Criticizing “China” Versus Being Critical About China

May 7th, 2008

One of the great challenges in any relationship is about establishing the right tone of dialogue. Should it be friendly, adversarial, competitive, or something else? Can the two parties be constructively critical, or will they just be critical? Can they listen to each other without becoming overly offensive and/or defensive?

Just about the only thing more difficult than setting the right tone of dialogue, is setting a new tone for a new conversation when the old tone of dialogue no longer works, if only because the underlying dynamics has changed. If there was one thing which came clear through my article criticizing the Economist’s Angry Chinese article, it was that this was something which needed to be examined more closely and discussed more openly, if only because the article attracted a large number of readers and comments (34 at the time of writing).

At the heart of the problem is how to break through outdated stereotypes about China. I, for one, believe that its time to get past criticizing “China” and to start being critical about China. Many western media experts and journalists tend to think that Chinese need to be separated from the Chinese government, and become more outspoken about the shortcomings of the Chinese government, believing that only when this happens, will China become a more open society. If they speak out in support of Chinese government policy over Tibet for example, they are quickly dismissed as government-supported actions, or being not aware of Chinese government-sanctioned policies in Tibet. In fact, it is far more likely that the positions of most of the Chinese population will harden in the face of criticism from the west and the western media. Instead of making it easier to reach a compromise, it actually makes it more difficult.

The fact is that the official Chinese media, even though it is state-controlled and monitored, frequently is very open in its criticisms of some government policies. There is a huge number of magazines and newspapers, and all of them now have to attract readers in order to justify their existence as businesses. If you are not reading it already, you should read Danwei just to get an idea of how much Chinese society has changed. Just keep in mind that what Danwei is able to cover is just a small snapshot of what is happening in modern Chinese society.

This is not to say you can say anything in the Chinese press. There are limits, and the Chinese frequently talk about “stepping on the red line” for violating government ground rules. Part of the role of those working in the media is to know exactly where that red line is, because it sometimes moves.

A very interesting development is the rise of the Chinese Internet, as increasingly large portions of the population depend on it for information, trusting it more than the traditional media. Sometimes this means that some of the wildest rumors spread much faster in China than in the west. It is possible to make the case that there is free speech in China, and that it exists in parts of the Internet. But often this free speech is closer to the analogy of the man who falsely shouts “fire” in a packed movie theater. This kind of free speech is unfortunately, more than unproductive, and is sometimes used to whip people into a frenzy. This happened with recent coverage of western media coverage of the Tibetan situation. When the Chinese became angry, many in the western media were taken aback at the scale of the reaction.

Part of this can be ascribed to the power of the Internet and mobile networks in spreading information and rumors.

Welcome to the power of the Chinese Internet.

The problem many western editors make is that they seem to want Chinese to cross the red line, then when it happens, they can use hold it high as an example of how authoritarian China is. This is an overly simplistic view of Chinese society which tries to reduce everything to black and white terms. In an increasingly complicated world, it’s not enough to reduce important relationships to overly simplistic terms, this will only make things worse and set the stage for future misunderstandings which may have tragic consequences for everyone.

Fortunately, there is some dialogue going on, and there are some very smart people who are devoting themselves to discussing these very real and important issues, and are setting the groundwork for a new and more constructive dialogue.

On the English-language side, some of the more interesting websites are:

  • EastSouthWestNorth
  • Danwei(for coverage of the contemporary Chinese media scene, complete with constant updates on moving red lines)
  • The China Business Network(mainly covers business but also includes cultural issues
  • James Fallows (I also enjoy his coverage of technology
  • The Washington Note(This website proves that something intelligent can come from the global capital of spin

    • If you want to keep on top of developments in China, these sites will keep you informed.

    And of course, there is the China Vortex. You are always welcome here.

What’s Wrong with The Economist’s “Angry China” Article?

May 3rd, 2008

I just read The Economist’s lead article this week titled “Angry China”. I came away from it disappointed, and I would like to explain why.

The main gist of the article is that the Chinese government should be worried about the rising tide of Chinese nationalism because a great deal of the anger now directed at western policies and interests are in fact, anger at Chinese government policy. Handled the wrong way, this tide of Chinese nationalism could very well turn against the Chinese government, leading to unpredictable consequences.

