YUJIA WEN

I’m currently writing from my new assigned desktop (my own laptop got IP-blocked by the network; long story short, I did nothing gregarious.) and the office seems rather empty today. Everyone’s on different business trips, to receive briefs, give pitches, conduct research, or to meet with clients. I know, how cool is that. You get to blast tunes that radiate a shell of people and their empty spaces (the office is like a “roundabout”, the central circle being where the elevators are situated).

When I talked about my internship with others, I’d often receive the curious remark of “so, what the hell do you do there?”. For the first few days, I couldn’t quite put an answer to that besides “LIKE, BE IN AWE AND DO WHATEVER THAT’S TOLD?” But really, I had to first ingratiate myself to a new circle of people, explore the office by poking around with a Canon, and intruding different groups with requests for more work. Actually, the only day that I felt long was the day that I didn’t take initiative. I hated feeling that. So I stopped and picked my feet up.

I guess I’ll give a brief overview of the projects/activities I’ve been involved thusfar at Saatchi:

1. Tianjin Real-estate

Tianjin is about 20 minutes from Beijing by train. A Singapore-based real estate company called UOL approached us regarding strategic marketing for its new urban-complex in downtown Tianjin, which composes of some luxury apartments, hotel, office buildings, and a shopping mall.

What I’ve been doing is researching on the competitors of UOL, both in the urban complexes and residential categories. I’d need to go on different real-estate search engines and filter out the competitors (based on region, price, or surroundings) and build Excel and Powerpoint doc’s showing the comparison with many parameters. Before I’d always hear that houses are expensive in China but I never realize the impact of it until I start shopping for these properties myself (online, of course)… in Tianjin, it’s around 20,000 RMB/sq or $3000 CAD/sq. For a one-room apartment, it would cost around 1 Million RMB. For a working professional earning 10,000 RMB/month, 1 million isn’t the cheapest route to a concrete hut.

But yet, blocks of buildings are being constructed every single day because there is demand, and there are the sufficient funds on bank account statements to support that, and probably 50 more properties and a string more Porsche’s. My team was planning to fly to Singapore for a pitch in mid-july and a week or so before the scheduled time, the people from the Singapore office called and rescheduled the pitch day to mid-August. Pheww. Changes happen everyday. People worked days and nights preparing the presentation and I guess the sudden call-off, thought optimistically, only gives more time for preparation of a more persuading presentation.

2. Ikea kitchen translations

Like Lexus, IKEA and HP are also big account at Saatchi Beijing. I had been done with the UOL research task so I decided to fetch more tasks from other groups. Fortunately, IKEA actually needed some translations done for a storyboard they just did for the kitchens, so I helped out with that. A fascinating aspect of office-communication in China is that they love using MSN. Almost everyone is on MSN and they use it to transfer files and my supervisor says they even use it to talk with clients. What I considered as only a tool for chatting up with some friends (thus I’m never on MSN at work because I feel “unprofessional”) is actually such a valuable and popular tool for in-house communications. I’ve also learnt about the difficulty of translating copy and making it sound the “same” – direct translations are sometimes your worst enemy and to craft it better, it takes great proficiency because it’s as if you’re writting another copy. Tough job. Luckily they only needed a rough one done.

 3. Taobao Shopping Mall

As some would know, Taobao (淘宝) provides the largest consumer-to-consumer (C2C) platform (ie. I sell to you), similar to a Chinese Ebay where anyone can set up an online-shop, People can register their own shops and sell products ranging from clothing, cosmetics, electronics, books, equipments, and even flight tickets.

Taobao makes 200 billion every year in sales, represents about 85% of the entire Internet-shopping industry, and ranks number one in the C2C industry. It’s HUGE. And now Jack Ma, the genius founder of Taobao that many young entrepreneurs in China aspire to become, had started up another project called Taobao Shopping Mall (淘宝商城) – which shifts it focus from C2C to Business-to-consumer (B2C). It wants to be the largest online mall that sells basically, everything. Right now it’s rather focused on electronics; having many brands such as HP, Sony, and Apple license its rights to Taobao to sell their products on the Taobao Shopping Mall, often at a more preferred price than buying it offline.

