“The Nomad” is a fortnightly published series where I talk to expat PR and Comms professionals, then delve into the insights which inform and help other people to live or to do business in an intercultural world. If you or someone you know would be happy to share their perspective, please get in touch! I’d love to hear from you.
As part of my series about how we can learn from different cultures to embed them into PR and comms practices to help create positive social impact and overcome communication barriers, I spoke to Scarlett Zhao, PR Manager EMEA at Alibaba Group where she’s been working for six years. Having been working in China and the UK where there are a lot of cultural differences, Scarlett shared her opinions and experiences and best practice to work cross-culturally effectively.
“It took me a while to realise this and find my confidence to make inputs because some people will tell you that ‘this is not how we do things here”, but that doesn’t mean that you’re wrong.”
We also talked candidly about imposter syndrome and the ever-changing tech and retail landscape.
Hi Scarlett, how’s it going? What are you up to recently?
What have I been up to? One is The Xec class 2022. The first bunch graduated yesterday. The Xec has impacted me a lot in the last 10 months. Professionally, I’ve learnt a lot of knowledge and skills and it helped me to build my confidence. Also, people from The Xec group, we’ve all become friends. We’ve shared a lot of love and stress (laughs*), so personally my life is just so much better with them.
How did you get into PR and communications?
I studied journalism and communication at uni because I was really curious about the world. After that, naturally, I got a job in a magazine owned by state media in China. Like many graduates, I didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted, so I got into that magazine and stayed there for a year. Then I moved to another magazine called China Entrepreneur, which is equivalent to Forbes in China. I got the opportunity to interview many famous entrepreneurs in China, and also artists who want to become entrepreneurs. I did two years there, then I went to work at Bloomberg Business Week as an editor and a reporter. At the time, my procrastination was unbearable – It was a bi-weekly magazine so you weren’t going to write daily. I worked late nights and it wasn’t necessary. So I needed to change it and that lifestyle. Also, the income of being a reporter or a journalist back then was low and there wasn’t a career progression that I could see. I thought I couldn’t just live paycheck to paycheck. I don’t know about here in the UK, but in China transition from a journalist to PR is quite common. A lot of companies tend to create the content themselves, especially with tech companies, and tend to rely less on agencies. My friend recommended me to the Alibaba PR team and I got in, and stayed in the company ever since, in different sectors, and from Beijing to London.
Being a former journalist, what is your best advice when it comes to working in media relations which is the bread and butter of PR?
Let me be honest, I haven’t done much media relations here in Europe and it was still new to me, and I’m still learning. However, from my experience in China, I feel like I could always think from a journalist’s perspective. Media relations is not just about how you pitch and how you approach reporters. The more important point is what you have on offer for them. When I was in China, I met with some of the reporters relatively often and I could then know what they had been working on, and what they need to make a good story. I’d always want to make sure that I’d have enough on offer and come up with story angles that could work for them.
What is your best advice when it comes to working and living as an expat?
Absorb everything you can. Observe how they do things and listen to what they say. It’s important to learn and adapt. But on the other side, as an expat, you bring different perspectives and different knowledge and different strengths to the team. It took me a while to realise this and find my confidence to make inputs because some people will tell you that ‘this is not how we do things here”, but that doesn’t mean that you’re wrong.
I think the definition “inter-cultural” or “cross-cultural” is not about “another country”, but even about when you work in a country or with different departments in a same company (ie. marketing/legal/product…), how do you navigate those situations to achieve the best outcomes for the business?
I didn’t consider communicating with different departments as “inter-cultural” but it’s interesting to hear that you think of it this way. When working in-house, you talk to different teams and get to know their ways of working quickly.
To achieve the best business outcome, you need to know the priorities of the business, the environment that the business is operating in, and be clear about the goal of PR. I consider campaigning at different targeted groups of the audience is more “cross-culture”, especially when you want to communicate with specific groups. You got to know your audience. You need to learn about their cultures or subcultures.
People recently have talked very frequently about imposter syndrome – BBC also did an article about the link of imposter syndrome and burnout and the mental health issue in the workplace. What are your thoughts on this?