Here are the money quotes:

China’s rage is out of all proportion to the alleged offences. It reflects a fear that a resentful, threatened West is determined to thwart China’s rise. The Olympics have become a symbol of China’s right to the respect it is due. Protests, criticism and boycott threats are seen as part of a broader refusal to accept and accommodate China.

There is no doubt genuine fury in China at these offences; yet the impression the response gives of a people united behind the government is an illusion. China, like India, is a land of a million mutinies now. Legions of farmers are angry that their land has been swallowed up for building by greedy local officials. People everywhere are aghast at the poisoning of China’s air, rivers and lakes in the race for growth. Hardworking, honest citizens chafe at corrupt officials who treat them with contempt and get rich quick. And the party still makes an ass of the law and a mockery of justice.

This is a classic “bait-and-switch” argument. The anger directed at the west is in fact domestic Chinese anger at Chinese government policies, according to this thesis. This is a dismissal of any anger at the west as an argument completely without merit, and an attempt to shift all of the blame onto the Chinese government.

It is exactly this kind of argument which Chinese see as western hypocrisy and double standards. Of course there is anger at some Chinese government policies, but these are a separate issue. Please don’t try to change the subject!

Sure, there are some aspects of Chinese government policy which Chinese citizens would like to see change. But the pro-Tibetan independence folk have committed the sin of lumping Chinese citizens together with the Chinese government in their criticisms. To the Chinese, it seems like a classic attempt to hijack the Olympics, something which almost all Chinese are truly proud of, and to turn it into a bully pulpit for their claims of Tibetan independence.

What angers both the Chinese government policymakers and people is that while the country has developed in economic terms and yes, even in human rights terms, that has not been recognized in the west. Instead, there continue to be politicians and media figures who continue to hector China, and play a leading role in shaping western opinions and political policy about China. To the Chinese, it seems like no matter how hard they run to the finish line, there is always someone out there moving the finish line even further away while they are running the race.

Trying to steal the Olympics and letting the Chinese have their day in the sun would be very similiar to insulting an American simply because George W Bush is his president. This is exactly what the pro-Tibetan independence supporters, and the China media critics have done.

Why should these people, who have little deep understanding of China and the Chinese (or Tibetans for that matter) have such an influential role in shaping opinion about such an important relationship as the west’s relationship with China, and be given so much ink and free air time? In light of this, why shouldn’t Chinese get angry about this very unfair and one-sided view which is put forward in much of the western media, and then passed off as the truth? And why doesn’t the western media instead reach out to westerners who have lived in China, and maybe, even speak the language in order to get a deeper understanding of the country?

Is this fair?

The real reason many Chinese are angry is not redirected anger at Chinese government policies, it is a genuine anger at a very biased and one-sided view about China which casts it as irresponsible, selfish, oppressive and wrong, and then throwing all Chinese citizens into the same basket.

The Economist is, generally speaking, a fair and open-minded newspaper, and usually presents well thought-out positions and arguments . It should look deeper than dismiss all of the Chinese anger out of hand.

If this lead article is the best that they can do, then I’m not optimistic about relations between China and the west.

Where China Falls Short

May 1st, 2008

China’s economic growth over the past several years has excited many members of the international community, who see it as an alternative to the US’s and west’s leadership of the world order for the past two centuries. There has been a deep underlying distrust of the west, but it was brought to the fore by the Bush administration’s single-minded focus on the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and what to many, have seemed like trumped-up reasons for the invasion.

This, along with China’s dramatic economic growth, has opened up a great opportunity for China to offer an alternative vision of economic and social development. But China has fallen short with the recent fuss over the torch relay, and the actions of the fenqing (angry youth). In a very short period of time, a great deal of the goodwill China has earned has dissipated.

This situation has forced many supporters of the reform and opening-up of China into a lose-lose situation. If they support the Chinese position, they become seen as Chinese toadies, and if they criticize certain aspects of what has happened during the Olympic torch relay, they become dismissed by the Chinese, especially fenqing, as western toadies. Intelligent people should not be forced into making choices like this which are not real choices, and further polarize the two sides. People should be able to make constructive criticism without being forced to make bad choices and being pigeon-holed into one group or the other.

I, for one, believe that there is validity to the Chinese criticisms of the way China and the Chinese have been shown in the western media. There are biases; some are based on ignorance and some may be based on malice. But anger and heavy-handedness are not the right way to correct these perceptions; instead they validate the views and fears of China’s worst critics.

