Asia’s financial woes have given impetus to media unbundling, which is happening with a rapidity that surprises even the region’s recently founded media specialist agencies. Across Asia Pacific, but excluding Japan, media specialists could buy at least 12 percent of all media this year up from about 5 percent in January 1997. Kelly Clark, deputy CEO for MindShare A/P, reckons this will grow to at least 50 percent within five years as media specialists increasingly "take over" agency billings. "It’s all happening much more quickly than we first expected," Clark says.

Of course now that cash-strapped consumers are buying less, it doesn’t take rocket science to fathom that budgets are being slashed and so interest in improving

the effectiveness of media investments is way up. It helps too that media owners, who had grown fat in seller’s markets where prices could only soar are now keen to deal for crumbs off the table. Thailand and South Korea have both seen print titles and their publishers fold with surprising rapidity.

MindShare found that, on average, TV costs in China were reduced by 11 percent across more than 125 TV channels, including many of the top markets like Shanghai; in Singapore, costs across all media have been reduced on average by 15 percent. Working for eight LVMH luxury brands across 10 Asian countries, CIA found it could save about 12 percent of budgets by consolidating negotiation and buying for magazines like Elle. And in Tokyo, Strategic Planners International, Japan’s only independent media specialist, found it could improve the efficiency of media investments by 30 percent through better planning and buying strategies. None of this will surprise those schooled in the UK’s tougher market, though it does surprise many of Asia’s big advertisers. In addition to MindShare and Zenith, the new line up at the trough includes Omnicom’s OMD, Grey’s Mediacom, Burnett’s Starcom, as well as CIA and Carat.

Though Japan’s advertising market still resist the changes rolling across the rest of Asia, it is questionable how much longer isolation can be maintained. Earlier this month [JULY] I&S Corp, Japan’s 8^th largest agency became part of BBDO. As the agency is re-fashioned in BBDO’s image, modern media planning tools will be introduced in working for major Japanese advertisers like Shiseido and Kao Corp. Other major Japanese agencies, including #3 Asatsu and #4 Tokyu Agency, are both keen to install new thinking in their own media departments. So far, the industry’s two oligarchs, Dentsu and Hakuhodo, have given little indication they see any need for change as they continue to parcel advertisers into prime-time program sponsorships laced with a random selection of spots across other time segments. Buying around 60% of all prime time and 65% of all TV spot time, Dentsu and Hakuhodo set the tone for most of the industry. But those days must be numbered. Kimio Arai, president of Tokyu Agency and an advisor to a number of government committees predicts a media ‘big bang’ that will be as revolutionary as that already re-shaping Japan’s financial industries.

And media planners the pain of change is good news. They are coming out of the clerical back offices, and finding themselves moving center stage—a strategic partner to creative. Media is becoming a serious career option for the first time in Asian agencies. And the suits are getting some jolly good leaving parties.