I’m affected by imposter syndrome and I feel the pain of it. I regretted some of the times that I talked myself off. There were opportunities I missed because I was not confident. I was overthinking in my head. And there are definitely times that I say no to things when I should have said yes. One of the best things that I get to do in The Xec is that I have a list of things that I’ve never done before that has to be ticked off. We recorded a podcast, which is a first for me; wrote a blog, which is the first time for me to write an article in English in my name; we joined discussion panels online and in person… There are a lot of first-times because of The Xec. I really need to push myself out of my comfort zone. I feel like I’m still battling it. We often talk about it in The Xec: being not confident enough or being a wallflower. I think Black, Asian, and Mixed Race group are more likely to feel that way. I definitely know that if you grow up in a Chinese or Asian family you’re constantly told every day that you’re not good enough but then you’re not told how to improve. Knowing you’re not alone in having imposter syndrome helps. It’s an ongoing process of talking yourself off it, pushing yourself a little more, or even letting it protect you sometimes.
What are your predictions for the ever-changing tech and retail landscape? What is the gap that we as PR and Comms professionals need to fill?
Tech is always evolving, there are a lot of new things that I know very little about such as cryptocurrency or Web3 which seem to be the hottest words right now. I’m more familiar with the retail industry. I think retail innovation in China is at the forefront of it. The market is massive and there’s more complexity to the retail market in China. There are different tiers of cities and then there are different cultures. What we’ve been seeing over the years and what is coming from China to the West is tech and retail are getting more crossovers. The line between tech and retail is becoming blurred – the trend of retail innovation and tech in retail is sped up by the pandemic. There is also a merge between online and offline experiences. The media has been paying a lot of attention to that.
Many corporations jump on the bandwagon of doing “Pride” campaigns but still support anti-LGBT+ agenda in the background and understandably receive a lot of backlash, and we see it with Black History Month, AAPI Month, diversity and inclusion,… What do you think of the say-do gap of authenticity, intention and action?
Launching Pride campaigns while supporting any anti-LGBT+ agendas is simply wrong. Consumers are information-savvy. Consumers, media, influencers as well as employees will scrutinise the campaign messages and the claims. Any corporation shouldn’t take any chances without self-checking. We’ve learnt a lot of that in the past years. Besides, the matters you mentioned are incredibly serious and they require a certain level of knowledge and research in order to plan a campaign. It’s far more than a tagline, some good visual and social media posts. I think it’s good to see that more and more corporations lean into consultancies that are experts in campaigning on these matters.
On a different note, I think it’s more difficult to make these campaigns for multinational corporations because they operate across different regions and things can vary drastically in these regions. I think for multinationals, campaigning about these causes in some markets that they’ve made good efforts in should be encouraged.
What are your recent creative hits and misses?
The two campaigns that wowed me in the past year are “Mount Recyclemore” by Fanclub PR and “Long Live the Prince” by MHP. I mean, how big you can dream! These two are very different campaigns but the ideas and the executions went beyond my imagination. They both delivered in so many fronts as well.
I am simply obsessed with Chinese cuisine (and I have all Chinese flavours and spices in my little cooking corner!!), so understandably, could you please tell us three dishes that you love the most? (I feel like three is not enough!)
There’s a great documentary on Netflix about Chinese food called “A Bite of China”. I want to introduce a few less known ones.
First we have tomato egg which is healthy and very simple to cook. You don’t need many ingredients at all and it can go with rice and noodle. The other thing is hotpot. When I go to the hotpot restaurant in London, there are not many Western faces. Hotpot is very “sociable”. You all gather around this big pot which has boiling broth of spicy or non-spicy flavours. You put raw meat and veg in to cook it and then fish it out into your plate, then dip in the sauce and eat. It’s very sociable food that is delicious and you can do it easily at home if you have a hot plate pot and some store-bought broth. And just cut up some meat and vegetables and just dig in. The third one is ‘chuan-er’ – barbecued skewers, again very sociable food. Chuaner and beer is kind of late-night street food we have in China.