 It’s a very fascinating project. Taobao thinks while short-term competitors are 京东商城 (mainly online electronics) and VANCEL (online clothing with a H&M feel), the long-term competitor is actually real shopping malls themselves. Talking about going digital.

So what Taobao wants is a brilliant campaign to build the brand of the TB shopping mall, as well, to differentiate TB shopping mall from Taobao. They just want to kick ass. Greg, the account director in charge of this pitch, went to Shanghai to receive the brief a few days ago. And we helped him with some competitive analysis. We want to help Taobao kick ass, too.

 4. SPIKES Asia 2010 entries

SPIKES is a huge advertising festival, presented by the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival, that takes place in Singapore every September to award creative excellence in Asia and Australia. They have a line of top-notch jury as well as speakers this year, including Howard Draft (Founder; Draft), Tay Guan Hin (ECD, JWT Asia), Bob Jeffrey (CEO, JWT Worldwide), Bob Greenberg (CEO, R/GA), Andrew Robertson (CEO, BBDO Worldwide), Sir Martin Sorrell (CEO, WPP), Mark Tutssel (CCO, Leo Burnett Worldwide), Rei Innamoto (CCO, AKQA), and many more from the same 3-am crowds in Cannes. Agencies from around Asia will submit works, similar to what they just did for Cannes, and in September, everyone attends SPIKES (at a lower admission ticket than the French, I’d hope) where they announce the winners and holds a huge party to celebrate the coming-together of creative talents from all over the world.

And luckily, I’m actually helping out with submitting entries for Saatchi. There are about 9 pieces we’d like to submit and for each piece, I’d have to help decide on the general and specific category (there’s about, a million), edit the English synopsis, fill out the creative credits and contact information, and lastly, work closely with the teams that did the works to obtain the necessary footage as we have to submit both online and offline (mail to Singapore). A couple of works have been last-minute additions, such as some videos for the TV/Cinema category (TVC) and it makes it very stressful for everyone because they’d have to catch the deadline on top of their other productions.

So essentially, I enjoy what I do and I like where I am. And I plan on getting to work earlier now to chop more wood before the fire starts its burning.

Please be well everyone, it’s been %#$%ing hot here in Beijing.

It’s 8AM in the morning of a Friday, I’m sitting on a tiny chair, listening to Claire de Lune and typing away on a 21st century Lenovo, which is not even of my own posession. It’s rather humid here. The television set is spilling out some serious news; there have been floods in many parts of China, and I guess, the recent rain in Beijing is some kind of indication.

For those who’re off the hooks, I’m in Beijing right now. After Cannes, I took a day in Nice (extremely sleep deprived by then so I crashed at 5PM) and then went back to Munich and took a flight there via Dubai to Beijing. It was a long flight yet interesting flight – to the heart of China, a destination so desired by the young, the ambitious, the rich, the poor, and studious, the entreprenurial, the cultured, the glamorous. Prior to my arrival, I had only been to Beijing once, for sometime less than a week. We had visited it as a family and of course, jumped on the biggest sights like every other classic tourist.

But now, oh my, I now sit no more than 10 kilometres  north of the most symbolic gem of this city, the Tian’anmen square. I know, I couldn’t believe that either until I actually measured my distances on Google map. Technology always has a way of convincing you. or your feet. or your lost souls.

So what have I been doing in Beijing? For the first week, some jet-lag recovery (was I jetlagged?), curious adventures and nightly strolls and jesus, I’ve been eating out (yes, breakfast, lunch, dinner) every single day. I only use the kitchen stoves for boiling water ( a Jia favorite) so I’ve been enjoying the greasy Chinese delicacies for sometime now. My stomach hasn’t felt like a erupting volanoe yet, so I guess it’s fine.

