a good response.
They can arrange road shows explaining to people what
actually e-marketing is and why it Is necessary?

37. STRATEGY
Successful CRM implementation, according to Viveca Chan,
hinged on a company’s ability to execute a strategy with the
right market knowledge; she felt no such player existed in the
market yet . Despite cost pressures, though, Grey WW-
HK/China decided not to compete on price; instead, it would
differentiate itself through a CRM proposition – the GRM
concept. To become that player, Grey WW-HK/China viewed
its Asian challenges in two specific ways: by managing
knowledge and by executing strategy through managing
technology.

39. Managing Knowledge
Knowledge is information gathered on customers through various
events and media. Sharing customer knowledge is our biggest future
asset. Our main challenge is how to develop a system to build
“customer equity”. In addition to “brand equity”; customer
management has become key in this business . This means managing
the multiple customer contact points, managing CRM.
-Theresa Franklin
The existing customer data and customer knowledge residing in Grey’s
specialised companies provided tremendous opportunities for knowledge
integration, creating not only a single customer database (that was easy to
catalogue and retrieve using the modern systems), but also a system that
collected hidden knowledge in existing data. This “database” or
knowledge base captured Grey WW-HK/China’s biggest asset and helped
in segmenting customers, predicting loyalty and analysing market needs.

40. Managing Technology
Technology is part of our total communications process, but not necessarily
part of our strategic processes. It is part of sharing information about our
clients, enhancing our business efficiency and as an alternative for traditional
media in building media presence on-line. Our focus is still our brains.
- Candy Wan, Director of Grey Direct
In particular, Beyond Interactive’s competence –
educating consumers and unique understanding of
gathering data, optimisation , among others in the front-
end as well as the back-end of using the Internet – was
fundamental to Grey WW-HK/China’s new CRM focus.

41. Viveca Chan’s final thought on Grey WW-
HK/China’s e-marketing strategy was:

42. Viveca Chan’s final thought on Grey WW-
HK/China’s e-marketing strategy was:
“Strategy is strategy. "e" is part of it
now, but there is no change in
fundamentals! "e" is just a tool for us to
change brand experience.”

43. GRM:
Strategic
Repositioning
through CRM

44. The GRM concept was a four-principle
philosophy developed with a specific customer
management focus:
1. Build brands
2. Develop and manage customers
3. Create a positive brand experience for clients
4. Build brand through knowledge about the
customer through constant dialogue

45. Grey WW-HK/China’s tools for implementing the GRM concept were two
proprietary products – “Brand Futures+” and “GRM Charter”

46. Brand Futures+ targeted companies that had traditional marketing
needs: defining and building brands. Brand Futures+ tapped a partner
or a group of Grey’s partners, such as specialist marketing and
communications companies, to create personalized strategies to meet
clients’ needs. For eg:

47. GRM Charter catered to the needs of companies who had strong marketing
and brand strategies in place and wanted to develop a customer relationship
vision and plan. GRM Charter could build an integrated plan that involved
the participation of all of Grey’s global talent. For eg:

48. Grey WW-HK/China would need to
operationalise adopted CRM processes for
all employees at all levels of the
organization

49. Grey WW-HK/China would need to
operationalise adopted CRM processes for
all employees at all levels of the
organization

50. The operation for adoption of CRM processes for all employees at all
levels of organisation should be well managed.
There should be well trained Managers at each level who works as a
team leader for his team.
GREY should get their employees trained by present CRM Experts.
GREY shall conduct competitions between the employees so that
they learn faster and better.

51. How shall GREY
attract customers
and retain them?

52. GREY shall attract customers
by offering lucrative deals.
GREYcan retain it’s customers by making them
feel privileged by organizing events for it’s clients.

53. GREY shall Reward
Loyalty of it’s customers.

54. Who is GREY Worldwide?
What was GREY Worldwide Hong Kong and China?
Who was Viveca Chan?
What are the challenges GREY has to face?
How did GREY WW-HK/China respond to the present scenario?
• GRM: Strategic Repositioning through CRM
• E-Marketing Strategies

56. Disclaimer :
Paras Arora
H.B.T.I. Kanpur
during an internship
by Prof. Sameer
Mathur, IIM
Lucknow
www.iiminternship.
com