Tonight, let's shake!
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Dick van Motman, President and CEO of DDB Greater China, is featured in the latest CampaignAsia article.  Building brand trust 'For Dick Van Motman success in China requires brands to be respectful, transparent, and responsible in order to gain consumers' trust.' Can I be honest with you? Chinese consumers are just not that into us - foreign, domestic, big or small. We try to win their hearts with poetic propositions when we can't even gain their trust with the simplest of products. They're looking for more security than we've been offering thus far. Communicating respect for the consumer and responsibility for everything brands say, and do. Once upon a time there was plenty of trust. A decade or so ago, celebrities were gods and foreign brands could do no wrong. Three years ago, we asked teenagers in tier three cities about advertising on television. "If it's on CCTV, it must be true," said one girl, and "CCTV is government TV. They censor everything." Times have changed. Trust is on life support. With a smorgasbord of life-threatening foods on the tip of consumers' lips (tainted milk powder, paper-filled buns, contaminated pork and exploding watermelons), should we be surprised? In a recent interview with a group from Chengdu, one man said, "Nothing's reliable anymore. I feel like I can't even believe the weather report. Is there anything we can still trust?" Are we moving too fast, buying and borrowing brands rather than carefully building them? Are we neglecting our responsibility as brand guardians to be fully committed to the safety and quality of the products that walk the brands' talk? One high-profile CEO of a major Chinese internet company recently lamented that so many companies in China were sacrificing their people in the pursuit of pure profit; this after discovering that some of his staff had allowed 2,300 fake storefronts to swindle customers out of US$2 million and on hearing, in the same week, that four children, in an unrelated incident, had died from melamine-laced baby formula. It is not just the root of the problem that has caused the crisis of trust but our response to it. We talk about how the customer is king, yet we treat him with great suspicion. The recent debacle by a world famous cosmetics brand is illustrative. After traces of harmful ingredients were found in one of their flagship products, they offered customers refunds, albeit not immediately, if they signed a document saying that nothing was wrong with the product. Consumers in China have begun to brand together to keep companies on the straight and narrow. With few official and effective outlets to voice their concerns and complaints, they are turning to each other for support and action. And the internet is helping them to do it, coming together on a shared grievance, planning a course of action and executing it with precision. A recent case invoking a giant German electronics company and a microblogging celebrity is a perfect example. After receiving a number of complaints about a refrigerator door that would not shut, the company issued a statement via their microblog saying they were in contact with the complainants, there were no design flaws and that they would not recall the product. For the microblogging celebrity and his disgruntled followers, this response was the final straw. Last month, they marched on the company's office with sledgehammers in hand and refrigerators in tow and smashed them to smithereens. We should expect more of these responses as consumers begin to see the power of concerted acts of protest. How do we re-build trust? The operative word is 'build'. There are no shortcuts. We have to do it brick by brick. Trust starts with respect, responsibility and transparency. Respect: we give lip-service to respect for the customer. We can hear it in how we talk about, characterize and value him. To many, he is simply a faceless digit in a promising cluster. We should spend the time to uncover reasons to respect and like him, beyond his profit potential. Responsibility: for better or worse, we are the sum of all associations we have in our ecosystem and we are only as strong as our weakest link. We should extend our influence and values to our associates and take responsibility for their actions, not just our own. Transparency: one of those rare and prized finds in China. We should create opportunities to demonstrate transparency to gain trust and admiration for their courage, candor and authenticity. LET'S PARTY ALL NIGHT LONG! 
13th Jan, 2012, DDB MTV Night is here! Our theme is to bring 'live' MV performance on to the stage for this celebration. Let's get the party started!  
Passionate, respectful, fun, genuine, professional, supportive, encouraging, spontaneous, hectic, silly, educational, serious, busy, enlightening, collaborative, productive...I could go on and on, but I'll keep it short.
The time I spent at RAPP's Shanghai office last year was one of the most hectic yet meaningful experiences for me. Everyone at the office treated me like a family member. This strong family spirit is one of the reasons that I always want to stay within RAPP's network wherever I go. Instead of buying coffee and printing papers, I was involved at almost every level of the projects I worked on, from meetings with the Creative Department to decision-making. I gained numerous hands-on experiences from my colleagues.
After my internship, I decided to pursue my Master's Degree in the U.S. As much as I hated to say goodbye to all the RAPPers, I went for my American journey. As it was said by Robert Frost, "The woods are lovely, dark, and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep." After a year's intensive training at the Newhouse School of Syracuse University, I was ready to hit the ground running. It was very kind of Michelle and Ross to put me in touch with RAPP's New York office. After rounds of interviews, I was offered an internship on the Client Service Team for Time Warner Cable. As a matter of fact, I turned down an offer from a boutique ad agency based in SoHo while I was waiting for RAPP NY's decision. And I believe it was worth doing so because RAPP has always been a dream agency for me.
