Meet China Digital A-List's class of 2018: Disruptors

Previously this week we announced China Digital A-List's Motivators 激励者 and Achievers 成就者 categories. Rounding out this year's results is the influential Disruptors 颠覆者 category.

Distuptors 颠覆者 have upturned the market with unconventional accomplishments. These are people who have taken risks, diversified themselves, transformed traditional industries and overcome obstacles to turn their visions into reality. The category highlights trendsetters, serial entrepreneurs and unconventional thinkers whose work has resulted in the creation of new industries, innovation or business models.

“Ray has brought unique capabilities from an agency background to EY. He’s one of our most important assets in further exploring the China digital market, while continuously evolving our traditional service offering.” – Benson Ng, partner, head of digital, Greater China, Ernst & Young Advisory

With over 11 years of digital marketing experience under his belt at agencies such as Ogilvy & Mather, RedWorks and IPG’s Weber Shandwick, Ray Hu has since shifted fields from creative technology to digital content strategy. His newly formed role at Ernst & Young is to help clients in diverse industries embed and drive digital in every facet of their organisation. This includes providing integrated digital marketing strategy consultations based on consumer data analyses, offering large digital program management solutions, and driving digital partnerships for clients to build their ecosystem in China.

Since joining in October 2017, Hu has aided China Telecom and Beijing Capital International Airport in improving their marketing framework and workflow, which in turn improved communication efficiency between internal teams, eCommerce platforms, brands and other collaborators. Of particular note, he helped Bacardi formulate its social and KOL strategy, boosting sales by 180 percent within the year.

“Alvin is good at bringing together talents from different fields to jointly achieve new business goals. No one is better fit to lead Isobar China to its next frontier.” – Jane Lin-Baden, CEO, Isobar Asia Pacific

Well-connected in the digital industry with a passion for new technology, Huang is a recognised talent with strong expertise in both digital creative and media. In 2017, his main task as managing director was to promote the company’s management. In particular, he headed up the collaboration with various new players to develop new businesses and provide customers with innovative, seamless solutions. Meanwhile, he coordinated three of DAN's agencies and jointly launched the Acura e-Performance Shop which utilised an online virtual experience showroom to overtake the sales function of offline showrooms, meeting the needs of China’s burgeoning auto market.

In recognition of his achievements in driving innovation and developing new business growth points, Huang was promoted to CEO of Isobar China Group. In his new role, he will be expanding Isobar’s digital capabilities, and driving strategic business growth even further. He also plans to enhance collaboration between the group’s six agencies in China, and foster more integration within the teams at DAN China. Staying committed to linking media, creativity, technology and data, Huang is the face of one of China’s premier digital solutions providers.

“He has helped create social buzz and increased brand affinity among our target audience. Via his successful projects, he has become someone everyone is talking about and learning from.” – Jetty Zhu, senior brand manager, Yum China

A former eSports professional, Yi Haocheng has challenged the traditional views on brand-gaming collaboration and scored some major wins for Mindshare along the way.

In his one year on the Content+ team at Mindshare, Yi has already worked on 14 gaming-related projects for clients and become famous amongst his colleagues for his distinct approach to partnerships. He has typically eschewed established games, which tend to yield less return on investment, in favour of alternative, often niche games with low-cost, high-reward potential for clients. For KFC, Yi leveraged the soaring popularity of the ghost-hunting game Onmyoji—which counted 10 million active users in China within two months of its release—by creating “limited-edition” ghosts found only in KFC’s 5,000 stores across China. The viral campaign resulted in a huge volume of limited-edition buckets at KFC stores within days, as Onmyoji players rushed to stores nationwide.

Yi’s insider knowledge of gaming and authenticity in his work helped net him awards in 2017 at the Festival of Media Awards, the MMA Smarties and the ROI Awards.

“Camille’s passion towards work never fades away and her persistence to pull things through is inspiring. She is my role model.” – Jill Ji, media master and supervisor at Mindshare

Having worked in technology companies in the US, Australia and China, Camille Lin has used her diverse professional background to her advantage at Mindshare.

