CAREERS MEDIA: Li rises as Grey's first local GM

Grey Worldwide has promoted its first local Chinese general manager, Mr Josh Li, as head of its Beijing office, to replace Hong Kong expatriate Ms Yvonne Lo, who left the agency after less than a year. Mr Li was until recently client services director and is believed to be the first local general manager to head a 4As agency in China. He has extensive experience across a range of client categories, both multinational and local, including pharmaceuticals (Smith Kline Beecham Tianjin), auto (Volkswagen), tech (Founder Computers and Maibo Online) and finance (Visa). Grey Worldwide Asia-Pacific chairman and CEO Viveca Chan said the promotion of home-grown talent was a crucial, but difficult task for 4As agencies to achieve in China because local staff tended to job hop. Yet, Grey clients like Volkswagen, which works with the agency on strategic brand development, have underlined the importance of grooming local talent for senior roles. "For us, the most important factor in brand building in China is not media budgets or importing foreign expertise. It is the expertise and knowledge of highly-educated local people, who understand both, the needs of the brand and the wishes of the Chinese consumer," said Mr Christian Claussen, senior manager sales and marketing of Volkswagen Group China. "It requires indepth knowledge of the market to be able to do a meaningful customer segmentation, product analysis and positioning, as well as coming up with strong communication messages," Mr Claussen said, pointing to Mr Li as one of the few local talents who fulfilled these requirements. Since joining Grey in 1994 as a junior level account executive, Mr Li proved to be an exception to the job hopping problem afflicting agencies in China. He said he regularly turned down offers from rival agencies and dotcom companies because these companies lacked the "opportunities and environment that Grey provided". "Grey does not have a strict bureaucratic reporting system - here, an account manager is expected to work as account director (AD) and the AD is pushed to think as a group account director," said Mr Li. "The company has always made sure staff knew the things they had not yet achieved and the target it wanted us to meet. This way, I could see the career path they had laid out for me." As part of grooming Mr Li for senior responsibilities, Ms Chan said the agency signed him for executive development programme at an American university and offered stints throughout its US office network. During a three-month stint at Grey's New York headquarters, Mr Li worked on Procter & Gamble's Pantene business. Having risen to the top, Mr Li said one of his priorities will be to plug gaps in senior level leadership by grooming its pool of middle managerial staff.

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