Life in Emerging Market

4 minutes read

Topic: The life lessons I learned from my time in China, and leading emerging markets in the last decade.

13 years ago, I had this amazing opportunity to be posted to China to lead the China marketing department for the company that I worked for. I stayed in China for 4 years from 2011 to 2014. The 4 years in China has been one of the most life-changing and most amount of learnings for me. Ever since that opportunity, as I started leading Asia Pacific teams, the understanding of China and the DNA of China has always stayed with me. Not only did I learn amazing business and marketing lessons of the Chinese consumers, but I also learned life and leadership lessons.? They also set the amazing foundation of experience for me leading emerging and high growth markets for the last 10 years. (I went on to lead large Asia Pacific and global teams in the last 10 years and many of them includes emerging markets e.g. China, Indonesia, India).

So, what did I learn about the Chinese consumers:

1.????? Experiential

China leads the world in terms of technology innovation in social media – with the platforms BATJ and the verticalization of all the multiple social media, ecommerce and then into digital payments channel.

Hence for any marketeers out there – you need to be the best in creating the best experience and you need to be champions in omnichannel and understand how to drive experiences through both the online and offline ecosystem.

I always tell my team – that if there is a market that you can put in real prototypes of campaign and test to understand how it works best and learn and tweak from it – it will be China.

Consumers are highly engaged and super savvy with digital and social interactions, apps and hence this is the market where you can learn how to up your digital marketing skills! It is not about a linear funnel it is about the application of a constant close-loop marketing approach, which presents huge amount of learnings, but also instant gratification.

2.????? Engaged

There is a saying in China that everyone’s lives evolve around the mobile phone. If they lose their credit card, it is ok, but not their mobile phone.

As a result, they are constantly engaged with their phone and hence they require instant gratification and on the spot feedback.

Ecommerce shopping takes place within 2 days or sometimes lesser and shopping is done with so much ease since the time I was there.

Hence, brands need to adopt a mindset of an ‘always -on’ mindset – and know how to constantly be engaged their consumers. If there is a country where you can best test the ‘close-the loop’ marketing and see how your funnel works immediately within a 1/ 2 days, it will be China.

?3.????? Entrepreneurial

China operates at a different speed and scale. Its belief and framework of thinking especially when it comes to development of products and services is fundamentally different than in the west. Hence speed to market is extremely important and an entrepreneurial approach is better than perfection. Often, you want to get to the market faster with a prototype, test it and then learn how to scale it first, then waiting for the product to be perfect. I still remember one of these incidents I had in China, we had to turn around a super large-scale event in 2 months in one of the Olympics stadiums for one of our super premium brands. 2 weeks before the event, we are still no where near there in terms of the construction of the stage, but 'lo and behold', within 2 weeks, the entire set up is completed and done in the most exquisite and luxurious way. I can never imagine this to happen in other parts of the world.

What are the life leadership lessons I have accumulated since then?

2 Rs + 2 Is:

1.????? Relationship matters.

In China, there is a saying that it is all about ‘guanxi’ – it is all about relationships that matter and trusted ones. So, investing in building the right relationships get you towards multiple opportunities. I don’t think this is something unique to China and it is bi-cultural in the west too, but in the east – this is extremely critical.

2.????? Resilience is the name of the game.

During my time in China, I often get ask questions by Singaporeans ( I am a Singaporean Chinese ) – why do you like China so much, why did you take the risk to go to China and not stay in Singapore. Innately within me, one of my values is all about curiosity and learning new things. I think there is no better place to propel your growth than to be in China. I also learned very quickly in my first year in China – resilience is the name of the game.

3.????? An Innovative Mindset. There is no shortage of opportunities, just shortage of time.

There is a Chinese word for crisis – “WeiJi” 危机 – it means: “in every crisis, there is an opportunity”. I am a firm believer of this. There is no shortage of opportunities in China even in crisis. It is all about having an innovative mindset and the willingness and humility to ‘REFRAME’ and ‘REIMAGINE’ possibilities. I experienced this first hand in China, and it became a muscle that I built thereafter.

?4.????? Importance of Agility. You need to be willing to let go and challenge your own ideas.

Everything changes very quickly in 6 months especially in emerging market. So, the importance of having agility in both mindset and execution is critical, especially in today’s world. You need to be willing to challenge your own ideas and adopt a new idea when you see a better one. Being speed and impact obsessed is so important.

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These are just some of my own learnings derived from my life in China and emerging markets. They helped built these muscles in me in the last decade.

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For any emerging market leaders, will love to hear your learnings too !

Siew Ting Foo is a future — focused, human- centric growth leader. She has delivered growth across diverse industries, through helping organizations re-imagining brands, businesses and organizations. Siew Ting is highly energetic, purpose-driven collaborator, who believes in harnessing people’s potential to build brands, business and people. She combines “art” and “science” in marketing and harness community to build powerful brands.

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