The Negotiation

We kicked off talking about what the opportunities for global brands in China at a high level. Joseph talks about the rise of the Internet citizen rate that has skyrocketed over the last dozen years, making it the largest commerce market in the world, as well as the amount of data that can be collected, yet still facing the struggles that the firewall presents. Hao complimented this point by sayin...

Today on The Negotiation, we talk with Mathias Chaillou, Global Head of Strategic Operations at Zenith. He relates his decade-long traditional marketing and, eventually, eCommerce career in China. In the days when TV was the medium of choice in the advertising industry, everything was about the cost-per-rating point around roughly a thousand TV channels, along with continuous negotiations with aro...

In this episode I, Todd Embley the regular host, was put on the hot seat and interviewed by Joseph Cooke, CoFounder and President of WPIC Marketing + Technologies. We started the show discussing how I became involved with SOSV The Accelerator VC, Sean O’Sullivan, and my good buddy Cyril Ebersweiler, and how Chinaccelerator was born in a small North Eastern  city named Dalian, and how we made the t...

David and Leif discuss the business they have built helping sports brands enter China and Chinese corporate brands enter the US, the latter of which we dive into a bit more to learn more about how purely China-centric brands look at market entry into North America. We also discuss the different aspects of relationship building with their North American clients vs. their Chinese clients. After aski...

Milo has a long and distinguished career working with a long list of amazing brands he’s worked with under his belt, so we kicked off the show asking him to discuss the more difficult industries he’s had to work on in China and Milo pointed to the auto industry as the most difficult. He’s worked with Volkswagen, Nissan, Ford etc. and because the market is so competitive and advertising is so homog...

After diving into some of Rob’s background in China and learning about some of the products he’s moved into China, he discusses the regulatory environment around health products and how going an ecommerce route can help avoid rigorous registration and regularity requirements. We then ask Rob to talk about overcoming other struggles he’s faced outside of the regulatory environment (like fulfilling...

We started off the show with Alex talking about what Kawo is (the Hootsuite of China), how social media enables brands to help customers make buying decisions, and why in China social media management agencies are so much more prevalent there than in the west. One of the more interesting facets behind the dependence on agencies is due to the lack of a social media management talent pool in China a...

The show kicked off with a quick background on how Elliott came to be in China and why he’s now splitting time between Beijing and Bangkok. Drawing on insights gained from his own podcast The China Tech Investor we then talk about some of the trends he’s seeing in China and how some of them can be attributed to the economic slowdown China has been experiencing, as well as a shift to enterprise as...

We started off our show with Stephen with an interesting discussion about working in China and adapting to the internet environment there which, as many of you know, can be difficult and slow at times. As Stephen points out, however, the number of digital platforms and services to make your life easier typically far outweigh and disadvantages from a more monitored and thus slow internet environmen...

We start off talking about Charles’ favorite Chinese company, Nongfu, a bottled-water producer who has, in Charles’ opinion as a branding expert himself, accomplished some incredible branding traction to the point of being able to charge in the neighborhood of $40 USD for a bottle of water. Not only is their marketing creative, but also their packaging, down to their unique bottle design. I then a...

We start out this podcast asking AP about his transition through the CCBC organization and why they’ve needed to scale so rapidly lately in both services and locations in China and across Canada. He describes some of the events they’ve drawn up and pulled off as some of their biggest accomplishments and why they are so important to their members to gain further footing in China. AP then speaks abo...

Today on The Negotiation, we talk with Jacob Cooke, co-founder of WPIC Marketing and Technologies. Jacob gives some expert advice for companies who are preparing for China’s Singles Day, also known as 11.11. Singles Day began several years ago as a marketing ploy from Alibaba Group who planned to make a purely commercial shopping holiday for the widest possible demographic, with an emphasis on big...

Today on The Negotiation, we talk with Michael Zakkour, Vice President of Asia and Digital International for Tompkins International, a global consulting firm focused on digital commerce, retail, and consumer products, and also the author of "New Retail: Born in China, Going Global.” Today we discuss why it's so important to deeply understand China's culture, history, philosophy, and language espec...

Philip discusses the value of gathering data to create lookalike audiences in order to predict consumer interests and buying habits, and in the process eliminate wasteful manufacturing costs. He gives the example of the American bag brand coach, which at one time collected data from WeChat users in order to see what consumers liked and shared with friends. With that knowledge, Coach was able to bu...

Jacob and Joseph talk us through the beginnings of WPIC and how operations are handled between their original office in Vancouver and their current head office in Beijing. They discuss how company branding changes as the dynamic between the target market and the business itself evolves. In this case, WPIC started out as an SEO service by the Cooke brothers and evolved to become a full-service tech...

For Amanda, who is involved in the client support side, gaining a deeper understanding of their experiences and identifying potential needs for their product is of the utmost importance.  Amanda also generates web analytics reports based on the client's website data that the company has collected.    Amanda talks about the changes in traffic and customer acquisition strategies in recent years, inc...

In this, our first-ever episode, we talk with David Sullivan, Managing Partner at Deo Navillus Global Solutions, about winning and losing in China, and what every brand needs to take care of on the home front before they make the leap into the digital Middle Kingdom.  For a Westerner looking to have their product or service embraced in a foreign market such as China, a long period of branding is t...

The host of The Negotiation, Todd Embley, breaks down what the show is all about and what you can expect to learn in this intriguing new podcast series brought to you by WPIC Marketing & Technologies.