But this is not purely a public relations exercise. If China was a smaller and less influential country, maybe that would work. What China needs is to offer an alternative vision to the western model of development. This model must include dialogue, institutions and rules without a pre-conceived agenda which are pre-packaged for others, who must buy into it. Basically, a new framework needs to be created for Chinese engagement and dialogue on a global scale.

One of the criticisms of western hegemony is that it has offered a pre-packaged vision which in reality, offers pre-packaged western interests at its core. Joseph Stiglitz talked about this in his book Making Globalization Work.

So what is China’s vision? Is it just anger for western wrongdoing and the way it is depicted in the western-controlled media? How much goodwill will venting anger get China? There needs to be a better more thought-out way which offers more constructive results.

More people need to be included, and it should not just be government to government. It should be open where all can offer their views, and be listened to. Differing opinions should be debated and allowed to co-exist. Out of this, some kind of rationale for China’s rise has to come out, and this vision needs to be consistent with the rest of the world, as well as the Chinese people.

China is now a real power in every way. Real powers listen to and debate different views. If they don’t like certain views, they can offer a point by point rebuttal, or they can debate those views, but there is no need to get angry.

New times bring new challenges, and new challenges call for new thinking.

Business Implications for Social Marketing

April 7th, 2008

There is a whole brave new world for social marketing which is unfolding and which, so far, has caught many businesses off-guard.

A good part of the reason for this is because many corporate marketing departments are managed by people who cut their teeth when TV, radio and print were the main ways to reach audiences.

Sam Flemming, who is the founder of Shanghai-based CIC, a market research and consulting firm which covers brand buzz in China, has posted an article on how online trends will affect how agencies will think and work.

Based on my experience working in traditional media and then online in China, I think that online users are about 2-3 years ahead of online users in the US. This is because the Internet developed without the help of advertising income in its early stages, unlike in the US where advertising was a very established model. For this reason, it is much easier for Chinese consumers and advertisers to adapt. In China, there is much stronger tie-in between offline events and online promotions, instead of just relying on online advertising as in the US.

US corporations and advertisers have to “unlearn” much of what they have thought would work in the new online space.

One of the big questions is that agency account people will have to learn to become advocates for their brands and products both offline and online. Where does the agency and customer advocate line end and begin? It’s easy to see that in the very near future the best agency account people will be those who are the most passionate and eloquent advocates for a product, and can exercise good judgment quickly. Those who succeed will be the ones who can go from strategy to tactics very quickly, while keeping the client clear about overall goals and weaving through the intricacies of the online conversation.

One book which is going on my “to read” list is Jump Point, which talks about how marketing to the interconnected online crowd is going to work.

How Much Can Chinese Bloggers Make From Blogging?

March 26th, 2008

manxcat.jpeg

For most people, blogs are no longer exciting as they were in 2002, when they first burst on the scene. Part of the reason for this is because although the technology for blogging is mature, an economic model for bloggers has not really taken hold. This is especially the case in China, where there are a huge number of bloggers and the Internet has become hugely popular, but the economic rationale has not yet appeared. Several years ago, there was a lot of talk and conjecture about a long tail, and idea which Chris Anderson made popular with his book, The Long Tail.

Unfortunately in China, the long tail looks like a Manx cat. (The Manx is a variety of cat which is born tailless.)

Recently there has been much discussion in the US about the value of ad networks. The economic rationale for ad networks is simple: they buy unsold inventory and place ads in them so that no ads go unsold. Better to place ads anywhere than to have them wasted, right?

Not so fast, says Jason Calacanis. Quoting from ESPN’s recent tough statement banishing ad networks, he says that “the use of ad nets diminishes the value of their (clients’) brand and content by spreading it so widely, ultimately threatening existing relationships with advertisers”.

In his article, Calacanis argues that for that medium-sized publishers, they should take on the costs and responsibility of their own ad sales networks to sell their own inventory, instead of outsourcing to an outside ad network. He argues that a real publisher is in control of three things:

  • Your writers
  • Your readers
  • Your advertisers

Moreover, he puts numbers behind his definition of a mid-sized publisher. If you have more than $250,000 in ad sales, you should hire your own dedicated sales person.