I started my internship at RAPP NY last week, and it has been very exciting so far. I was welcomed in front of more than 200 RAPPers at the agency's weekly meeting and given tours around the office. As always, RAPPers here are very passionate about their jobs and fun to work with.
During my interview with Sharon Shaffery, the VP Account Director on Time Warner Cable, she asked me why I wanted to work for RAPP. Apart from telling her my wonderful experience with RAPP Shanghai, my answer was: In the words of Bill Bernbach, "All of us who professionally use the mass media are the shapers of society. We can vulgarize the society. We can brutalize it. Or we can help lift it onto a higher level." I believe RAPP is one of the few shapers of the society. And I want to be one of them.
Here I am, part of RAPP's family again. I would like to thank everyone that I've worked with at RAPP Shanghai. It would be awfully nice to see you again at some point down the road.
Joanna Mo
Shanghai, October 25, 2011
DDB China group has won a total of 51 awards between September and October 2011 over the 7 awards show. 32 awards where awarded to DDB China Group in the 18th China international advertising festival 2011 that happened from September 25th to 27th in Shenyang. The agency ended up being the most awarded agency of the year at the China EFFIES notching 11 trophies. In the three-days festival, DDB China Group picked up 7 Golds, 14 Silvers and 11 Bronzes in total, over six award shows: China Effie, China Great-Wall Awards, Chinese Element International Creative Award, Public Service Advertisement, China Internet Ad Competition, China Media Planning Award.
DDB China Group also picked up 19 awards at the famous Longxi Awards 2011 on October 13, in Macau: 3 Golds, 3 Slivers, 9 Bronzes, 2 Merits, 2 finalists and 19 shortlisted. The agency was one of the most agency in Greater China and inarguably was the most awarded one in China.
At the China Effie award, DDB China Group has been the most awarded agency in China bringing back 11 trophies of which 1 Gold, 6 Silvers and 4 Bronzes. 1 Gold medal and 2 slivers were awarded to the famous "Green Pedestrian Crossing" campaign of the China Environmental Protection Foundation.
DDB China Group has secured an impressive result at the Great-Wall Awards, winning 13 across all categories of which: 2 Gold, 6 Silver and 5 Bronze.
DDB Shanghai Group notched the Grand Prix at the Chinese Element International Creative Award with its Philips Dining video, proving the company reasserting its creative dominance. Also the Shanghai Volkswagen's Tiguan campaign won a Gold in the radio category.
DDB China Group also had its highlights in picking up 6 other awards: 1 Gold at Public Service Advertisement; 1 Gold, 1 Silver and 2 Bronzes at China Internet Ad Competition as well as 2 merits; 1 Silver at China Media Planning Award.
Dick Van Motman, CEO & President of DDB Greater China group, commented: "I am very proud that we've won so many awards at both the China International Ad Festival and the Longxi Awards this year. I'm particularly thrilled that we've been the most awarded agency in China at the China Effies and Longxi awards. This is a milestone for DDB China Group and for our clients as it demonstrates the importance of marketing effectiveness and that effective creativity has become the focus for both clients and us. Congratulations to everyone who has contributed to DDB's success."
by Joan Voight, Thursday,
September 1, 2011, 12:00 AM A
View from DDB in Shanghai Today's China and the hyperconnected Chinese marketplace are
concepts so big it can be hard to wrap your intellectual arms around them. It
helps to focus on only a few impressive facts at a time. One, China is rapidly turning urban and middle class. About
90 cities in China have a middle-class population of at least 250,000; the U.S.
and Canada together have fewer than 70. Two, the country's economy is becoming consumer driven. China
already ranks as the number one or two market in the world for consumer
electronics, shoes and jewelry, says the Boston Consulting Group. Three, China is adopting new technologies faster than nearly
every other developing country. Mobile telephones are ubiquitous in cities. The
country has more than 400 million Internet users, most with broadband access.
