Universal McCann Malaysia started the New Year on a celebratory note by achieving a significant milestone with its top 10 clients embracing search marketing in their mix.



Prashant Kumar, CEO of Mediabrands Malaysia, which houses UM, Initiative, Rally, and Reprise, equates this achievement to a futurists’ dream where search marketing, the default go-to place for research, information, comparisons, and advocacy, will soon become market of clients’ overall marketing plans.

In 2009, UM emerged as the first Google Advertising Professional (GAP) qualified media agency in Malaysia, and launched ‘Project Mandate’, a comprehensive Test-Learn-Deploy program for its clients to experiment with search marketing and establish its role in the marketing mix. UM successfully moved most of its clients, including Johnson&Johnson, Telekom Malaysia, Proton, RHB Bank, Cerebos, Coca-Cola, and Mastercard, to invest substantially on search marketing a year after ‘Project Mandate’ was launched.

“Our search marketing billings tripled in the past year that accounted for a substantial part of our total digital billings,” Prashant tells ADOI. “This success defines our integrated strategy to encourage the use of search marketing in the total marketing mix.”

This year, UM formally introduced Reprise, Mediabrands’ global search offering. Reprise is headed by Ullas Sahadevan.

“Search marketing is a natural inclusion in our media planning. Consumers repeatedly use search engines for their purchase intentions, making them well-defined prospects.”