Today on The Negotiation, Todd speaks with Marian Danko, founder of the tech innovation platform weHustle; and TECOM, a conference for tech entrepreneurs. A native of Ukraine, Marian experienced culture shock upon arriving in China, particularly when it came to the rapid speed that defines the nation’s startup ecosystem. Speaking on Shanghai’s tech startup landscape, Marian says that “the ceiling is very high and the floor is very low”. That is, while Shanghai can be regarded as “an expensive ci...
Mar 12, 2020•31 min
Today on The Negotiation, Scott Laprise discusses his transition from a career in diagnostic medicine to a financial analyst and researcher for emerging markets specifically within China. Scott considers Chinese languages the most important to study because of the country’s position as a key player in world business. Additionally, it is not enough to converse in English because the Chinese express themselves in a way that is fundamentally different from how Westerners communicate. Scott, therefo...
Mar 06, 2020•46 min
Today on The Negotiation, Olivia Plotnick talks about her entry into China as an entrepreneur from the United States. She shares how she was able to grow WeChat accounts at a massive rate in a fast-paced marketplace whose consumer culture is so different from her home country’s. She also explains how brands can capitalize on certain WeChat features, such as Top Stories, the “Wow” function, and WeChat groups. When asked how companies should look at WeChat in 2020, Olivia recalls how WeChat gradua...
Mar 04, 2020•40 min
Today on The Negotiation, Kevin Johannes Wörner discusses his background in venture capital and the startup space in China. The German-born entrepreneur developed an “appetite” for the Chinese market at an early age. He studied at Tongji University before working for some time in Germany as a management consultant. Following this, he founded the business accelerator Properas in Berlin. It was around this point, however, that he decided it was time he made the move to China. He got in touch with ...
Feb 26, 2020•34 min
Today on The Negotiation, Cyril Ebersweiler shares 20 years of business experience working with various brands in China. Cyril began his career as an eCommerce project manager for Carrefour, launching China’s first online retail platform. From there, he worked with Adidas for four months before making the switch to Air France, where he would work for the next three years. Air France at the time was taking major steps to invest and promote greater relationships in China. From Air France, Cyril jo...
Feb 18, 2020•41 min
For the past 7 months, this show has been all about China and the amazing opportunities that lie in wait for companies willing to put in the work to be successful there. China’s business landscape and culture have been our bread and butter, it’s what this show has been built upon, and because of that, we need to talk about the tragic events that have been happening there over the last month due to the outbreak of the Coronavirus. The past month has been a difficult one for China and those impact...
Feb 13, 2020•8 min
Today on The Negotiation, Sarah Kutulakos talks about her experiences working for the Canada China Business Council (CCBC) for twelve years, and how doing business between both countries has changed over the last decade. Sarah talks about the evolution of the “depth of companies’ activities in China”. She highlights eCommerce as a big game-changer for the consumer market, as well as brands’ bolder attitude as a whole towards the creation of IPs. Sarah says that if you do not figure out how to co...
Feb 10, 2020•31 min
Today on The Negotiation, Scott Silverman emphasizes efficiency and localizing new technologies as the two keys to brand success. When it comes to promoting your product, your service, or even your company, you must influence the perception around the thing you intend to bring exposure to. As to “what’s in the soup”, the most sacrosanct are 1) the product, and 2) the key benefit. The brand must be aware of the sensibilities of its target consumer and market accordingly. Scott brings up Lenovo’s ...
Jan 31, 2020•42 min
Today on The Negotiation, marketing specialist Lauren Hallanan talks about all things digital marketing, influencers, and social media for brands in China. Lauren shares her insights on what platforms are on top and which are soon to be left in the past by consumers and brands alike. Listen in to learn what tactics are being used by domestic Chinese brands and why studying their approach could be the key to attracting superfans for a brand or product in China. We kick off this episode by asking ...
Jan 28, 2020•48 min
Tom points to social changes as most fundamental to the rapid growth of the Chinese market, particularly with how quick consumers are in adopting new technologies. There are three keys to this change: 1) Immersion, or maximizing the buyer experience (i.e. standardizing vertical video); 2) Innovation, and framing these novel platforms as a positive lifestyle change; 3) Entertainment, which was never a huge factor to the Chinese consumer in the past. According to Tom, there are two types of conten...
