Women to Watch 2020: Anita Hsieh, BBDO China

Anita Hsieh

Business director
BBDO
China

Anita Hsieh’s job title doesn’t justify her mammoth role: sitting as the cross-border creative lead in APAC for Visa. When first faced with the task, she set up the vision of the APAC work and established a modular, scalable and flexible creative approach as well as built a systematic way of working to ensure consistency across local markets.

In China, she leveraged regional assets given that intensive competition from the likes of China Union Pay and Alipay posed a challenge for her client. Visa needed to change its approach, so Hsieh orchestrated an integrated plan to revitalise the Visa business in a cost-efficient way, build strong partnerships with relevant travel sites, as well as conceptualise campaigns. Efficiency was crucial through all of this as Visa’s competitors in China were spending up to 25 times more on marcomms. Her success is telling when the account business grew by a whopping 200%.

During COVID-19 when the washed-out tourism industry dented Visa’s business, Hsieh initiated a ‘discuss session’ with clients to quickly pivot to ecommerce as a core for business growth followed by immediate action plans to switch gears and develop ecommerce assets. The work was completed in a record time of just two weeks, further attesting to Hsieh’s herculean abilities.

It’s not just Visa that Hsieh can take credit for. For feminine hygiene brand Libresse—a newcomer to the China market—she set out to work on smashing the nationwide taboo of periods seen as shameful or taboo. Through the work of her team, the campaign not only achieved sales growth of 500% but also made 98% of viewers act differently toward menstruation. This, plus the string of achievements above, are the only ways to explain Hsieh’s four promotions in the last six years.