Year In Review, Part 1 | The Greatest Hits Of 2022!!

This episode is our Year In Review: 2022 Greatest Hits Part 1! We've put together some of our favourite clips and moments for you to enjoy over the holidays, and look forward to seeing you again in 2023 for some of our best guests to date!

The 2022 guests featured in this episode are:

#1

Patrick Deloy, E146 & E147, September 7th & 14th, 2022

Our first feature comes from episodes 146 and 147 on September 7th and 14th with Patrick Deloy, Managing Director at Merkle, an award-winning e-commerce solutions provider which supports medium to large B2C and B2B companies with the planning, development, localization and long-term support of multi-country e-commerce website deployments in the APAC region. I had asked Patrick ‘what is the omni-channel retail ecosystem and environment today in the APAC region?

#2

Liam Mather, E134, March 15, 2022

Our second clip features Liam Mather, Head of Public Affairs and Communications at WPIC Marketing + Technologies. Reporting to the Chief Marketing Officer, Liam helps guide WPIC's public and government affairs, strategic communications, media engagement, corporate branding, and sales enablement. Liam previously worked in BCW's Corporate and Public Affairs practice in Beijing, where he helped clients manage reputations, respond to crises, and navigate policy issues. This was from episode 134 released on March 15th, and for those who didn’t get to hear the full episode, it’s quite unique as we had the opportunity to talk to Liam about his time covering the Winter Olympics from within the Olympic bubble. Specifically, Liam was able to cover the hockey event, so we asked him about the state of hockey in China, specifically women’s hockey, and here’s what he had to say.

#3

William Bao Bean, E152 & E153, October 19th & 26th, 2022

Up next is a clip from episode 152 on October 19th, the first of two episodes with an old friend of mine and an old friend of the podcast, William Bao Bean. William is a General Partner at SOSV and Managing Director of Orbit Startups. Orbit Startups helps companies scale breakthrough technologies across emerging and frontier markets to the regions with the most aggressive growth. William is a senior advisor at SOSV who has been a pioneer in the tech and telecommunications space in Asia. During his time with SoftBank China & India Holdings, he led investments in companies such as Yodo1, DemystData, Lekan, and Massive Impact. He was also an equity research analyst at Deutsche Bank covering the Internet and Telecom Equipment sector in Asia for 11 years before joining Innov8 Ventures as Managing Director where he is focused on supporting China investments. He is definitely one of the foremost experts on early-stage startups and investing in Asia Pacific, and in this particular clip I asked him ‘what are the strengths and differences of the teams you invest in and work with within Asia versus outside Asia?’

#4

Zarina Kanji, E133, March 7th, 2022

On March 7th we released episode 133 with Zarina Kanji. Based in London, Zarina is the Head of Business Development for Health & Wellness and Food & Beverage Brands at Alibaba. She previously served as VP of Global Fashion Brand Partnerships at Lazada in Singapore. Zarina spoke with us about Tmall’s upcoming International Women’s Day—a key event tied to the company’s Super Brand Day—on March 8, 2022. It has proven in previous years to be the third-largest shopping festival in the nation, behind 11.11 and 6.18, and is a unique opportunity for brands to engage with women across China. So, for this clip, we chose her response to my question ‘Can you tell us a little bit about what the Gen Z female consumers really care about in China right now, and how does that differ from their elder counterparts?’

#5

Alvin Wang Graylin, E125, January 12th, 2022

On January 12th we were blessed to be able to interview Alvin Wang Graylin, China President at HTC. For anyone unfamiliar, HTC is an award-winning developer of smart mobile, connected technology, and virtual reality products. Alvin is also the Vice President of the Industry of Virtual Reality Alliance (IVRA) and the President of the Virtual Reality Venture Capital Alliance. He has almost three decades of business management experience in the tech industry, including 20 years in Greater China beginning with a Senior Management position at Intel in 1993. Prior to HTC, Alvin was a serial entrepreneur, having founded four venture-backed startups in the mobile and internet spaces, covering mobile social, "ad tech", search, AI, big data and digital media. I asked Alvin to tell us about some of the coolest & most innovative examples of VR that are heading our way in 2022 and beyond.

#6

Charles Lavoie, E154 & E156, November 2nd & 16th, 2022

Our last clip for Part 1 of our Year in Review is from our conversation with Charles Lavoie on November 16th, episode number 156. Charles is the VP of Creative & Head of Creative Labs at WPIC Marketing & Technologies. A creative strategy & data analytics leader, Charles has incredibly strong cross-cultural backgrounds in international growth, go-to-market strategy, growth marketing, data analytics, creative planning, storytelling, sales, e-commerce, design and retail in the APAC region with projects focused in China, Hong Kong, Japan & Singapore. I asked Charles a very nuanced question at one point, probably one of the most granular questions I’ve asked anyone about brand entry into the APAC region, specifically “if a brand wants to take a multi-market strategy, how do you advise them, especially if they are also trying to stay ahead of an aggressive market competitor who might be going after the same regions for expansion themselves and may not have time to take a step by step approach?’