Most importantly, China is at the forefront of social media and digital
connectivity, because in China social media is the mainstream media - more
trusted and commonly used than state-controlled public media. Experts at Boston
Consulting warn that Western companies, including Facebook and Twitter, will
soon be fighting Chinese competitors on U.S. turf. For instance, the Chinese
version of Twitter, Sina Weibo (pronounced "way-bore"), plans to
release an English version this year. Tom Cruise, Bill Gates and other celebs
have been Weibo-ing since last June. So far, Sina Weibo has about 140 million
users. For all these reasons, we sought the in-the-trenches perspective
of Dick van Motman, CEO of DDB Greater China Group, which includes digital
agency Tribal DDB. He is mainly Dutch and Indonesian and left Holland for Asia
when he was 29. We met him in the largest office of DDB's Chinese network,
located in booming Shanghai - the hotspot for China's new digital marketing
scene. In a business park inhabited by digital ad and PR shops such as AKQA,
van Motman works from an orderly, glass-walled work space for clients including
McDonald's, Philips, Unilever, Volkswagen and Pepsi. Across town, corporate
skyscrapers house rival agencies Ogilvy and JWT. The ddb office's calm is an illusion: last year the shop crafted
a cross-platform campaign for McDonald's that was so disruptive the Chinese
government shut it down. McDonald's used the Web to invite people to bring
their discount coupons from rival restaurants to mcd outlets. Word got around
and McDonald's restaurants got so crowded it upset the industry's competitive
balance, according to government officials. Hence the shutdown. Van Motman says that using digital connections for marketing is
a matter of survival in China. Digital communication is what unites the
sprawling, rapidly changing country. "China's sheer size means it has to
depend on digital media to simply get things done," van Motman says. It
helps that there are no legacy systems sucking up resources and consumer attention.
"Here it is easier to leapfrog over platforms," he notes. He points
to the penetration of smartphones, which is greater in China than in the West.
"Long before iPhones, China had Nokia smartphones," van Motman says.
Online instant messaging is also well established. im service QQ has 600
million users in China alone, compared with 200 million Twitter members
worldwide. Indeed, social media and mobile have become the glue that holds
together hyperconnected Chinese consumers and their favored brands. In a
country of "only" children, due to the government's
one-child-per-family policy, social media offers the younger generation a
chance to connect with the "brothers and sisters" that they don't
have at home, agency insiders say. Natalie Lam, former executive creative
director at the Shanghai office of WPP's OgilvyOne, says, "Social media is
second nature," an essential part of the lives of young consumers in
China. In van Motman's words: "Forget the quiet, submissive, passive image
of Chinese. This generation is passionate about expressing their opinion
online." He explains that, as a result, the county's social sites, which
started out as copies of U.S. services, now have far more features than what we
find on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others. For example, AKQA
Shanghai used social media and mobile to entice a whopping 103 million people
to send branded online New Year's video greetings to one another in a campaign
for Lipton Tea last year. To harness the Chinese version of mobile and social connectivity,
the DDB Group in Shanghai is broken into three divisions. Working in an open
floor plan are digital shop Tribal ddb, direct marketing specialist Rapp and ad
agency ddb. But the divisions are mainly for show, to communicate
"expertise and credibility" to clients, says van Motman. "In
reality, the entire staff strives to be both digitally oriented and
brand-savvy. The divisions share a single p&l, Tribal and DDB
creatives work side-by-side and incentives are handed out to groups," not
individuals, van Motman says. Hires are decided by the candidates' "ability to play
together." Executive coaches are brought in to teach managers how to see
the big picture and collaborate better. To help clients such as Johnson & Johnson keep up with the
digital changes in China, DDB Shanghai hosts them for training sessions called
"digital days," says van Motman. More than 30 people from the client
company spend the day at the agency studying key topics, such as how to build
brands through social creativity and improve digital roi, according
to Daryl Ho, Tribal business director. Van Motman himself seems like a harried ringleader, working to
keep control in a cross-platform, interconnected marketplace that is changing
under his feet. His territory is a consumer base that went from no choice
to endless choices overnight, and where new high-rises - especially in Shanghai
- have risen in the time it takes a U.S. city to approve a new street sign. Van
Motman's office area is dominated by huge written slogans from ddb founder Bill
Bernbach about the value of "creativity." But ironically the
word never pops up in our conversation. Motman finally notices and takes a
moment to explain. In China the relevant word isn't creativity, but
"innovation," he says, because it takes into account the importance
of technology, change and speed. And, of course, connections. 
Continue reading Happy mid-Autumn festival 2011.
Tim Schlick, Co-Head of Strategic Planning of DDB Greater China Group,
was a guest star on Thoughtful China's weekly web show, Where he discussed
branding in China and the challenges faced by Chinese companies who strive to
build strong national and in some cases international brands in front of a
strong competition from foreign companies. Watch him on the episode
"China's Most Valuable Brands" here. |
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