His advice is that if you are a mid-sized publisher:

  1. Hire three ad sales people
  2. Spend 50% of your time going to ad meetings and conferences
  3. Kick out your ad networks and use something simple like Google Adsense to take up your backfill

Another article about how Gawker Media pays their writers left me even more interested in how these numbers would translate for China. Gawker writers are not paid a salary, but simply get an “advance” against pageviews. Basically they have to hit their pageview numbers if they are going to do well. Moreover, these numbers are public.

This raises a really interesting question: How would these US numbers for pageviews and traffic volume translate to make sense in China? And could it be that blog ad networks in China have held down bloggers’ salaries by providing low quality untargeted traffic, and the only way to turn the situation around is to have publishers build their own ad sales teams in-house instead of relying on outsiders to sell their ad inventory so that they can pay their writers a working wage?

I suspect that the answer is “yes”, because only a publisher has the best sense and feel for their own content and audience. Ironically, it could well be that ad sales for medium-sized networks are something which cannot be sold best over the Internet.

Now, that would be a change, wouldn’t it?

There Are Chinese, Then There Are Chinese

February 10th, 2008

crowd.jpeg

For many westerners and western companies, it’s hard to figure out why some Chinese have gone to the US for their graduate degrees, worked at name technology companies such as Intel and Microsoft, then come back to China, their homeland, start their own businesses, and fall flat on their faces.

How is this possible? They had everything going for them; they had the best education the US had to offer, worked in a great company, were smart and entrepreneurial, know the language, have connections, and they failed.

More often than not, these people have been away from China for a long time. Over time, they have become used to the American way of life, and while they keep up with what is going on in China, their knowledge and understanding of the country has gone stale. Gradually, they are more at home in America than in China. They jump on the China bandwagon because it is in the media all the time, and they hope to strike it rich.

Then they return to China and discover a country which is not the China which they grew up in. Compared to when they left, the role of the government is much smaller, the country has become more market-oriented in most sectors, and they may have lost many of their former connections. Worst of all, they look at the country through American-tinted glasses and use American society as a point of reference, something which does not work in China at all.

For any business or individual to succeed in China, you must understand China on Chinese terms.

This failure to understand China on Chinese terms is, in my opinion, why so many western Internet companies have failed in China. Moreover, the constant need of local management to report to headquarters outside of China, and to report every purchase they make, and more often, to explain what they are doing, puts a fatal hindrance on the decision-making process because the management is constantly tied up in knots educating someone in headquarters about China.

This makes for another very important point: No successful company in China can be successfully run from outside China; the key decisions and decision-makers must live, breathe, work and sweat in China every single day to make it work.

The single most important bad decision western companies make in China is to force the local China management to consult with headquarters about every matter; this makes the local management look weak in the eyes of their own staff. After all, what is the point in staying with a company if they do not have the power to make decisions even if they are sitting in the corner office?

It all comes down to how empowered people are to make their own decisions, and to be held responsible and accountable for them.

It makes much more sense for them to break out and start their own company, often taking the idea the western company had, but was not able to implement in China because they were constrained by headquarters’ indecision. In the Internet sector, where change is happening so fast, it makes no sense to sue and countersue; that would only make the lawyers happy and not solve the basic issues.

This just scratches the surface of why being Chinese is no guarantee of success in today’s China. Put simply, the society has changed too much too fast, and unless outsiders live here and deal with local Chinese who have never been outside China and speak only Chinese on a daily basis, they will fail.

In business, success cannot be guaranteed, but failure can…

The Coming End of Corporatespeak

November 30th, 2007

I have spent a lot of time recently thinking, writing and researching on the implications of the Internet (hence my sparse article posting; my apologies) and what that means for how people do things in a corporate setting.

The most important takeaway so far is that blogging and the Internet will accelerate the death of corporatespeak. By “corporatespeak” I mean the gargled and mangled language which comes out of public relations agencies in the form of press releases, and which sometimes make it into mainstream articles in magazines and newspapers. This is the stuff where a company tries to preserve and protect its “corporate image” and speaks with authority to its customers, and ends up sounding like a robot because the message has been run through corporate communications and the legal department to insure that the company won’t get sued for any claims it makes. Ad agencies spend a good part of their time undoing corporatespeak in order to get the company message through to consumers in a way which sounds like there are actually human beings on the corporate side.

