Profile: Gap China marketing head Grace Wong

Having spent the past 11 years at Gap HQ in San Francisco, Grace Wong is deeply embedded in the company culture and her fervour for the brand, its values and the overall Gap culture is marked. Now heading up marketing operations for Gap China, she is on a new mission to spread the company mantra in one of the largest and most challenging markets in the world. “I love the company so much as a brand. I really want to share it with people here,” she says. “It’s a very special company.”

Gap landed in China with a bang in late 2010, opening four stores - two apiece for Beijing and Shanghai - as well as an own-brand e-commerce website. Wong’s own journey to Gap China, though, began several years earlier, shortly after the company’s intentions for China had become an open topic at senior levels. “China was always in the back of my mind and then I met John Ermatinger who is president of Asia-Pacific and we sat down and had a chat and it was interesting to me. How many times in a person’s career can they say that they launched a brand like Gap in China? I don’t think that is an opportunity that comes your way very often so I raised my hand.”

Initially commuting between San Francisco and Shanghai, Wong finally settled full-time in China in mid-2010. The experience, so far, has been something of an eye-opener. “It is so complex - beyond comprehension. And it is changing every day. That is exhausting and challenging and exciting and exhilarating all at the same time.”

The launch process has been a testing one, as would be expected for any brand entering a market as diverse and competitive as China. One of the major problems Gap faced prior to its China launch, for instance, was its low brand awareness in the country. It was in the 30 per cent bracket, compared to up to 98 per cent brand awareness in the US. “And when you dug deeper and asked about the brand - what it stands for - you realised that just because consumers had heard of it, they didn’t know what it was about.”

Wong is quick, though, to refute any accusation that Gap suffers from being such a late entrant to the China market - its major international rivals such as Zara and H&M, have been building store networks since 2006 and 2007, respectively.

Instead, Wong argues that now is absolutely the right time to be setting up in China. “If you think about it, it is now the second largest market in the world, the third largest apparel market in the world - to us it’s the perfect time. But we did take our time in terms of research and making sure we got it right. We are committed to China and are committed to building this brand over time.”

One of Gap’s first China priorities was to make sure it had the right agency partners. And with a media agency background prior to joining Gap - working with the likes of Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola - this was something Wong took very seriously, personally undertaking an extensive agency review. “It took a long time, at least half a year,” she says. “I feel like I have spoken to every agency here, and I probably have. But this was extremely important because we needed to find the right partner.”

Wong says Y&R Shanghai was eventually chosen because of its creative offering for the launch campaign. “I just loved the idea,” she says. This again goes back to her agency days in New York, particularly her experiences at Coke. “It was eye-opening for me to see just how much Coke appreciated creativity and invested in it,” she says.

With Y&R on board, Gap released a high-profile launch campaign, with print and outdoor executions shot by famed photographer Annie Leibovitz. The campaign was released in two phases and paired Western and Chinese cultural icons, including bloggers, models, film directors and musicians under the banner ‘shared freedom’. 

Wong stresses that while it was important to make the brand relevant for local consumers, even more pressing was the need to promote the cultural and heritage elements that are the essence of the Gap brand story. This, she feels, was communicated clearly in the launch, and she is understandably proud of the results.

Alongside her media roots, Wong is also a strong advocate of the power of the creative idea. In fact, she cites the iconic Gap Khaki Swing ad from 1998 as the turning point in her career. “I remember distinctly exactly where I was when I saw it,” she recalls. “I remember stopping and staring at the TV and saying ‘I really want to work on that.’ I didn’t think anything of it but the next thing you know I moved to Gap HQ in San Francisco and I just fell in love with the brand and fell in love with the company and before you know it, it is 11 years later.”

She feels that this creative spirit is something that still exists within Gap. “Being on the agency side, you hear them say we have to break the walls down between disciplines, we have to do more integrated, but honestly Gap was the first place I worked where this is truly the case,” she says. “When I started we used to do everything in-house, we didn’t work with outside agencies.

There just were not any walls - you worked together to come up with great ideas and you just made it happen.”

Wong’s next move in China will be to take the Gap message further. “This launch is the beginning of a very comprehensive market-entry strategy so we will be opening more stores in Shanghai and Beijing and other markets. The next one is Hong Kong, which will open at the end of the year. So this is just the beginning. In terms of our brands - Gap Inc has five brands - we started with our most iconic brand and will evaluate opportunities as time goes by to bring other brands here.”

Nils Andersson CCO for Y&R China and head of art for Y&R Asia, argues that Wong is the ideal person to take Gap deeper into China. “Grace lives and breathes Gap, and was committed to communicating the company’s liberated spirit to the Chinese consumer,” he says of the launch campaign.  “She is a passionate advocate for the power of having a strong brand and the need to take the longer-term view in order to build one - despite all the pressures to be short-term and simply ride the China wave of natural growth.”

Wong recognises the ongoing challenge the China market presents to any fashion brand, not least the difficulty of building brand loyalty in a country where consumers are faced with a huge choice of local and international brands, and how fast the market is changing. “Couple that with the millennial target and how savvy they are about brands, how savvy they are about learning about brands and building brand loyalty is extremely difficult.”

The solution will be to understand what the brand’s target consumers want, but also respecting and communicating the company’s heritage. “From our product to our pricing strategy to the marketing, we never thought about just lifting from the US. It is more about what is right for the consumer here, what is right for the country but also staying true and authentic to the brand.”

This once again returns Wong to the underlying theme of recreating the Gap culture. “Trying to convey or instill a culture is always difficult,” she says. “I think the onus is on all of us here. We are going to build the Gap culture here based on our stores, our staff and our products. It’ going to take time and it is not going to be an exact lift of the culture of Gap in the US, but there are values that go along with Gap that will be localised here.” 

This article was originally published in the May issue of Campaign Asia-Pacific.