Women to Watch Greater China 2021: Echo Ao, Wavemaker

Echo Ao

Head of innovation and business lead
Wavemaker
Shanghai

Echo Ao has bagged contracts with clients in China and worldwide, including Pernod Ricard China, Chanel, Sands Group, Coca-Cola, Jala, GAC Fiat, Shell, and GSK. Her career started in 2007 at MediaCom London, where she introduced attribution modeling for Shell in 2012. It was the same year that she moved back to Shanghai.

China's market has proven to be challenging to navigate. Ao is a restless digital marketer who drives digital transformation. Gordon Domlija, APAC President of Wavemaker, praised her, "Echo has been a key driver of the digital transformation strategy undertaken by Wavemaker China from 2017."

As a leader in the Wavemaker agency brand safety and ad-verification initiative, Ao conducted a comprehensive audit of local and international measurement tools in this area. In 2017, she successfully implemented a local ad-verification tool RTBAsia across all Chanel campaigns. Ao moved into Wechat customized targeting in 2017, using platform data to identify and engage audiences with discreet messaging effectively.

In 2020, as Martell's account leader, Ao proactively led a Pernod Ricard China/MPlatform data partnership project, which involved multiple data sources as anchors to eliminate potential impact of data redundancy and feed learnings back to brand planning. Because of Ao's critical role in the project, Brand Director of Martell, Pernod Ricard China, Louis Cheng, said "Martell's KPIs are not only met but exceeded in terms of reach and cost efficiency."

Combined with 13 years of experience overseas and in China, Ao's passion and proficiency in data usage helped to strike strategic partnerships with leading platforms such as Tencent, Dianping, and various tech providers in the likes of Mplatform and RTBAsia, which led to increased effectiveness and efficiency for her clients.