From questionnaires to forty-one thousand screens

Mandate

Rebuild advertiser confidence in our audience evidence and protect pricing and partner relationships through a weak advertising market.

Outcomes

• Ended a camera attention pilot and introduced holdout tests used by twenty-three advertisers by 2024
• Held national list prices in 2024; realised pricing fell 7 per cent against a proposed 25 per cent cut
• Raised local advertisers from 17 to 29 per cent of revenue between 2023 and 2025
• Cut residential owner complaints from sixty-three to fourteen in a half-year after new category rules

Decisions in context

The appointment combined marketing with the content-standards desk and partner communications, which meant I owned both what we claimed about our audience and what our screens showed to it. My first year was dominated by measurement: ending the camera pilot, persuading property managers to share aggregated entry counts and designing holdout tests that advertisers could run against their own sales. The second was dominated by pricing in a slowdown, where I argued against a general discount and accepted the business we lost as a result. Since 2025 most of my attention has gone to residential partners and the owners behind them. I present our pricing and partner decisions to a board on which both major shareholders sit, and I have learnt to separate what Hexiaolan wants as a property manager from what Xiaruntang needs as a network.

Reason for the move

Current appointment; seeking one compatible independent board seat.

Mandate

Bring advertiser marketing, audience research and pricing under one leader and make the audience method intelligible to agencies.

Outcomes

• Published an annual audience-method note to agencies, including its known weaknesses
• Repackaged residential inventory as office footfall collapsed in 2020
• Introduced a quarterly research forum attended by eleven agency research teams

Decisions in context

I took the role six months before offices across our cities emptied. In early 2020 our lobby audiences fell by more than half for several weeks, and revenue for the year dropped to RMB655 million. I could not pretend the lobbies were full, so we told agencies what had changed and moved advertisers towards residential entrance halls, where families were collecting groceries and parcels. That shift brought residential screens to the centre of the business and raised questions about content I would answer later as CMO. I also began publishing an annual note explaining how we estimated audiences and where the estimates were weakest. Sales colleagues worried the note would arm buyers against us. In practice it shortened pricing disputes considerably, because agencies could see our assumptions before campaigns ran rather than after reports disappointed them.

Reason for the move

Appointed CMO when the company joined marketing, content standards and partner communications under one executive.

Mandate

Replace inherited audience claims with documented estimates and introduce pricing that reflected differences between buildings and screen positions.

Outcomes

• Replaced a single per-screen rate with four building tiers and two screen positions
• Rebuilt audience estimates using documented survey and occupancy assumptions
• Reduced disputed compensation-spot claims from agencies by about a third

Decisions in context

Xiaruntang had grown quickly by placing screens in buildings managed by its parent, then in third-party offices and compounds. Its audience figures were optimistic, and every screen carried the same price whether it faced a busy lift lobby in a Grade A tower or a quiet side entrance. I spent my first year rebuilding the estimates from survey and occupancy data, with each assumption written down. The second step was the rate card: four building tiers, two screen positions and seasonal adjustments. Some property partners were unhappy when their buildings fell into lower tiers, and sales colleagues lost a simple story. But agencies began to accept our figures with fewer arguments, and disputes over compensation spots for underdelivered campaigns fell. The experience convinced me that a stated weakness costs less than a claim discovered to be wrong.

Reason for the move

Promoted to lead marketing as a whole after the tiered rate card and research changes were adopted.

Mandate

Make the company's growing media spending accountable to sales results across its regional markets.

Outcomes

• Introduced regional comparison tests using distributor shipment data
• Moved roughly a fifth of the media budget from city-wide outdoor to retail and transit placements
• Agreed a shared campaign review format with the finance director

Decisions in context

Qingtaoyuan was where I learnt what a media budget feels like from the inside. The family owners expected marketing to justify every renminbi, and the finance director's question in 2012 exposed how little of our reporting connected spending with sales. I began running comparison tests across prefectures, using distributor shipments as the outcome, and agreed with finance a review format that showed what we had learnt as well as what we had spent. Some channels survived the tests and some did not. Office-lobby screens performed better than I expected for one product line and worse for another, which taught me that a medium's value depends on the brief. When Xiaruntang approached me in 2015, I accepted because I wanted to see whether a screen operator could offer the evidence I had needed as a buyer.

Reason for the move

Recruited by Xiaruntang to apply advertiser-side measurement within a screen operator.

Mandate

Plan and negotiate television and outdoor campaigns for food and household brands.

Outcomes

• Built schedules for eight client accounts across television and outdoor
• Introduced post-campaign audience checks on outdoor screen purchases
• Negotiated the agency's first volume terms with two office-screen operators

Decisions in context

At Gaolianshu I learnt the buyer's craft: reach and frequency, negotiation calendars and the patience to read a station's audience claims sceptically. The early office-screen operators were appearing in Shanghai, and my clients wanted to try them. Their figures were frequently generous, so I began asking for building lists and occupancy evidence before recommending a purchase, and checking delivery after campaigns finished. Some operators welcomed the questions; others stopped returning calls. By 2009 I led four planners across eight accounts with about RMB260 million of combined spending. The role sharpened my judgement about what a placement was worth, but it left me one step removed from consequences. A planner presents a recommendation and moves to the next brief. I wanted a role in which the budget I advised on was also one I would have to defend.

Reason for the move

Moved to an advertiser to become accountable for spending rather than only recommending it.

Mandate

Design, field and report consumer surveys and brand-tracking studies for food, drinks and household clients.

Outcomes

• Drafted questionnaires and weighting notes for brand-tracking studies
• Introduced back-checks on a tenth of completed street interviews
• Wrote the limitations section that the firm later placed at the front of every report

Decisions in context

My first job taught me how fragile a confident number can be. I wrote questionnaires, briefed interviewers and spent many evenings in shopping streets watching how fieldwork actually happened. A sample of two thousand could still overrepresent the people who had time to stop, and a change in question order could move a brand's awareness score by several points. I introduced back-checks on a tenth of completed interviews after finding that one team had shortened a questionnaire without telling anyone. My manager also let me rewrite the limitations section of our reports, and the firm later moved it from the appendix to the first page. I left because I wanted to see what clients did with the research. The habits I formed there, such as questioning samples and stating weaknesses openly, shaped every later role.

Reason for the move

Joined an agency to see how research was used in spending decisions.