The Beyond Boundaries Experiential Awards Program recognizes and rewards the excellent talent that exists in all offices, practices and job functions across MSLGROUP North America. As MSLGROUP North America brand ambassadors, our award recipients will be blogging and taking photos throughout their journey. Dawn received the opportunity to “study abroad” for one week at one of our global (wholly-owned) offices, and is currently at MSL China in Shanghai.
My morning began with 25 Shanghai colleagues crammed into a conference room to learn more about the MSL Chicago office and a few of our case studies, including one about our successful Chevrolet Volt Klout program. The team was very intrigued with how Klout worked and they were anxious to check on their Klout scores after the meeting.
This afternoon, I met with Kelly Shen, Associate Consultant, who shared case studies with me regarding her clients, which include the Peninsula Hotel, Saatchi & Saatchi and a real estate client. The team’s work with the Peninsula includes the Peninsula Group, the Peninsula Shanghai and the soon to open Peninsula Residences (in Shanghai). The work with the Peninsula was exciting to me considering my interest in travel, food and local culture.
I also met with Judy Luo, a director in the consumer practice, who shared a few case studies from her healthcare, fashion (like Swarovski and UGG) and durable goods clients. Healthcare PR is different in China because the government still controls a lot of the messaging and brand names of medicines cannot be used, which makes promotion of them difficult. As a result, their work in this area focused on over the counter products like Head & Shoulder (P&G) science communications, pet medicine and more.
I’ve been learning that traditional public relations is the key focus with many Chinese clients and that it remains the primary source of revenue. Social media is still so new, with many teams and clients trying to determine how to best integrate digital into their plans and how to measure it like they can with traditional public relations. The popular platforms here are Weibo, which is the Chinese version of Twitter, and Kaixin (means “happiness”), the Chinese version of Facebook.
While it is only my second full day in Shanghai and I’m unable to communicate with many people, including a few colleagues, I’ve quickly settled in and still feel very comfortable and at home here in the office. While China is different in so many ways, in the end, we really are more alike than different.
After work, many of the top leaders in the region, including Glenn Osaki, President of MSLGROUP Asia; Par Uhlin, Managing Director of MSL China; Charlotta Lagerdahl Gandolfo, Director and Alice Hu, Manager, Social Hive, Asia; were kind enough to take me out to dinner at a local restaurant known for its Hunan cuisine. I’ve enjoyed trying the different styles and must say it was my favorite meal yet!
