Staff Reporters
Feb 5, 2010

VIDEO: G2's Joe Celia on China growth

ASIA-PACIFIC - Agencies who "parachute expats" into Asia-Pacific to lead their local market operations are going about business the wrong way, says Joe Celia (pictured), chairman and CEO of G2 Worldwide.

Celia, who visited Hong Kong for a regional G2 conference, spoke candidly about the network’s strengths and weaknesses in Asia-Pacific, noting that G2 has seen its share of success partly due to placing local heads at the agency's operations in each market.

“Don’t treat it as a region - think of it as countries and people,” Celia advises, warning that Asia-Pacific’s diversity presents problems to agencies looking to implement a strict regional structure. “Resist the temptation to homogenise.”

Celia goes on to note that G2 is most established in markets such as Malaysia, Japan and Korea, but has had a harder time making a name for itself in China and Australia.

Of China, Celia tells Media that G2 will only be able to grow and gain greater prominence through new business wins.

“What we’re really trying to do is go hunting and gathering every day,” he says. “Acquisition of significant agencies is not really an option in China … so you really want to grow organically.”





In terms of digital, Celia further offers advice to global clients looking to strengthen their interactive reach: take the time to learn the platforms.

"Every client needs to invest in learning. In the past five, six, seven years there has been more change in terms of marketing-communications vehicles than ever before," he says. "Now clients are scrambling to get into blogging, Facebook, mobile - but a lot of this sentiment is fear-based because they think they need to get into it. Take the time to learn before engaging."

Click here for more video interviews.

Related Articles

Just Published

9 hours ago

Spikes Asia 2025: Rika Komakine and Tetsuya Honda ...

A Japanese PR agency and their client cooked up a Spikes Asia Award-winning campaign by tackling a common cooking complaint—sticky gyoza. This is how they did it.

10 hours ago

Meta could soon be the largest misinformation ...

The tech company’s recent changes could result in a surge in unmoderated and unfortunate content, underscoring the need for advertisers to again be mindful about where they spend their dollars, writes Sarah Thompson.

11 hours ago

WPP mandates four days per week in office

The change to the global guidelines will apply across WPP's operations.

12 hours ago

Why Meta’s pivot on fact-checking is the right move

This course correction is not merely expedient; it’s the right move for Meta, its shareholders, advertisers, and audiences alike, argues Ramakrishnan Raja in his forthright analysis.