Developing effective marketing strategies through DEI

This article is part of a content series on diversity, equity, and inclusion for Campaign Asia-Pacific and Greater China’s Women to Watch, created in partnership with EssenceMediacom.

 

Meha Verghese, managing partner and head of strategy at EssenceMediacom, was recognised in Campaign Greater China's Women to Watch 2021 and as an Emerging Leader in the Campaign Women Leading Change Awards Asia-Pacific 2024. Amanda Ma, business director at EssenceMediacom, was named to Campaign Greater China's Women to Watch 2024.

 

How important is diversity to an advertising agency? What are the advantages of EssenceMediacom’s diverse workforce when designing and delivering effective marketing strategies? 

 

Meha Verghese (MV): Diversity, whether in terms of expertise, age, or social and cultural background, is imperative for advertising agencies to design effective marketing strategies. Consumers are increasingly diverse in their values, attitudes, media behaviours, and purchase considerations, and they all expect brands to be personally relevant to them. We need people who deeply understand brand growth audiences (beyond just the numbers) to connect with them. 

 

Furthermore, China’s media landscape is continuously evolving with new channels, platforms, and experiences. We need diverse expertise to unlock innovation and give our clients a competitive edge. We’ve crafted this mix of talent at EssenceMediacom China. 

 

How does EssenceMediacom facilitate communication and collaboration between employees from diverse expertise, cultural backgrounds, and generations?

 

MV: EssenceMediacom’s vision to deliver breakthrough thinking for brands is backed by a culture of continuous learning and collaboration. Our culture principles, such as ‘celebrate every success; appreciate every experiment', create psychological safety to voice differing opinions and try unproven ideas. The principles of ‘always include’ and ‘build better together’ emphasise the importance of divergent thinking and effective collaboration to uncover breakthroughs. 

 

This agency mindset is backed by practical skillsets and toolsets, including our ‘jump’, ‘stretch’ and ‘burst’ workshops that bring together cross-functional experts at different stages of the campaign cycle to spark fresh thinking.

 

AM: EssenceMediacom not only hosts training sessions, but also practical initiatives and inspirational forums to encourage communication and collaboration. Our annual ‘Breakthrough Camp’ invites employees to step away from daily work and tap into current trends for out-of-the-box ideas. Last year, team members proactively sought out colleagues from different disciplines to form diverse teams and propose new solutions. This year, we brought in even more diversity of ‘thought’ as people used our EM Sidekick AI tool to co-create fresh campaign ideas. 

 

Our regular local and global town halls and our global EMmies awards celebrate breakthrough work and talent. These platforms recognise individual and team achievements and foster a sense of community and shared vision, driving us to keep pursuing breakthroughs together.

 

How has your diverse team assisted brands in developing effective localised marketing strategies? What are some of the achievements to date?

 

AM: We worked in agile cross-function sprints to turn China’s beloved “let me have a 1982 Sprite to chill out” meme into reality with a limited-edition product and innovative launch campaign. A blend of creativity, data science, and media innovation backed never-done-before experiences, including Douyin’s first-ever live auction, which went viral and set records.

 

1982 Sprite earned over 100 PR articles and was named the best campaign of 2023 by multiple local industry publications, growing Sprite’s brand equity and sales. 

 

MV: I crafted the global end-to-end strategy for Coca-Cola Creations Y3000, an AI co-created limited edition with a groundbreaking AI co-creation digital experience. The unique insights and perspectives offered by creative, social, PR, and shopper teams and AI experts spread across the US, Singapore, China and Australia made up for the many late-nights and early-morning calls. 

 

Globally, the digital engagement was named the #1 AI activation of 2023 by AdAge while the first ever brand-led consumer-facing generative AI experience in China created a huge social buzz.

 

The benefits of greater collaboration and integration across diverse teams are clear from the work and its industry recognition. EssenceMediacom China has won over 70 local, regional, and global industry awards for our work with The Coca-Cola Company in the past 18 months – and we’re just getting started!