MARKETING COMPANY TESTIMONIALS

Bacardi

The process of conducting Aprais reviews and the insights by them have enabled both our brand teams and our agency partners to forge more productive relationships. All members of the marketing organisation, senior and junior, have benefited from reviewing the way of working together using both quantitative and qualitative information to identify strengths and weaknesses. This is in sum is used to create a real change in the organisation."
Adam Hillyer - Global Marketing Services Director, Bacardi

Bacardi Global Brands, the international brand hub responsible for defining the global brand vision, strategy and key marketing activity across their core brands, appointed Aprais in 2005.

Citibank

"Aprais provided an excellent framework for us and our agency to sit together and talk through all aspects of the relationship in a non-confrontational, positive, problem solving way. The benchmarking of relationships was very useful, as it gave us a target to aim for, and the fact that it was done across all Citi-Publicis relationships in Asia added a competitive edge for us in India as well."
Vijay Ramchandran - Country Marketing & Internet Director, Citi (India)

Citibank has been an Aprais client since 2006.

Emirates

Emirates Airline has been a client of Aprais since 2004.

Friesland Campina

"Just like Aprais, I sincerely believe in the statement that "The best creative work arises from the best possible relation between client and agency". Such a relation is based on confidence and respect, for which clear expectations and open communications are crucial. Aprais was an enormous help in achieving this for Milner cheese with our advertising and design agencies, with an efficiency award for our campaign (Effie) and an enormous growth in turnover as result."
Jos van Wezenbeek - Marketing Manager for cheese brand Milner, FrieslandCampina (Holland)

"There have been very satisfying results on both sides and the co-operation has been developed very positively since then."
Anja Henze - Marketing Director, FrieslandCampina (Germany)

FrieslandCampina is the major Dutch Dairy producer and marketer. Aprais has worked with the company across a number of brand relationships and agencies since 2003.

GlaxoSmithKline

"Aprais as a system has proven to be a very useful tool for better connecting the agency and the client than what usually happens in a 'normal' situation.  Specifically, we have found this systematic approach and the facilitation provided by yourselves to be an excellent means of building bridges, as well as having those 'Real Conversations' that this critical relationship often requires in order to deliver  maximum value to both parties.  As a consequence of this Aprais process, I believe that the client-agency relationship between GSK Malaysia and its 2 main advertising agencies is now fundamentally stronger than it was before."
Akhil Chandra - CEO, GlaxoSmithKline (Malaysia)

HSBC

"I find Aprais to be an excellent tool, because of its ability to get to the heart of issues that exist between my agencies and my people, which get in the way of a smooth and productive working relationship. The involvement of a highly qualified 3rd party also ensures all issues are correctly identified, addressed, and followed up. This enables us to achieve constant (measured) performance improvement in the relationships, and gives us the ability to assess our performance against world and industry best practice. Additionally, the scoring provides the facility to incentive better performance from our agencies via PBR. I also like the fact that Aprais is now well accepted and liked by our agencies (who all willingly contribute to the cost) for the same reasons. Having looked at other system and process options available, I found nothing that could deliver the benefits we get out of Aprais."
Darren Friedlander - Director of Marketing, HSBC (Australia)

Nationwide News

"Having used Aprais to measure the performance of our relationships with both our media and creative agencies, it has been extremely helpful in providing the structure that ensures our relationships become productive and cost efficient. The ability to articulate areas for improvement in a non-confrontational environment allows for the real issues to be identified and dealt with in a measurable way."
Liza McNally - Marketing Director, Nationwide News, News Limited (Australia)

Nestle

"When we established both a new Client and Agency team, Aprais helped them learn together and to understand each others needs. This resulted in a better and more productive relationship, grounded on the continuous measurement of mutually agreed KPIs. The work is better and the relationship on both sides much healthier."
David Rennie - MD, Nestlé Rowntree (UK)

"The systematic agency evaluation through Aprais can show us areas for improvement in the co-operation early in advance."
Lars Woebcke - Director Communication & Corporate Marketing, Nestlé (Germany) 

"With Aprais, Nestlé and our Agency partners have been able to clearly define the areas of strength and areas for improvement in our relationships.  With the areas of improvement we can now proactively define action plans to address these areas to consistently develop a win-win partnership for the long-term. In the end, we are able to focus on what really matters - great results!"
Gerry Bes - Communication Director, Nestlé (Caribbean)

"Aprais is a most informative and instructive analysis of what is actually going wrong. It forces us to recognise that we can sometimes be a significant cause of problems. It sends a clear wake up call to both sides as to the issues - and prompts action, the success of which both teams know will be measured."
Ian Alwill - Communications Director, Nestlé (Australia)

What started as a local project in Australia back in 2002 has since expanded into a global programme that currently covers 54 markets.

SAB Miller

"The Aprais process runs quietly and smoothly in the back office of our marketing function. It is a great tool to ensure that our relationships with our agency partners are fair, open and focused on continuous performance improvement. It has become part of the way we work."
Piotr Jurjewicz Blaszak - VP Marketing, Backus SAB Miller (Peru)

SAB Miller is a major regional client for Aprais in Latin America.

Standard Bank

"Often relationships that have been going for as long as the one we have with Standard Bank can become complacent.  The Aprais system has been critical to highlighting where the issues lie and give all concerned the opportunity to address them in a constructive manner.  Most often the issues are fairly small but if not dealt with can be the cause of a breakdown in the relationship.  Aprais acts as the ‘early warning system' for both Client and Agency alike."
Gabby Cowling - Business Unit Director, Standard Bank (South Africa)

"Aprais has certainly provided Standard Bank with an essential appraisal tool to develop stronger agency partnerships. We have found the Aprais process to be effective in consistently highlighting our key improvement areas whilst building on our successes. The Aprais process is unbiased, flexible and informative; hence it was easily embraced by our agency partners. The local Aprais team is well versed in their discipline, objective and professional whilst being cognizant of our business challenges. Going forward we consider Aprais to be an essential part of our agency management methodology and will continue to utilize the services of Aprais to enhance our agency relationships."
Mayur Soni - Marketing Operations Manager, Group Marketing, Standard Bank (South Africa)

"I have worked with lots of so-called agency evaluation tools both as an agency exec and now as a client. This one is the best - period.  But then I am not sure it's an evaluation tool, it allows us to candidly look at both 'sides' performance and then have an open dialogue about how we see things going forward as partners in driving our brand.  It's not just about the actual software though, the team that run it for us make sure it's not only painless to work through, but their evaluation, analysis and recommendations are the third party objective input you need to be sure you can see the wood for the trees. Considering what we spend on agency partners, this is the best investment in making sure we get the most for our expenditure."
David Wingfield - Marketing Director, Standard Bank (South Africa)

Standard Bank is the leading South African bank. Aprais works with two divisions of the Bank to help it manage its relationships across the aligned Creative, Media, and PR agencies, part of Omnicom Group.

Toyota

"Aprais is a truly prescriptive tool that will benefit both agencies and clients, whether the news is good or bad. It provides the necessary stimulus and an objective forum to debate issues which would normally be too difficult to facilitate and which threaten productivity within the relationship. It will drive a result that puts the onus on both client and agency, at every level of the business, to lift discipline and contribute to more measurable and effective marketing & advertising communications".
Andrew Caie - National Advertising Marketing Operations Manager, Toyota Motor Corporation (Australia)

Toyota is a long standing Aprais client in Australia that has grown very considerably over the past 7 years.