According to a report by Thanh Nien, wholly Vietnamese advertising agencies will soon be a thing of the past as foreign companies are snatching them up in droves. Industry insiders say tht 80% of local firms have already passed into foreign hands.
Brining deep pockets and international experience to the table, companies like Omnicom, WPP and Edelman have given Vietnamese advertising agencies no choice but to “sell themselves,” said Nguyen Quoc Bao, director of the Ho Chi Minh City-based Awareness ID Public Relations, one of the biggest private PR firms in the country, adding that ten large Vietnamese firms had been acquired by foreign companies since 2008.
Bao said that the 200 remaining solely Vietnamese PR companies are all struggling to remain independent:
“Several international PR groups have made it clear that they want to enter Vietnam just like they did China and India -- without spending a lot of time or money. [Local firms'] status goes up and we share the market segment with [foreign parent companies].”
Phan Nam Phuoc, co-founder of a PR company that was bought by a foreign firm said that while mergers were good for business, raising brand profiles and bringing them up to international standards, “…she also expressed some regret, saying that being a solely Vietnamese firm has its up sides--without specifying what they were…[adding that] her team may have acted differently if given a second chance,” wrote Thanh Nien.
Apparently, local companies aren’t helping out their brethren with Do Kim Dung, head of the Vietnam Advertising Research and Training Institute and deputy head of Vietnam Advertising Association, saying that he’s heard that when Vietnamese firms are invited to present their ideas, the client takes them to bigger foreign advertising companies.
For better or for worse, this is the cost of admission into the free market.
