Women to Watch Greater China 2022: Rachel Yan, Mindshare

Rachel Yan

Neo general manager
Mindshare China
Beijing

With over 15 years’ strategic planning experience in advertising agencies to her name, Rachel Yan is passionate at driving innovation in content and consumer interaction. When working for Jia Duobao, she created ‘The Voice of China’ sponsorship. Then she served as a business director for Mars, where she contributed to their first joint business partnership with Tencent, exploring new opportunities for business growth beyond TVCs, including the memorable Snickers exam series.

In 2018, Yan took over the Neo Beijing office during the company's transition from Ogilvy to Mindshare. Today, as general manager, she manages 70 people and has re-positioned Neo as an autonomous agile company within Mindshare. Yan has made full use of Neo’s creative genes, engaging talent with diversified backgrounds to expand the boundaries of media while driving digital transformation and technology innovation for her clients.

The results speak for themselves. Since taking over Neo, Yan has led the team to receive a wealth of industry recognition, winning 14 awards in 2019, 21 awards in 2020, and more than 50 awards in 2021.

Yan has found success in working with her clients to look beyond traditional TVCs to invest more heavily into content. She re-built her team with the most media-savvy creatives and established “Digital Day” for her key client Yili. Digital Day is an offline event with on-site experiences and interaction designed exclusively for Yili’s marketing team. Through the event’s high-quality content, Yan's team successfully attracted Yili’s senior clients to join, driving Yili’s digital transformation and tech innovation. This model has effectively increased business and revenue growth.

As a leader, Yan guides her team with an open, transparent and flat structure to enable everyone to excel in their personal strengths. She has led Neo through a successful transition and turned the agency into a desirable workplace for young talent. Both the turnover rate and the staff cost-to-revenue rate of Neo were lower than the company average level for three consecutive years.

Yan has been a true change maker at Neo, driving the company to achieve digital transformation and create multi-award winning work. An insightful thinker and a great team leader, she looks set to continue leading her team to make breakthroughs and innovations. The sky is the limit.