And some lovely news; I landed a spot at Saatchi & Saatchi Beijing and it’s been a week since I took on the role of an Account Intern. Saatchi is conveinently located in the Central Business District (CBD) of the city at one of the busiest subway stations known as Guo Mao station (“World Trade”) – I work on the top floors of the China International Trade Center, which houses 36 floors and is surrounded by a dozen of other high rises, luxury shopping, and fancy resturants.

It’s nice, it’s very nice in fact. You walk under these tall blocks of sky scrapers so the sunrays automatically become less intensive  and when you look up, you feel like you’ve grown up, or your dreams grow up, grow close, and grow real. Manhattan on a smaller scale. Behind every window, someone could be making the decision that signs away the lives of their organization and their own. And they probably do.

Every morning I cram the main subway line with a million other citizens that need to get to work. I head back home at around 8. I go up to the reception entrance and witness the “Nothing Is Impossible” wall of Saatchi’s, over and over again. I stack my Adage and Campaign neatly, along with my travel-journal-turned-notebook and orange poreclain cup on the table. I take the elevator that gets me down 35 floors in 35 seconds. I meet new faces everyday during our irregular lunch-times. I redesign powerpoints and apply the highest standards to the smallest and most ignorable fonts. I relax and converse with my director, Alex, on his dreams, upbringings, and views on about everything. I dance to  indie beats blasted from the silver Mac’s located in all different directions. I blast my own Ingrid Michaelson and I looove the ambience. I walk by shelves of classic coffee-table books and ask them to unlock the literatures for me. I stay away from the coffee machine because I don’t need more energy than I currently bear. I peek at things with curious eyes. I don’t abuse the paid-proxies they have here for logging freely onto facebook and youtube. I smile at whoever that rides the scooter because they’re too lazy to walk around the office. I want to feel a bit more real for a while. and I have.

Everything’s so beautiful because finally, someone believes in you and they give you a chance. A lot of people ask how I got myself in. I tell them, it’s blood, sweat, and some big dozes of persistence. I’ve made more calls and crafted more e-mails than I could count – maybe 50, maybe 100 – and I’ve been shot down. A lot. But that never hindered my curiousity, imperfected my confidence, or deterred my growth. I just continued because I believed. That I belonged, and that I deserved to be belonged. Sometimes you gotta be a bit more ignorant and eager. And finally, someone decided to give me one shot. I was so happy.

 I was so happy.  

And thank you for those that believed alongside with me. Thank you. You guys have been so sweet, really. Believe in me a bit more and I’ll strive for greater things.

For now, I’ll go take a shower and get ready for a brand new day. Take care.

More photos of the office to come.

Today begins the last day of Cannes and it has been one of the craziest. We had gotten back from the Guttar bar near sunrise, slept for 3 hours, listened to 3 great speakers, had our graduation ceremony on the beach property, went to the film awards ceremony, and lastly, sang our last goodbyes at the closing gala (by the way, the Brazilians went nuts after an apparent winning match)

Surreal.

I remember walking back to the hotel near 4 and we all witnessed the Palais for the last time (hopefully not in our lifetime), with the giant banners and effortless red carpets still at such a serene hour, it really injects a sense of nostalgia, all the way back to day 0. This week has truly be filled with the most precious, adventurous , and glamorous memories and it will only be a matter of time before we all unite in Cannes again (and jump for our Simba’s on stage).

 Back to the curriculum – we had our very last 2 speakers coming in today – Dick Van Motman, CEO of DDB China and Craig Davis, founder of BrandKarma and former Chief Creative Directot of JWT North America. Out of the many speakers this week, Mr. Motman has been the only one coming from Asia and it ignited great interest for me.  He studied marketing and economics in Amsterdam and he is an interesting mix of many many roots. Having worked in advertising for 20+ years, he finally rose to the chief executive position at DDB China and now he lives and works in the metropolitan of Shanghai.

