ISC Innovators and K&L announce JV for SEA

ISC Innovators, or the ISCI agency of Kuala Lumpur, and the K&L agency of Tokyo, Japan, recently signed a joint venture agreement to unite both agencies’ strengths in order to expand their joint business in Southeast Asia, which is the third largest market in the Asia-Pacific region after China and India.

This new KL-based agency, called K&L-ISC (Southeast Asia), has just been announced in both Kuala Lumpur and Tokyo by the two new partner offices.

ISC’s co-founding President Austen Zecha said, “We are delighted to have had our two-year affiliation with K&L evolve into a joint force as we do have a lot in common with them, especially in viewing Southeast Asia as an increasingly attractive market which is witnessing, especially, a new influx of Japanese corporations and marketers needing our integrated marketing communications services.

“Also, as K&L is highly-respected in providing its integrated services to a diverse group of Japanese consumer and durable goods throughout Japan, China and India, we at ISC complement their strengths with our award-winning branding work and noted services to airline, tourism and travel clients – especially our enduring thematic “Malaysia: Truly Asia” branding for Tourism Malaysia – and also our other numerous multinational clients’ automotive and consumer products.”

ISC and its predecessor agencies in Bangkok, Hong Kong, Jakarta and Singapore have previously undertaken other joint ventures with former or current multinational agencies such as, in alphabetical order, DMB&B, Edelman, JWT, Landor, Saatchi & Saatchi and TBWA and have also been affiliated with Daiko, Dentsu and Doremus.

K&L’s President and CEO Shinichi Okazaki added, “We have been supporting marketing communications across borders for major Japanese brands through extensive range of services from corporate branding to product branding, and from traditional advertising to digital campaigns and from local campaigns to regional campaigns.”

“Also, we both belong to the same worldwide network of independent agencies, ICOM, which is an international network of more than 80 offices in over 60 countries around the world.”