Even though I come from a marketing background, I have really hated corporatespeak with a passion, which is an important part of why I like the Internet. For me, the Internet is about facilitating asynchronous conversations. It allows me to meet people I have never met before, and would never have the opportunity to meet before if the medium had not existed. For instance, just yesterday, I connected with a group of IT professionals in France who enjoy reading this blog. It was good to know that there are people in France, and maybe other countries, who enjoy the content of this blog. The Internet is like a huge room with many small groups of people chatting away. If you are polite and friendly, you can walk up, introduce yourself, listen and contribute to the conversation. Then, when you want, you can say thank you, and move on to another conversation.

And the neat thing is that these conversations need not be going on at the same time.

Now, marketing and corporate communications departments are wondering what to do because they have been set up to “protect the corporate image” and “protect the management” respectively, and really don’t know what their new roles are. It takes a new kind of corporate communicator and a new kind of marketer to say “My job is to engage with the customers (or shareholders) in a new kind of one-on-one conversation” when that is not what they are used to doing.

It takes a certain of confidence and good judgment to engage in conversation. They can’t be corporate drones anymore; that way doesn’t work in this new world.

Did you know that corporate CEOs are human beings too? It would be really good if some of them expressed their thoughts online, without having to worry about getting spammed, etc.

One of the things I have noticed in China which is very different from the US is the huge number of people always in bookstores, especially the larger ones. Many Americans like to get their information from radio and TV and think of reading as a chore. I have never understood this attitude; I prefer reading to radio and TV. Words and text in an article expose how a person thinks, and how they analyze a problem in a way video and audio do not. It goes deep while television, especially in the US, is all about sound bites. It encourages shallow thought, which leads to (surprise!) shallow behavior.

This is why sometimes, when asked to comment on a given subject on radio or TV, I say no. If I feel that I cannot add something new, or a deeper viewpoint which people can think about later, I prefer to keep quiet. If I want to offer a viewpoint which will make people think a little longer and deeper, then an article is the best approach.

The great irony about the Internet is that it encourages the development of a whole new set of soft skills. Traditional advertising stressed divisions along media; now those divisions no longer exist. People have a whole smorgasbord of media available and they don’t divide along media lines; they divide according to where the content is and what is most convenient for them at the time.

The new soft skills will stress:

  • How to converse intelligently with people, one on one, even in asynchronous conversations;
  • How to listen to people and use that information to get insights;
  • How to handle a difficult or bad situation and turn it into a good situation;
  • How to keep the conversation going and add to it from time to time;
  • Being proactive all the time;
  • And maybe most importantly, knowing when not to say anything

Marketers and advertisers being able to have intelligent conversations? What a revolutionary idea!

If you will excuse my initial sarcasm, that is exactly what is needed. In writing, I have found the greatest challenge to be finding a voice I’m comfortable with. Now it’s easy.

The new advertisers and communicators will have to be able to think this way too.

It will be interesting to watch how this all develops…

Another Way To Develop Global Chinese Brands: Buy Google, Apple

October 20th, 2007

Over the past few years, one subject has dominated Chinese thinking on the government and enterprise levels: how to take Chinese brands global. During the runup to the Beijing Olympics in 2008, and then the Shanghai Expo in 2010, this subject will become even more popular, as China’s economic power grows and the US’s economic dominance gradually recedes.

So far, the thinking is that Chinese companies, with some degree of Chinese government assistance, should buy leading US brands and manage them. This was the thinking, for example, behind Lenovo’s purchase of IBM’s money-losing PC division and the Thinkpad brand in 2004. It was also the thinking behind the aborted CNOOC purchase of Unocal, an offer which had to be withdrawn because of heavy US congressional pressure over security.

Outright purchases of foreign companies, in the form of hostile takeovers and mergers rarely go well, even when the cultures of the two companies are close. When they are as far apart as Chinese and western companies, the odds are overwhelmingly stacked against success.

Now there is renewed interest in buying western companies for yet another reason: the Chinese government is sitting on US$1.3 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, and with the dollar falling against the euro and other major currencies, there is strong pressure to invest this money in something else besides US dollars, which will continue to depreciate. In order to slow down this depreciation, the Chinese government has announced that it will establish a Chinese sovereign wealth fund to invest about US$200-300B in higher-yield investments. Within the past year, sovereign wealth funds have proliferated as foreign governments seek to diversify their foreign-exchange reserves out of US dollars, especially as the US subprime mortgage lending crisis has spread overseas.

