Integrated Communications Group - Established Brands and CitiBusiness Regional Brands Winner

WITH six companies operating from 23 offices in nine major markets, Integrated Communications Group (ICG) knows the importance of clearly defined branding.

"Branding for us is very much about instilling the underlying values, work ethics and culture to all our colleagues regardless of the brands they belong to or what nationalities they are," says Mr Lee Tse Liang (above), chief executive of ICG.

"If our value is not clearly articulated through the brand experience of our products and services, clients will resort to pricing as a point of differentiation."

The ICG brand consists of six specialised marketing services companies: PMG Group, Xtentia, The Thinc Group, Moving Content Solutions, Origami Frontiers and Figment.

Each caters to different areas of communication such as marketing communications, channel marketing, creative design, technology and virtual world marketing communications.

Although ICG was officially formed in 2003 as a holding company to manage the overall group operations and strategies, some of the subsidiary brands such as the PMG Group have been in operation in Singapore for over 12 years.

Because these brands evolved from a single brand, Mr Lee says that "bringing the underlying values and cultures to each new business and brand was fairly straightforward".

It is no surprise that ICG won in not one but two categories of the Singapore Prestige Brand Award - Established Brands and CitiBusiness Regional Brands.

The Established Brands award is given to businesses that have been around for six to 30 years, and the CitiBusiness Regional Brands category recognises businesses that have achieved a breakthrough in foreign markets while retaining the essence of a Singapore brand.

A first-timer in the SPBA, ICG was "fairly confident of winning at least one award", says Mr Lee.

To win both awards was certainly a pleasant surprise, he adds.

"Preparing for this award allowed us to take a methodical look at ourselves and gave us a unique opportunity to document many of the brand values and brand personality that we have all along been practising," he says.

"As we have several brands under the ICG brand, it also served as a checkpoint for us to tighten the brand architecture."

Mr Lee says the SPBA win encourages ICG, which positions itself as a "truly Asian marketing services network", to continue with its push into the region.

"As with our brand values of being curious, daring and innovative, we will continue to look at creating new and unique service combinations," he says.