Jan 24, 2020•51 min
The China tech scene has been on the rise for the past decade. However, challenges still exist (and are actually increasing in number) for foreign companies looking to enter China and vice versa. As the first foreign correspondent to interview Jack Ma, Rebecca was witness to the eCommerce tycoon’s early days as an entrepreneur. She remembers him as being charismatic, honest, and open. She notes that he did not seem to have any handlers around him listening to their conversation—although the situ...
Jan 21, 2020•19 min
Today on The Negotiation, Shawn Graham discusses his transition from a politician in Canada to a business consultant in China. As the 31st Premier of New Brunswick, Shawn participated in a highly successful trade mission to China which brought an influx of new business for the Atlantic province. Speaking of the various Canadian business leaders that Shawn accompanied on his trade mission, the former premier refers to the experience as a “baptism by fire”. At the time, China was quickly evolving ...
Jan 14, 2020•31 min
Today on The Negotiation, Doug Pearce discusses the rapid transformation in recent years of the media and advertising landscape in China. Doug says that the media scene in China “is like nowhere else”. In place of Google, Facebook, and Amazon, the country has BAT, Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, and now TikTok creator ByteDance. The difference between these Chinese companies and their Western “counterparts” is that investments made by megabrands in China give them a huge number of platforms for adverti...
Jan 09, 2020•39 min
Today on The Negotiation, William Bao Bean discusses what makes China one of the most competitive markets in the world. He points to the quick adoption of new technologies—particularly artificial intelligence—as one of the main drivers of the country’s economic growth. William says that machine learning allows for personalization of consumer experience on a virtually infinite scale, and many Chinese companies are using these resources relentlessly to their advantage. William observed that intern...
Jan 07, 2020•50 min
Today on The Negotiation, we talk with Bessie Lee, founder of Withinlink. She shares her experience working for WPP, a marketing and communications holding company. She discusses WPP’s challenging journey as it steadily grew into one of the leading advertising groups in China, from its timely entry into the market during the foreign investment boom in the mid-1970s to the rise of the internet and digital marketing in the country. It was during this latter period, in which online transactions dra...
Dec 20, 2019•42 min
Today on The Negotiation, Elizabeth Campbell discusses her experiences working in marketing communications in the Chinese market. She considers building up her businesses’ digital marketing capabilities as a “critical part of the overall growth strategy” in the country. We start out diving into the differences in Pay-Per-Click in China vs. the West. When Elizabeth began looking into digital marketing in China, she and her team started by working with paid search in order to raise awareness and d...
Dec 18, 2019•31 min
Today on The Negotiation, Sally Zhang, a certified lecturer at Alibaba Taobao University, gives us a masterclass on the largest company in China today. What impresses Sally the most about Alibaba is its big data capabilities. “They know their customers, where their customers go, what they like, and what their habits are,” she states. As a lecturer, Sally notes that a lot of new vendors do not know how to run their own e-commerce stores, with regards to legal, logistics, and supply chain know-how...
Dec 10, 2019•39 min
Today on The Negotiation we speak with Jordan Rosenberg to discuss the world of bitcoin and cryptocurrency with regards to China. Cryptocurrencies were created around 2007 in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis. They were noticed very early on in China, a country that had, in fact, been at the forefront of digital currency. China had already been specializing in server farms and hardware production, both of which are required to produce proof of work for Bitcoin. Bitcoin mining is a ver...
Dec 03, 2019•33 min
We kicked off talking about what the opportunities for global brands in China at a high level. Joseph talks about the rise of the Internet citizen rate that has skyrocketed over the last dozen years, making it the largest commerce market in the world, as well as the amount of data that can be collected, yet still facing the struggles that the firewall presents. Hao complimented this point by saying that we haven’t even realized half of the potential that the China internet market presents. Hao t...
Nov 15, 2019•46 min
Today on The Negotiation, we talk with Mathias Chaillou, Global Head of Strategic Operations at Zenith. He relates his decade-long traditional marketing and, eventually, eCommerce career in China. In the days when TV was the medium of choice in the advertising industry, everything was about the cost-per-rating point around roughly a thousand TV channels, along with continuous negotiations with around 26 provinces. Some provinces were more traditionally-minded than others when it comes to marketi...
