A Yum-my Presentation

Near the end of the winter quarter, the Medill Career Services office was pleased to have Ms. Qun Wang, Vice President, Public Affairs and Government Relations, Yum! Brands Inc. - China Division, join us for a luncheon presentation. She introduced the unique practices of Yum! Brands in China and answered many questions brought up by Medill IMC students with examples from previous cases. Some students stayed for a long time after her presentation to ask her additional questions, and they all benefited a lot from her discussion.

From Ms. Qun Wang we came to know that the Yum! China Division, which is based in Shanghai, has been running more than 3,000 restaurants since the beginning of 2005 compared to Yum! Restaurants International, which operates more than 12,000 restaurants outside the U.S. (excluding the Yum! China Division). The primary Yum! brands in China are KFC and Pizza Hut. In addition, the company’s Chinese quick-service restaurant brand, East Dawning, is also developing fast. Unlike operations in other countries, most Yum! restaurants in China are direct stores rather than franchises. We were told that this policy is in line with Yum!’s commitment to quality control and for such a huge evolving market like China, it is never easy.

Around 140 staff members from Yum! China’s headquarters and its 17 markets report to Ms. Wang. Since the practice of public relations is not yet an industry standard for corporations in China, Ms. Wang’s staff continuously faces challenges internally and externally. Ms. Wang also stated that due to the lack of powerful country-wide media and the complexity of each region’s unique characteristics, staff at Yum! China had to be highly creative and sensitive to changes in local societies.

On the topic of use of social media, Ms. Wang kindly requested suggestions and viewpoints from IMC students. Yum! China was aware of the importance of newer media and had already dealt with an unfavorable crisis started by a blogger. Ms. Wang felt highly interested in the latest developments in the U.S.  in this regard and looked forward to constructive contributions from IMC students. For Yum! China, work on social media was still developmental and not yet playing a significant role for business. Nevertheless Ms. Wang affirmed, “…but we have been keeping an eye on it.”

To the students’ excitement, Yum! China Division had created two residency projects to work on this summer in Shanghai. One of the projects will require student teams to build integrated marketing and communication plans for KFC’s summer beverage business and the other one will look to improve of Pizza Hut’s Dine-In business. On this topic Ms. Wang ended by saying, “We are really looking forward to meeting you and working with you soon!”

……….Wendy Chen

Marketing the Asian Way

In the middle of the winter quarter, the Medill Asian Student Association (MASA) organized a panel consisting of 6 Medill IMC students from Asia who introduced the marketing landscape of their respective countries. In addition each of the presentations highlighted the countries’ demographics and/or economy.

Chinese student Nina Xiao introduced Focus Media, China’s most aggressive new media company. Focus Media expands its business through mergers and acquisitions. Such a strategy is still very new in China, which gave us a fair idea of the transformation that companies in China are going through.

Srividya Sridharan gave a perspective of her native country, India, which is one of the four gold-brick countries in Asia. Economic reforms have transformed India into the second fastest growing economy in the world with an 8-9% GDP growth rate over the past few years. Srividya also showed the audience a very cool video, which gave a nice insight into this emerging country.

Rachelle Goh presented her home country Singapore, which is a small but competitive country. Rachelle introduced the hyper-connected trend in Singapore. With a mobile penetration rate of 122.5%, wireless technology plays an important role in marketing there. For example, when you go to a shopping area, you can get promotional text messages. Rachelle also talked about the World Effie Festival 2008 in Singapore. It was the first time that the festival was held in a country outside of the U.S. and it will definitely put Singapore on the map.

Fion Huang, a Taiwanese student who worked in Japan for 2 years, covered some very interesting topics on Japan. The first was innovation. She gave an example of how within one convenience store chain, there are 24,000 new products per year. She described how innovation was a ‘honeymoon phenomenon’ in Japan. When new products launch, they always bring in high revenues, but only for the first three months. Another interesting phenomenon Fion discussed was that of vending machines. To avoid pressure from salespeople, Japanese like to avoid talking to people and therefore love vending machines. Some of the products available in vending machines in Japan include eggs, umbrellas, hot ramen, rice, mobile phones, toilet paper, children’s toys, flowers, insurance, pornography films and some other bizarre items.

Wendy Chen represented Taiwan. She introduced the convenience store phenomenon in Taiwan where, because of the fast-paced lifestyle, such stores provide a wide variety of services. For example, they have delivery services where you can buy things online and ask FedEx to ship them to designated stores rather than your home. Taiwanese convenience stores also have meal packages for traditional holidays. They have iBon for scanning, printing, photocopying, faxing and ticket purchasing. Two other amenities include iPhoto for uploading photos and iCash for prepaid gift cards.

Yoon Jung Kim introduced Naver, a South Korean product. Launched in 1999, it’s the No. 1 search portal in South Korea. Naver is more like a Yahoo-esque portal than a mere search engine. Koreans prefer Naver over Google for searches because of the wealth of the results that skim Web sites, blogs, news and videos. The Web site organizes them by category. Naver gave us a very good example of how global marketing should be done to fit different cultures and people.

All in all, the Asian Markets Panel was a success!!! Thanks to our faculty advisor and moderator, Professor Tom Collinger, it was a very interactive panel discussion. The symposium attracted a lot of students. In addition Professor Clarke Caywood, Professor Frank Mulhern, and Nancy Bennett and Caitlin Lyttle from Medill Career Services joined us. About 10% of the participants were non-Medill.

MASA would like to thank everyone who joined the panel. It wouldn’t have been so successful without all the efforts of the moderator, the panelists, the MASA staff and the audience. We look forward to the next MASA event and your enthusiastic participation.

……….Evanne Lee and Andrea Yao

Chicago Goes Irish

On the Saturday before St. Patrick’s Day, some of us went to see a great Chicago tradition - dyeing the Chicago River GREEN!

Chicago, with its strong Irish culture and influence, holds one of the largest St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in the nation. Needless to say, the city is not short of Irish festivities! As a way to commemorate the holiday, every year since 1962 a portion of the Chicago River between the Michigan Avenue and Columbus Avenue bridges has been dyed emerald green.

As we stood on the bridge, we looked out to over a thousand spectators. The majority were decked out in green and all were anxiously awaiting the river transformation to officially kick off St. Patty’s Day. Shortly before 11 A.M., the boat emerged and poured an unknown orange powder-like substance (it’s a secret, they say) into the river. Within only a couple of minutes, the river was a very vibrant emerald green!

Following the event there was a St. Patrick’s Day parade on Columbus Drive. It was the second Irish parade for Chicago. The first, the south side Irish parade, took place a week earlier.

So it really is true - around St. Patrick’s Day the whole city of Chicago becomes Irish. And who would have thought that more than three days later, the river would still be festive green!

Contrary to popular belief, the green river event is privately funded. For more information on its history, go to www.greenchicagoriver.com

……….Kristine Britt

Niche Communities

I recently came across an online community that reminded me of Tokoni (where people connect through experiences) - the social network that we talked about in Clarke’s class. This social network - PatientsLikeMe - is based on a similar concept of connecting through shared experiences, but is more niche and has a clearer purpose, something that we talked about with the ladies from Tokoni. With PatientsLikeMe, you can share your experience about a certain medical condition that you have, connect with others who have the same medical condition, and learn from each other. I can see how this social network can become a great resource for people - both as an information aggregator and as a source of emotional support.

……….Rachelle Goh

IMC Video

The new official IMC promo video is out - enjoy!