Sir Martin Sorrell’s new venture, S4 Capital, continues to roll-out globally, announcing Singapore as its APAC headquarters.
Arguably, it continues S4’s move to play in spaces less dominated by Sorrell’s former muse, WPP.
Thus far S4 has shown particular interest in the likes of India and South America, eschewing WPP’s stranglehold in the likes of Western Europe and the US.
It’s assumed that Singapore will also be the head office of any of S4’s plans for the Australian market.
Commenting on the move to Singapore, Sorrell told The Business Times: “One institutional investor described S4 as a bit like WPP without the baggage. It’s a reasonable way of putting it.
“Singapore is the archetype… or prototype of what we will be rolling out around the world. We have a unitary P&L [profit and loss] approach which is embodied here [Singapore] – the first office where we are physically bringing together MediaMonks and MightyHive.”
It’s expected that S4’s APAC move will hasten the region’s race to own first-party data.
In a podcast last week, Sorrell declared the control of data as adland’s “biggest battleground”.
“There is a somewhat unfortunate Brexit analogy here. One of the slogans was ‘Take back control’ and that is exactly what many advertisers want to do,” he said before adding that the mantra of his new venture, S4 Capital, was to develop first-party data content and media sales for its clients,” Sorrell told the the Online Marketing Rockstars podcast.
“When I left WPP, I looked to see in which areas revenue was growing. And those were first-party data, digital content and digital media planning–exactly those areas we are pursuing now,” he said.
