About Jan Van Den Bergh

Jan Van den Bergh
1952.12.21
Linguistics Katholieke Universitet Leuven

1977 : started as junior copywriter at Ogilvy Brussels

1977: moved as a copywriter to a local Brussels agency of 13 FET and left in 1991 when it was a +40 Fet agency. Was in between creative director since 1982 and CEO since 1987.

1991: one of the 4 founders of the agency that was called at that time Quattro and which is since 2002 the Brussels’ office of Saatchi and Saatchi. Operated as business development partner. I left ‘formally’ since end 2004, but was since 1998 full time involved in i-merge.

1994: under my leadership the above mentioned Quattro agency was one of the 1st European agencies to evangelize about the use of the web as marketingcommunication tool

1998: official start within Quattro of the business unit i-merge. CEO since the beginning.

2000: official start of i-merge as independent cie after a merge with Sign a web-agency in Leuven.

2000 – 2007: we grew i-merge into a 60 FET agency in Belgium, Ireland and China. I operate as Active Chairman of the group and President of China. I live since feb 2006 in Shanghai to set up i-merge China.

In the meantime the European agency is called boondoggle ...

Jan Van Den Bergh, President of i-merge shares his insights on doing business in China with Christine Lu, Founder of The China Business Network in a recent video interview in Shanghai. This is Part 1 of 2 segments for this interview.

The following is a transcript of this interview:

Welcome back 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: In this segment I’d like to introduce Dan Van Den Berg CEO of I-Merge an interactive agency that began in Europe in 1999 and established itself in Shanghai last year. Jan, welcome to the China Business show.

JAN VAN DEN BERG: Hello – Good afternoon… Good morning.

CHRISTINE LU: (Laughter) Yeah well, the time difference you are in Shanghai and we are over here, in San Diego so good morning to you and afternoon to us. Now before we learn more about I-merge in China, can you give us a background on who you are, and what brought you to China after being so well established in Europe since 1999?

JAN VAN DEN BERG: Yeah, I’m an old man, in advertising terms at least. I’m 54 which means that 30 years ago I started working in advertising as a copywriter and I worked as an M3 for the first 10 years of my career and then started up a classical advertising agency almost 20 years ago with some friends which is now Saatchi & Saatchi Brussels . Belgium is a very small country. But we go very early in picking up the first signs in Belgium, I think it was 1994 when we discovered some of the younger guys at the universities playing around with that the stuff and looking at it with our advertising eyes. We thought it could be something very new, very exciting, also for a marketing communication perspective, and that’s when it started, in the beginning just a few people working within the classical advertising agency and trying to build websites.

CHRISTINE LU: Well I think you are what we would call that earlier doctor then in that case, wouldn’t you be?

JAN VAN DEN BERG: Yeah, absolutely… Because absolutely earlier when we had the first site I remember it was front page in the national newspaper in Belgium.

CHRISTINE LU: Right… Great, now, what brought you to China and can you give us background on I-merge now, what you are doing in China?

JAN VAN DEN BERG: Yeah. It started as a serious advertising agency in Belgium and we were growing and growing until we were 45- 50 people in Belgium which was huge and that at certain moments we felt that the growth could maybe stop there and we discussed with our CC about what we should do - moving out to Paris or Amsterdam or London, etc., etc. … Finally we decided if we had to move abroad why not go to the biggest market of all and then we looked at the figures it was back in 2005 of the potential of China there was no visitation any more. So after two weeks of investigating the local markets we decided to do it and offering roughly the same service as we are offering in Belgium.

CHRISTINE LU: Interesting, I was going to ask who are your target customers and clientele in China?

JAN VAN DEN BERG: Right now is the beginning. So we are working for some local brands in cosmetics and pharmaceutical. We are also working for our home country Flounders Belgium travel tourism trying to convince Chinese to go to China. We also are doing some projects for the European Union. What we have to do is evangelize here. That is an important element so the agency is still only an agency of 10 people, some creative, some technical people, some account people. So it’s really the beginning.

CHRISTINE LU: What an exciting time. I always love hearing about people who’ve just landed in Shanghai and they’ve been there a year. Being a fairly new player in the industry with fresh eyes on China, what kind of insights can you share? What’s your take on it? What do you usually tell people back home?