I enjoyed his presentation greatly because instead of it being focused completely on Advertising, he gave an excellent overview of the Chinese marketplace, which is exotic to most of us (even some to me) in terms of unique attributes and trends.  Some of the insights that he shared:

Despite China being the infamous copy-cat-factory of literally every big brand in the world, from Apple to LV, there is actually much more to that. Out of the 10 top global solar technology  companies, half of them are Chinese companies. The car company, BYD, to which the logo looks a bit similar to BMW, was originally a premier battery company and as it started manufacturing cars, it received a 500% return within 2 years. Luckily Warren Buffet had already predicated all that and made an investment in BYD before it went hot.  Mr. Motman also introduced a website called 新茶, which was started by a foreigner for the intention of connecting China’s creative communities together. 

China’s future mission? To change it from MADE in China to DESIGNED in China. Seeing the drastic and constant evolvement of this young yet cultured nation, I can’t help but feel a bit excited to be a part of bringing this vision alive. At the end of the session, Mr. Motman kindly gave me a little gray book filled with quotes said by the great Bill Bernbach, seeing the material was printed in both English and Chinese. Really a precious give, every saying of Bill’s makes you feel that much stronger, closer, and so damn energetic about advertising. Really appreciated it!

Our second speaker, Craig Davis, as some may already know, created the website BrandKarma. Prior to listening to him, I never knew how BrandKarma operated. Basically, online users can follow, rank and comment on over 300,000 brands across a dozen of industries. All comments are public and users can choose to either agree or disagree with other users’ comments.  The mission of BrandKarma is “to help everyone make better brand choices and influence brand behaviour for good” and as Craig shared, BrandKarma does the following:

[+] make brand owners accountable

[+] share, amplify, and mobilize your opinions

[+] help consumers make better purchase decisions

As consumers  become increasingly engaged with the building process of brand images via online contributions, Brandkarma definitely seeks to expand into the next social-media powerhouse. Their business model works simply as selling the databases to large organizations that take the interest in what a consumer has to say about their brands, competitors, and industries. The project is currently sponsored entirely by Craig at the moment. BK is a pretty neat idea.

Forthwith to the speakers, it was time for all of us, like first day, to give a presentation on What Cannes Meant To Me. It was a project given a couple of days ago but I’m positive due to the excessive late night explorations… everyone crammed their video/powerpoint/skit in minimal time. Some were very creative (they did an awards show, presenting awards to what they thought were the most valuable parts of the Festival), and some, like myself, just did a very gesticulative powerpoint on how absolutely fabulous these past 7 days have been for each single one of us.

Around 3, we all headed towards our graduation ceremony by the beach. Everyone grabbed a few champagnes and we all had such a wonderful time taking our last photos, receiving our diplomas, and thanking Rick and Clive for their most wondrous  teachings and support in us. It felt like prom in Cannes – our attire might have been a little casual, but the backdrop sure was an enjoyable one, with the sun and waves right by our ears. As a goodbye gift to both the tutors, we had made shirts at the Youtube station that said “Yes, We Cannes ‘10” in the Obama blue and red font – everyone has signed the shirt so it looks more colourful and valuable than any other souvenir you can find on this coast.

Clive and Rick gave us a few kind words; to always have passion and work very very hard because any of the best people in advertising got to where they are today not only lending to their talent but moreover, to their diligence and absolute standards to only do the best work. They’re so cute and we’ll miss them very dearly!

AWARDS & the GALA

The last awards ceremony is actually a new one this year called Film Craft. I’m not really what the innate difference is between that and short video but Canada grabbed a lion today on the Tropicana video that has been circulating quite around during festival. A very poignant clip made by the Canadians, such a great joy to watch in the auditorium.

After the awards show comes the closing gala, held at the same property as the opening gala, which is at the beach of Carlton Hotel. Even though I had been suffering from a sore throat the night before (and what seemed a mild fever), I still, and surprisingly, went all out and didn’t waste a minute dancing with the crowd and mingling with the people from coming all over the world. Really, I think that is the true beauty, to meet Spain, dance with Italy, talk with Swedish, and drink with Singapore. As the gala ended around 2, everyone headed out to the Guttar Bar, the most notorious hangout spot during Cannes and truly, it is a phenomum! As soon as it hits 3, you’re guaranteed to see a massive roadblock at the intersection filled with just the classic ad men with a drink in one hand and cigar in the other.