Nov 12, 2019•28 min
In this episode I, Todd Embley the regular host, was put on the hot seat and interviewed by Joseph Cooke, CoFounder and President of WPIC Marketing + Technologies. We started the show discussing how I became involved with SOSV The Accelerator VC, Sean O’Sullivan, and my good buddy Cyril Ebersweiler, and how Chinaccelerator was born in a small North Eastern city named Dalian, and how we made the tough decision to choose Shanghai over Beijing for it’s new home in order to grow and take it to the l...
Oct 31, 2019•37 min
David and Leif discuss the business they have built helping sports brands enter China and Chinese corporate brands enter the US, the latter of which we dive into a bit more to learn more about how purely China-centric brands look at market entry into North America. We also discuss the different aspects of relationship building with their North American clients vs. their Chinese clients. After asking Dave and Leif to talk about the secret sauce that makes Red Phoenix so successful, it segue’s per...
Oct 29, 2019•44 min
Milo has a long and distinguished career working with a long list of amazing brands he’s worked with under his belt, so we kicked off the show asking him to discuss the more difficult industries he’s had to work on in China and Milo pointed to the auto industry as the most difficult. He’s worked with Volkswagen, Nissan, Ford etc. and because the market is so competitive and advertising is so homogenous it’s difficult to try and convince them to be different. We then asked for the opposite, the s...
Oct 24, 2019•58 min
After diving into some of Rob’s background in China and learning about some of the products he’s moved into China, he discusses the regulatory environment around health products and how going an ecommerce route can help avoid rigorous registration and regularity requirements. We then ask Rob to talk about overcoming other struggles he’s faced outside of the regulatory environment (like fulfilling an order for 10 containers of pig feet for Chinese New Year) and why it’s important to be ready to b...
Oct 22, 2019•27 min
We started off the show with Alex talking about what Kawo is (the Hootsuite of China), how social media enables brands to help customers make buying decisions, and why in China social media management agencies are so much more prevalent there than in the west. One of the more interesting facets behind the dependence on agencies is due to the lack of a social media management talent pool in China as it has been slow to develop as a course of study in post-secondary education. I then ask Alex to g...
Oct 17, 2019•30 min
The show kicked off with a quick background on how Elliott came to be in China and why he’s now splitting time between Beijing and Bangkok. Drawing on insights gained from his own podcast The China Tech Investor we then talk about some of the trends he’s seeing in China and how some of them can be attributed to the economic slowdown China has been experiencing, as well as a shift to enterprise as one of the few remaining low-hanging fruits a company can go after. We then talk about why so many C...
Oct 15, 2019•30 min
We started off our show with Stephen with an interesting discussion about working in China and adapting to the internet environment there which, as many of you know, can be difficult and slow at times. As Stephen points out, however, the number of digital platforms and services to make your life easier typically far outweigh and disadvantages from a more monitored and thus slow internet environment. Stephen then talks about his work at Campaign Coach China where he trains CEOs and CMOs on how to...
Oct 08, 2019•25 min
We start off talking about Charles’ favorite Chinese company, Nongfu, a bottled-water producer who has, in Charles’ opinion as a branding expert himself, accomplished some incredible branding traction to the point of being able to charge in the neighborhood of $40 USD for a bottle of water. Not only is their marketing creative, but also their packaging, down to their unique bottle design. I then ask Charles to talk about the importance of being unique as a success factor in China. Charles then t...
Oct 03, 2019•32 min
We start out this podcast asking AP about his transition through the CCBC organization and why they’ve needed to scale so rapidly lately in both services and locations in China and across Canada. He describes some of the events they’ve drawn up and pulled off as some of their biggest accomplishments and why they are so important to their members to gain further footing in China. AP then speaks about the reciprocal sentiments that Canadian and Chinese companies have towards each other and why des...
Oct 01, 2019•30 min
Today on The Negotiation, we talk with Jacob Cooke, co-founder of WPIC Marketing and Technologies. Jacob gives some expert advice for companies who are preparing for China’s Singles Day, also known as 11.11. Singles Day began several years ago as a marketing ploy from Alibaba Group who planned to make a purely commercial shopping holiday for the widest possible demographic, with an emphasis on big-ticket deals. 11.11 has since taken off and demonstrates a growth average of 30-40% year after year...
Sep 26, 2019•17 min