She quickly rose through the company ranks, receiving industry recognition for her work in disrupting traditional media planning. Notably, by prioritising user acquisition over standalone online orders, she helped the Yum! restaurant group sign up millions of members. Her ingenuity in leveraging data to discover new business opportunities helped KFC decrease its cost-per-action, while her data-based work with HSBC helped the banking giant improve its return-on-investment.

As a young leader in a traditionally conservative social environment, Camille has parlayed her diligence, positive attitude and motivational spirit into incredible success. She now leads a team that manages ten different bidding platforms for SEM, programmatic and app distributions.

She has earned accolades for her work as a mentor as well. She often hosts workshops and one-on-one sessions on platform optimisation tactics, data flow management and China-specific programmatic practices for her team as well as other teams across Mindshare and GroupM.

“Andrea was among the first digital strategy experts in China and behind the success of a dozen international superbrands over the last decade.” – Pan Chenyin, partner and China manager, Fireworks Shanghai

Andrea Fenn has been at the vanguard of social media marketing, e-commerce and technology in China since 2008, when he began researching Chinese social media.

In 2013, the former journalist, researcher and 4A agency strategist founded Fireworks, China’s first post-digital agency, at the age of 26. He has notched a series of successful campaigns since then, especially in the luxury and fashion worlds. Most notably, his social media and e-commerce integration for Farfetch saw the luxury fashion platform achieve 74 percent year-on-year sales growth and helped to land a US$397 million investment from JD.com.

The multilingual Andrea credits his intercultural communication skills and belief in sharing knowledge for Fireworks’ success. He manages a team who collectively speak five different languages and span multiple generations, and his work in the social sector extends to 19 different countries. He has curated and taught courses at the Shanghai-based Condé Nast Center of Fashion & Design, lectured about innovation in China at institutes across the world and spearheaded an internal incubator to encourage his team members to pursue their own ideas.

“Li’s in-depth understanding of the Chinese market and his deep insight into regional users have helped us shape Timberland’s local Chinese market.” – Olga Wu, general manager, Timberland China

When Water Li founded W, short for “Wild Dog”, his unconventional approach led to a slew of groundbreaking projects, from WeChat H5 campaigns to large-scale music festivals. Taking it now one step further, he has developed a new strategy of “hyper-media” as part of the W culture. The mission is to create a community of a “shared destiny”, one that consists of highly creative talents, local and international, across disciplines – be they directors, artists, or musicians – to come together and bolster the creative possibilities of campaigns. Incubated through the “Wild Dog Music Club” and the “Wild Dog Academy”, the results have led to a music marketing business model for creating advertisement songs, as well as art exhibitions such as the O2O “Wild Dog Island” commercial art fair. It also attracted 33 cooperative brands to organise a festival-like event in Shanghai Joy City mall.

Never satisfied, Li envisions an industry that integrates more Chinese culture, relying on its strengths and unique qualities. With the view that China still lacks an advertising agency to fill this role, Li is striving to put W front and centre.

“Lu’s experience and leadership gives her the unique ability to navigate business challenges, welcome new perspectives, and transform brand building in the digital economy.” – Wu Hao, marketing director, Alimama

Since 2016, when Christina Lu joined Alibaba, she has led her Uni Marketing team in the company’s transformation from China’s biggest eCommerce platform to a strategic business building partner for brands around the world. Her newly formed team has diverse expertise in brand building, including CRM, marketing operations and media services.

Lu and her team launched the Uni Marketing Center in November 2016 as a framework, powered by data intelligence, that digitises consumer and brand relationship management, making the consumer journey much more dynamic, and making such relationships visible, actionable and measurable. Publicis was one of the first agencies to adopt Uni Marketing, followed by WPP, OMG, Dentsu, IPG, Havas, and more than 40 media publishers and 140 brands. Within a period of 6 months, nearly 50 brands have seen their campaigns come to fruition. Ultimately, with Uni Marketing, Lu envisions a more open, inclusive, democratised commerce landscape—a freedom of consumerism—that unifies data around Alibaba’s number one priority, consumers.