CAREERS: MindShare China on new strategy

"I like the wide open roads of Beijing," says Mr Eddie Cheng who took on the position of managing director MindShare Beijing in September 2000. "They free your mind and give you room to think," explained Mr Cheng, who has 20 years of advertising experience in Asia and Canada. And a free mind for new ideas is what Hong Kong-born Mr Cheng needs, as he takes on the challenge of making the media dependent a more service-oriented organisation, which talks to clients in a language they understand. MindShare China is looking at introducing a new strategy for its Beijing and Shanghai offices, where executives with a strong background in client service, rather than media buying and planning professionals, have been recruited to head up the operations. Mr Cheng's experience as a client and on the client service side of the industry will help him do just that. While it might not make sense for an engineer to sell the bridge he has designed, by the same token media buying or planning professional are not necessarily the best people to sell a media plan. Client services are not being given the attention they deserve in traditional media operations Mr Cheng believes. "Clients often don't have the time to look at a media plan, they just want to know what it means without too much professional jargon. We need to take the initiative to help the client so that he can match up advertising costs and sales figures to see if it (the advertising campaign) is working. We need to use their mindset and language," he said. After graduating with a degree in psychology, Mr Cheng started his career in the late '70s on the client side working as a marketing executive for Westinghouse and Fuji Film in Hong Kong, then moving on to work as accounts manager for McCann-Erickson Hong Kong. However his career moved on to television when he emigrated to Canada along with his family in 1987. He worked there as vice-president of Fairchild Television, the national Chinese Television network and as director of accounts services with an ethnic advertising agency. But after several years in the land of Mounties and doughnuts as he puts it, he realised that his career growth would be limited if he did not anticipate change. "Everyone in North America is eyeing China and it was just a question of when to come back. "This is where the growth will be and the earlier you come back and learn the better. Now I am in the lucky position that someone is paying for me to learn," he said. "And even having grown up in Hong Kong I didn't speak any Mandarin, I thought what the heck," recalled Mr Cheng. Since returning in 1996, Cheng has spent several years working as business director for McCann-Erickson Guangming Hong Kong, as general manager for Anderson & Lembke Asia and managing director Grey China Guangzhou, before being recruited for the MindShare Beijing office. His many years in the industry have put Mr Cheng in a position of knowing what clients want and need. "I have been a client for many years myself, and people want to make money and not spend it on advertising. We now need to make clients see advertising not simply in terms of spending, but rather as an investment for future sales," said Mr Cheng. As a troubleshooter, he has for the first few months of his new posting analysed structures and aims to optimise them in the months to come. "I will be looking at the overall picture and will identify where the problems are," said Mr Cheng. But all is easier said than done. In an increasingly-competitive market where local clients have yet to be convinced of signing up to costly services that international advertising agencies offer, Mr Cheng's theories will be put to the test. Mr Cheng sees himself as a perfectionist but realises that he needs to find a balance, as perfection is not always possible. A perfect media plan will seldom be executed as it will be too expensive, but the goal is to find the balance and find the break-even point with which the client will be happy. Music-loving Mr Cheng plays the organ and violin and has recently taken up the saxophone as well as being the bass baritone in the Hong Kong Oratorio Society. While happy to be in Beijing, which he refers to as his virtual home, he recognises differences. "In Canada there is a greater balance of life. People expect you to have a life which is not always the case here," he said. Source: CMM Intelligence.

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