HONG KONG – Alexander Mann Solutions (AMS), a talent acquisition and management services specialist, has appointed The Hoffman Agency for its PR across Asia-Pacific.
AMS, a UK company, will work with Hoffman in Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia. The companies are also understood to be discussing opportunities in China. AMS is an established company in its field in Asia-Pacific but is looking to raise its profile.
Martin Cerullo, the Hong Kong-based director of global brand and marketing for AMS, told PRWeek that the company was looking to expand aggressively into new geographies following investment last year from New Mountain Capital in the US. AMS launched in 1996 and has been present in Asia since 2002, with around 500 staff across the region.
Cerullo noted that AMS had "significant" business in China, the Philippines, Malaysia and Japan, but planned to concentrate on reaching regional leaders in terms of communications activities.
According to a statement from Hoffman, the agency will aim to use its "strategic storytelling skills to magnify AMS’s brand presence, and through leveraging AMS’s research, help AMS strengthen its position as an industry leader and credible partner in advancing companies’ talent agenda".
Jenny Chan, vice-president of business development and marketing at Hoffman, told PRWeek that Hoffman’s primary value would be helping AMS build thought leadership in an intensely competitive sector.
"Asia is very important for us and we were looking for a partner to help position us in the right way around talent consulting," Cerullo said.
He said part of AMS’s communications strategy had always included the creation of unique research and content, but that the next level was to turn that content into more compelling stories on an ongoing basis. In particular, he said AMS sought to position talent as critical to an organisation’s success by talking not just to HR directors, but to the C-suite.
All content, he said, must remain focused on business issues. "There’s a lot of content out there but it rarely relays back to what a business is trying to achieve," he noted. "It’s often features-led rather than explaining what you can do [with those features]."
The move follows a pitch that included three undisclosed agencies. AMS previously worked with Priority in Singapore and EBA Communications (part of Lewis PR) in Hong Kong. Cerullo said he was impressed with the research, insight and thought-leadership Hoffman brought to bear in the pitch. Chan suggested that Hoffman’s single P&L structure, which facilitates regional collaboration, also contributed to winning the account.