For the Chinese government, which likes to do great projects which it can then use in PR to the Chinese people, there is a fundamental bottleneck: there are not enough Chinese who have international experience managing global companies. And those who do have the skills usually decide to spend their time and effort in the private sector where their skills are more needed. In one article some time ago, Business Week claimed that China needed about 75,000 international executives while there are only 5,000 available.

There is another problem with creating global brands: in most sectors, it takes an awful long time to create them. If you look at Toyota in the automobile sector, it has taken the company mostly since the period from 1945 to become established as a leading quality maker. When it comes to manufacturing, global brands are not made, they are earned on the basis of quality products.

The place where brands have sprouted relatively quickly are in the computing and hi-tech sectors. Apple has been around since the 70s and has undergone a dramatic rebirth under the tutelage of its founder, Steve Jobs, who returned in 1997 after Apple’s acquisition of NeXT. Since his return, he has launched the iMac, iPod and now iPhone lines, all of which have won critical acclaim from users worldwide. Steve Jobs has shown that he is that rare type of executive, someone who learns from his mistakes and is passionate about creating excellent products. Now, even for dedicated Windows computer users, Apple’s products are something worth thinking seriously about. When it comes to evoking pure passion among users, there is no company like Apple. The way Apple has launched the iPhone globally has shown that it fully understands how to use the power of the Internet and the media to create global attraction for its new products at very little cost. On October 26, the company will launch its latest version of the OS X operating system, Leopard.

The company’s success has been rewarded on Wall Street; the company now has a market cap of more than 148.2B and its shares are trading at $172.

Another company which has succeeded in creating a global brand in a relatively short time is Google, which was founded on September 27, 1998. Google started as a technology company, and has morphed into a company which understands, and is now revolutionizing the media business. Coming from a very strong technology core base, they like to constantly talk about their technology, even though that is relatively unimportant backend stuff to most people. Very early on, Google figured out that as computing, and now mobile computing grew, more and more data would be accessed from online. The question was: “What was the economic/business models which would support it?” The answer is first search, and then other formats of online advertising. Google strived to make advertising more relevant and less disruptive, and strived to do this all with its Adwords solution.

It has also been a success on Wall Street. Even though expectations were high, it blew past the estimates with its recent earnings announcement , growing the company at twice the growth rate of the growing online ad market.

While Google has continued to have a hard time succeeding in China because of strong competition from Baidu, it is performing exceptionally well in other markets. Compared to their smaller local competitors, US companies continue to have a hard time succeeding in China. Nevertheless, Google continues to make inroads in China.

When talking about large investment amounts, it is easy to forget that the most important part of the equation in brand-building is always people, not marketing dollars or yuan. Buying into Apple and Google would get an inside view into how these leading companies are run.

So what is the best, the smartest way to buy into these companies?

My guess is that the smartest way is to buy Apple and Google shares on the open market and gradually build up enough to get a board seat, where the sovereign wealth fund’s proxies could quietly learn how these companies perform, and find out who are the people who really make contributions to the company. Steve Jobs likes to create the persona that he is Apple and Apple is Steve Jobs, but the truth is not that simple.

Be a smart passive investor, not a dumb active investor. Learn to walk before you run. While it may seem a longer, slower process in the beginning, this is actually the faster, smarter and more economical way to go. Can you think of another way where you earn money while you learn instead spending big chunks?

So to sum up, the benefits of buying into Apple and Google are:

  • Great place to park those extra depreciating dollars and get some appreciation
  • Great way to learn how digital online products and brands are made
  • Great way to find out who the smart movers and shakers are
  • Great way to learn how to become a smart passive investor

If the sovereign wealth fund is doing what they were set up to do, they are already buying Apple and Google shares.

Now that would be real smart…

Give Me A Shout If You Are At Adtech Beijing

October 14th, 2007

Adtech Beijing will be coming up on October 16-17 at the China World Hotel in Beijing.

Since I did not get an invitation to address that other important meeting taking place in Beijing on Oct. 15, I decided to go to Adtech.

Just kidding! Adtech has a great list of speakers. Sure, you don’t get a chance to plot the course of the world’s most populous nation for the next five years, but it makes for a good second choice.

Many people whom I have met on the Internet, but have never had the pleasure of meeting in person will also be attending Adtech.

If you are one of those people going and would like to meet, please give me a call at one three five five two zero one zero four nine three.

It would be great to meet and put a face on the person; I’m sure we’ll have plenty to talk about!