Kaiser Kuo, Group Director of Digital Strategy for Ogilvy China shares a glimpse of his 15 years of experience living and working in China as a musician, writer, tech entrepreneur and opinion leader in his current role at Ogilvy China.

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About Kaiser Kuo

When Kaiser Kuo joined the leading advertising agency Ogilvy as their director of digital strategy in 2007, he had already a varied life in China's booming internet. As an opinion leader in his industry, Mr. Kuo worked at the famous magazine Red Herring as their Beijing bureau chief, but his activities have not been limited to that leading publication.

In the one-and-a-half decades in China he worked as a technology and business writer for such publications as Time, TimeAsia, China Economic Review, Asia Inc., and the South China Morning Post. He is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and has an MA in East Asian Studies from the University of Arizona. Mr. Kuo was co-founder and lead guitarist of one of China's most successful rock bands, Tang Dynasty. He lives in Beijing with his wife and two kids.

Kaiser Kuo is a professional speaker listed with the ChinaBiz Speakers bureau who is often invited to share his views on various topics in China ranging from internet to music to youth culture and trends.

The following is a transcript of this interview:

Welcome to the China Business Show, brought to you by Global Sources.com connecting global buyers and suppliers. Here is your host, Christine Lu.

CHRISTINE LU: It’s not often that I get a chance to talk to the Co-Founder of Tang Dynasty, one of China’s most successful rock bands, who now leads the digital strategy for a global marketing communications firm in China. Joining us for this segment to share his insights on China business is Kaiser Kuo, Group Director of Digital Strategy for Ogilvy China. Kaiser, welcome to the China Business Show.

KAISER KUO: Thanks a lot Christine and good afternoon to you.

CHRISTINE LU: Thanks for joining us today. Now, how did someone such as yourself, who grew up in the U.S. go from co-founding one of China’s most successful rock bands, to your current position as the Group Director of Digital Strategy for Ogilvy. What’s the journey been like so far?

KAISER KUO: Long and strange and full of incredibly good luck. Seriously, the on part of the odd part of the rather twisted career path that I’ve tread is the part that actually meandered into rock music. People who don’t know me really well assume that music is somehow my true calling. In fact I think that there is actually a lot of things that I do better then play rock guitar.

CHRISTINE LU: But that’s the first thing I hear when I hear about when I hear your name. It’s like the “Tang Dynasty,” that era of your life.

KAISER KUO: Yeah, it’s probably the thing that is most associated with me. Not that I mind that of course. I definitely came to China straight out of college with the idea of playing in a rock band in mind. I had seen evidence of a nascent rock scene here in Beijing and I was pretty determined to find it. So I headed to China with a guitar slung over my shoulder.

CHRISTINE LU: Now this was the late 80’s wasn’t it?

KAISER KUO: was, and it was definitely the right place to be at the right time if you wanted to get involved in the Rock scene and if you were somebody who like me had just decidedly mediocre guitar skills. But the whole thing launched me on some incredibly cool adventures, and in the ensuing years I’ve had opportunities to do things that I think that nobody in his right mind would have passed up.

CHRISTINE LU: Yeah, definitely, I know you survived the dot.com bubble that was well known back in 1999 in China.

KAISER KUO: Yeah, I sure did. My company didn’t survive it. I certainly did or I wouldn’t be here talking to you.

CHRISTINE LU: Right.

KAISER KUO: Yeah the internet was great. When I left Tang Dynasty in ’99 I actually did a fairly long hiatus back in the U.S. in graduate school where I was under the impression that I was actually going to be a history professor at one point, but then I got called back into the band. I’ve actually only spent a few years of my life as a full-time musician. That would be1988 – 1989 while I was here playing Tang Dynasty, well before we had gotten any kind of fame or notoriety. From 1996 – 1999, I rejoined the band, and then in 1999 after I left, the internet was there for me.

CHRISTINE LU: Right…

KAISER KUO: A catch basin for a lot of people like me who are reasonably bright, but with no real skill set.

CHRISTINE LU: Then from there you did a stint with Red Herring as the Beijing Bureau Chief.

KAISER KUO: Yeah, I sure did… There were many years in between after I left China Now the dot come I was with from 99 -2001, after that went under, I spent some time in Mobile. I worked for a little start up called MIG and then I worked for a company called Linktone (which was publicly listed), then spent years in the winter as a free lance technology writer, working mostly for regional technology and telecom publications. That is not a life that I would recommend for anyone who seeks “life changing wealth.” (Laughter) Then after I got married (and had that first kid) I was pretty determined that I was going to seek something with a little more security to it and so when the Red Herring opportunity came a long I took it. That was the re-born Red Herring - that was Red Herring, not the one that was in the phonebook from the dot.com era of course. I joined shortly before it went to a weekly format. It was a real terrific perch for anyone to get a perspective on the tech business. I made a lot of contacts there that have been incredibly valuable to me since I joined Ogilvy which was just this past January.

