Meet the CEOs: OMD China’s Arlene Ang

Recognised as one of the “Women to Watch China in 2014” by leading marketing and advertising publication Ad Age, Arlene Ang is definitely a big name not to be missed in the advertising industry.Born as the eldest daughter in a traditional Singaporean family, Ang has to take care of her two little sisters and fulfil her parents’ expectations, which raised her to be an independent, responsible and hard-working person.As a female in top management at a large-scale international agency, gender is never a barrier to Ang.“I never think I’m a woman,” Ang chuckled.“I always think that I am a person. I don’t think I’m a man or woman. I always try to pursue my interest and my passion. I don’t think being a woman is going to slow me down or put me in disadvantage. I always think that if I put in the effort and if I do my best, come up with a good idea or bring a lot of strategic advice to my clients, I can be accepted as a good ad person rather than a woman.”With a strong belief in the power of digital and innovation, the 20-year veteran established her own digital marketing agency AdXplorer in 1999 which later developed into a network of eight offices across Asia Pacific and was eventually acquired by Publicis Groupe.Her relationship with OMD started from 2010. Climbing up from the head of the Intel business at OMD Beijing to CEO of OMD China today, Ang has made great contributions to the agency and aims to drive OMD China into a “no-line” agency.As a successful entrepreneur herself, Ang is also the first woman and CEO to create the tech start-up programme OMD Innovation Fund, focusing on digital innovations to help Chinese budding entrepreneurs and tech developers kick-start their own businesses with investment and expertise from OMD.Ang shares with Marketing her successful story.How would you describe your management style?Rather than telling people what to do, I leave room for them to grow. I hire the best people who are smarter and better than me, and empower them to unleash their potential. If you hire the best people, but not give them enough room to grow, they will be demotivated. I help them to clear the obstacles and give them guidance to achieve their goals. Meanwhile, they also have a lot of autonomy in their job.Who was the mentor who most influenced you and why?I think mostly my father. He is my key model. He teaches me to be a hard-working person.He was an entrepreneur himself and owned a laundry which was one of the biggest private laundries serving to hotels in Singapore. Although he is not highly educated, he learnt how to handle and repair the machines all by himself.He is also a very hard-working person and able to manage the factory to operate 24/7 non-stop to meet the high demands of hotels. I have learned from him how to manage people and how to build up the best team spirit.What was the proudest moment in your career?So many! If there’s no satisfaction in the work life, it won’t last for long. As a person with more than 20 years of experience, I have had a lot of good times.When I took up my current role 18 months ago, OMD’s digital business was just 12%. Now it is about 30%. What a huge improvement and a huge step towards digital.I’m also very proud of our solid specialised business units such as China’s largest programmatic trading desk Accuen; Annalect which focuses on analytics; the search engine marketing unit Resolution; Social@OMG; as well as the mobile marketing unit Airwave.What’s the toughest part of your job?I think every industry and every agency is the same nowadays. As the economy is getting less and less strong, there’s a challenge that clients are cutting the budget. However, staff costs are increasing. So the key is how to keep costs down and a strong profit margin for a company.What keeps you inspired?I’m an optimistic person and I really love my job and my team. You must enjoy what you are doing, be curious and stay young at heart and that will keep you going and spread positive energy to people surrounding you.When you’re not at work, where could we find you?I like to stay home and sleep. China is fast-paced and life in the ad industry is really stressful. Sometimes it is good to do nothing and escape from the crowd.I also enjoy cooking. I enjoy cooking Singaporean food and I cook really well. I like inviting my family, friends, colleagues and even clients to my home. We can cook together, share food and wine, chitchat and just be relaxed.What’s the craziest thing you have encountered working in the ad business?A lot! Like drinking late, staying late, working until the next day then going for a pitch directly. We have done a lot of crazy things. We even had a Victoria Secret stage at some of our annual parties. Life is so short and so stressful. We must have fun together. I’ll do all sorts of crazy things.What’s one piece of advice you would give to someone just starting out?First of all, don’t be afraid of being hard-working. Don’t be afraid of doing minimal things like running data and recording. Because everybody must have a good foundation before they can move up. You have to start from the bottom and get your hands dirty. Be hard-working, be curious, don’t be afraid to ask questions, put in extra effort to learn and don’t be in a hurry to change jobs or jump around.What’s the best thing about living in China?Clients in China are so forward-thinking, so strategic and so innovative. They are willing to try new things and are very open to new ideas. It is good to work with really smart people that will keep you challenged and push you to come up with pretty good ideas. And the budget in China is bigger. China is always a challenging market as everything is happening so fast and large-scale.Staff here are also as good as any other international staff. They are well-educated with a good attitude. Everybody works very hard.What issue would you like to see the industry change in 2015?Our industry is a people business – it is all about people. The works and team spirit are largely determined by the client. So I hope the agencies can be treated and paid fairly. I would appreciate fair relationships. Clients should recognise the effort of the agency. We should work together as a partner.Meanwhile, we should also have agreement on some basic professionalism. Some of the agencies are not acting professionally, just cutting the price to fight for clients. It is hard to gain recognition and appreciation if we undervalue ourselves.Facing talent shortages and increasing costs, it is also very important to nurture talents instead of poaching people with a lot of money.There is another trend where many brands are pitching their business more than normal. In my opinion, there are two reasons. First it is about cost-cutting issues. Procurement is looking for more value and a better price. CMOs or brands are also looking at what kind of capabilities are out there and is there a better way to do marketing. The industry is fast-changing. What might work in the past may not work in the future. Now we look for innovation, digital, new media knowledge and more accountability.So how does your agency keep up with the trends? What are the big plans?Of course I still read news on CNN, ChinaDaily or other publications. But I tend to follow certain KOLs. I think that is the fastest way to get qualified information. I also follow our clients to see what initiatives are happening. We only need to know what is happening, no need to go in depth.OMD has launched an OMD Dive series, providing clients with consumer insights about some of the deep topics through research. In addition to our current OMD Dive Social and OMD Dive Mobile, we just launched OMD Dive Video, a quantitative research study that explores both consumer video watching behaviour and video advertising effectiveness.We will also continue participating in industry events and conferences, panels, speeches, launches and researches. And our OMD Innovation Fund will continue acting as a bridge between start-ups and clients.We also have a WeChat account to publish the latest news about OMD.