JAN VAN DEN BERG: What we tell back home is that you should absolutely not over estimate the market at this moment as far as agency or marketing is concerned. This is really a market where marketing, advertising internet use, internet as a marketing communication… It’s really the beginning. So everyone who wants to move here looking with great eyes of the potential and it’s true. It was also me in the beginning. I was a bit disappointed that it went so slowly.

CHRISTINE LU: You are saying Shanghai doesn’t move fast enough for you Jan?

JAN VAN DEN BERG: Sometimes I really have to compare it to Europe and the U.S. Lets say at the end of the 1990’s, seven, eight or nine years ago. Slow in adopting, slow in convincing marketing directors that they should go to digital they should go to interactive.

CHRISTINE LU: But I think as with anything once it does take off, something click and it really does start to fly. So we look forward to following you on that.

JAN VAN DEN BERG: Yeah, that is true. The whole picture we are seeing here to is that we are waiting for that “big one.” So you see gradual growth.

CHRISTINE LU: I know, I think its coming. We are out of time, but I wanted to make sure we got this in - where do we go to learn more information about I-merge.

JAN VAN DEN BERG: The best thing is to go to the site which is I-merge.com.

CHRISTINE LU: Thank so much for sharing your time with us today; we look forward to following up with you again.

JAN VAN DEN BERG: Thank you!

CHRISTINE LU: Thanks for listening, I’m Christine Lu.

Corbett Wall, China Director, Jade Dragon Development (JDD)

Mr. Wall is a successful serial entrepreneur with 20 years of China experience in business development, planning, intellectual property, project management, operations, team building, China entry, marketing, and finance.

He most recently was Principal at Home Abroad, a residential investment fund in Beijing, and under his leadership grew into the largest expatriate housing provider in Beijing. Previously, as CEO of Bzbeat Interactive Media, Mr. Wall was at the forefront of new media distribution via mobile phones.

Mr. Wall is a patented inventor, a managing partner for an entertainment PR firm, owns a popular nightclub, is a well respected music producer, and during his twenties was a major recording artist throughout the region. His credits include 10 solo albums and over 40 major Mandarin pop and classical productions, and two published books. In 1996 his production for BMG/Elite garnered the first ever Grammy Award nomination for a Chinese recording.

About Marc van der Chijs

Marc van der Chijs is a successful Dutch entrepreneur based in Shanghai with a decade of experience doing business in China. He is the CEO of Spill Group Asia and co-founder of Tudou.com, the largest video sharing site in China. Marc is also an angel investor in Chinese start-ups.

The following is a recent video interview of Marc highlighting his experience in China, the role of foreigners in the market and valuable advice for companies and entrepreneurs who are looking to expand into the China market:

Adam Schokora is Edelman China's Social Media and Digital Strategy Manager. Adam is originally from Detroit and has been in China since 1999.

He is curious about technology, youth culture, music, design, fashion, and motorcycle's; not to mention his passion for Chinese language and the Internet. Adam graduated with highest distinction from the University of Michigan with degrees in Chinese politics and Mandarin.

Adam Schokora hosts DanweiTV's "The Shanghai Beat". You can follow Adam on Twitter as: ajschokora

In the following interview, Adam shares his background and experience of living and working in China and provides insight on the role of foreigners in the China market:

A former China correspondent, turned internet entrepreneur in Shanghai. Currently he is a Europe-based advisor for media-organizations, IT- and telecom companies, government agencies and non-profit organizations on their China strategies. He wrote a best-selling book on China “Fifteen misunderstandings about China and the Chinese” (in German and Dutch), about the future of the foreign correspondent for the Nieman Report of Harvard University.

He is chief-editor and columnist at www.cbiz.cn, and writes for a wide variation of online and print publications and commenter at European broadcasting organizations on both China and new-media developments. He taught at journalism schools in and outside China and is a speaker at new-media conferences.

He was the founder and first elected president of the Shanghai Foreign Correspondents Club in 2002. He is founder and Director of Marketing and Speaker Relations for ChinaBiz Speakers.