CHRISTINE LU: Right, now can you give us a brief intro to Ogilvy in China and what you do specifically for them there?

KAISER KUO: Sure, I’m probably not the best person to do an intro to the company, since like I said I’ve only been there since January. But Ogilvy is a WPP company. It is the largest communications company in China. We’ve got about 1700 people in China, so it’s quite an operation.

CHRISTINE LU: Wow!

KAISER KUO: Yeah, that’s mainly in our Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou Offices, and I’d say over 850 people now are in our Beijing office alone. There are four parts of the business in China. It’s not the same in every geographic area. There are four disciplines as we call them. There’s O &M, Ogilvy and Mather, the advertising agency that most people are really familiar with. Then there’s the public relations practice, Ogilvy One, which grew out of our one on one marketing practice, it’s the direct marketing arm, but here in China it also includes what is called Ogilvy Interactive in other geographies, and that is where most of our digital strength is housed. Then there’s Ogilvy Action which is our activation practice. It’s all about selling in the last mile. Then there’s a bunch of other things within Ogilvy in China. We have for example, under Ogilvy One a digital media planning and buying arm called “Neil” at Ogilvy and Ogilvy has done very, very well in China. Growing very healthfully in a time when I think the advertising business in developed markets is somewhat “lack luster”.

CHRISTINE LU: Right...

KAISER KUO: As for what I actually do here… One part of what I do is to scout and take a first look-see at promising technology companies that we can either work with on specific campaigns, or we can partner with strategically or actually invest in, or possibly even acquire. I don’t come from a finance background; I’ve been a reporter for most…

CHRISTINE LU: But you sound like the person that keeps his finger on the pulse of what’s going on, what’s hot in circles over there.

KAISER KUO: Yeah, that’s really the rest of my job and this scouting bit is very helpful in terms of allowing me to see what’s going on. I do what you would call “internal evangelism” I fit horizontally across the four disciplines of Ogilvy here, so what I’ve tried to do is to help people in all four of our disciplines to appreciate in what’s happening in digital not only in China, but in the Valley, but in other tech hot spots – in Korea or Japan.

CHRISTINE LU: So they can get a sense of what’s happening around the corner. That they can stay tuned into…

KAISER KUO: Exactly, I try to be the guy sits in the crow’s nest and is the look out.

CHRISTINE LU: (Laughter) That’s a good way of putting it though. So then for those listening Kaiser, who are new to China, can you paint us a picture of what’s hot in the sectors of business you are dealing with right now.

KAISER KUO: If what you mean by hot is what parts of the business I deal with is actually making money, then it’s the big portals in Bidu.

CHRISTINE LU: I guess what I mean is buzz-wise – what’s around the corner.

KAISER KUO: What’s generating real venture capital interest or interest from advertisers? A lot of these things are like in the U.S. they are very, very hot, but they haven’t really realized the potential of actual advertising dollars. Video sharing, social networking, but I think they are going to prove out to be really rich veins in the United States just like in China here. As far as more China specific advertising things, I am really watching P2P video streaming and downloading plays. Companies like PP Live or some upstart companies, one called Beleen.cn; Companies that find their closest analogies in something like “juiced.”

CHRISTINE LU: Got it.

KAISER KUO: They’ve built a lot of their user base on “unlicensed” content, to put it charitably. They’re U.S. based investors though they call them rightly that this is a “no-no” and that advertisers won’t go near them until they’ve scrubbed themselves nice and squeaky clean. I’m just curious as to what is going to happen. If they’re going to be able to keep their fairly substantial audiences, if they lose all that “not so legal” content and go legit.

CHRISTINE LU: Right… Now just in under a minute, I’m really interested to know – you deal with Chinese and Western counterparts on a regular basis. What are some common business misconceptions you come across and what you do when it comes to China from those who are from the West who may not fully understand it yet?

KAISER KUO: Well, I’m from the West too, despite my Chinese name, I do speak Chinese, but I’m sure that even after all these years here I still carry around plenty of misconceptions myself, just as a little caveat – I’m definitely no expert on rights or wrongs and I’ve spent more years writing about business then actually do it. But, I guess if I had to pick a couple of things one would be that westerners (and I hate making these generalizations) tend to get wrapped up in cultural differences. They exoticize the whole process of doing business in China.

CHRISTINE LU: So business is business then?

KAISER KUO: Yeah, business is business.

CHRISTINE: Well Kaiser, we’re actually out of time. Where do we go to learn more about Ogilvy?

KAISER KUO: To learn more about Ogilvy and what Ogilvy is doing digitally in China, check out my blog, it’s called “the Ogilvy Digital Watch,”if you just google that you’ll find it. That’s Ogilvy Digital Watch.

CHRISTINE LU: Great, Kaiser thanks so much for sharing your thoughts with us today and thanks for listening. I’m Christine Lu.

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