Leo Burnett Shanghai Advertising Co, established on Nov. 7, 1994, is a Sino-US cooperative joint venture. The firm is a partnership between Shanghai Taofen Advertising Co., Ltd and Leo Burnett Worldwide of the United States of America, and it will mark its 10th anniversary on Nov. 7 this year.

Founded in 1935, Leo Burnett Worldwide is a globally famous advertising firm with its headquarter in Chicago, USA. Leo Burnett has been placing a top priority on the development of the Chinese market since 1979 when it opened its Shanghai representative office following Marlboro’s inroad into China, and the year 1994 saw the establishment of the Sino-foreign joint venture of Leo Burnett Shanghai Advertising.

Since its inception, Leo Burnett Shanghai Advertising has been striving to integrate the top-notch brand building, marketing and management philosophy and practices adopted by the Leo Burnett Worldwide and other firms in western developed countries with China’s specific cultural environment and market situations, with an aim to set up and develop our own distinct services and brand building philosophy and to provide efficient and quality advertising agency service for the customers.

Based on its belief of seeking long-term growth in China and joint development with clients, Leo Burnett Shanghai Advertising has never been satisfied with the management mode of just providing a slew of advertising agency projects or a handful of “ideas” for the customers. Instead, we have sought to shape up a successful and creative advertising agency relationship with our customers and to jointly create top brands for our customers through deep consumer understanding.

Along with the company's fast development and growing presence in China, Leo Burnett Shanghai Advertising was approved to open its Guangzhou branch on October 31, 1997 and Beijing branch on June 9, 1998 up relevant regulatory approvals. The establishment of the two branch companies not only served to provide more complete and perfect advertising agency service for existing clients, but also helped expand our client base and our operation scale.

Starting from 2000, Leo Burnett Shanghai Advertising has divided its lines of business into two department: the advertising creation and design department and the media execution department in order to better adapt to the development of the company and to provide media execution services, including media planning, strategy, pre-order, buying, tracking, analyzing and research, for customers with a high price/quality ratio. The company launched the media execution service under the brand of “Starcom Media Vest” in the advertising market, which has been well received by the clients and the media circle, fuelling a significant increase in the number of our clients and in terms of annual turnover. Along with the fast development of the company, we have moved our business office to the 16 F of CITIC Square on the West Nanjing Rd. and the 32 F of the Bund Center on East Yan'an Rd., covering an area of 1,500 square meters, from the initial underground office of our Chinese partner Taofen Advertising Co. Our number of employees also increases to over 190, including the Guangzhou and Beijing offices, against only around 10 people at the beginning.

Leo Burnett Shanghai Advertising has been well recognized among our clients, the advertising market and our industry peers because of our leading position in the sector in terms of professional expertise and service standards. Our firm was listed in 2001 by the influential Media magazine as the annual Best Asia Advertising Firm. In 2001, Leo Burnett Shanghai Advertising was designated as the advertising agency for Shanghai's bidding for the 2010 World Expo host city, which testified our firm's service standards and added to our hoard of honors.

I

Most of the company's clients are foreign-invested firms in China. The company has been endeavoring to provide excellent advertising services for those firms investing in China, helping them to enjoy the same high-quality service as provided by overseas leading advertising firms, which will help boost their investment confidence and speed up their presence in the Chinese market. Take Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and Macdonald for example, these famous multinational firms have been expanding quickly in China, and most of them are clients of Leo Burnett Shanghai Advertising. These globally renowned firms have highly demanding requirements for advertising agencies, and it’s not easy to win their advertising agency contract, and even more difficult to be their advertising agency in so many years. Leo Burnett Shanghai Advertising has won the trust from the customers and grabbed the market share on the back of its professional commitment, service standards and permanent customer-first service attitude.

On top of our existing clients of cosmetic makers and beverage producers, Leo Burnett Shanghai Advertising has moved to develop advertising customers in the automobile and telecommunication sectors in recent years, for instance, General Motors Asia Pacific Ltd, Shanghai General Motors Co, Nippon Paint and Johnny Walker. The expansion of service sectors has effectively enlarged its customer base and turnover, improved the company’s credit standing and ameliorated its profitability.

II

While consolidating and further developing its relationship with foreign-invested firms, Leo Burnett Shanghai Advertising has also attached equal emphasis on fostering advertising customers among Chinese state-owned and private firms. We have been trying to help domestic firms, via our advertising agency contracts, build and develop famous brands in China first and then market them globally by making use of our professional expertise and experience. Beijing Li'Ning Sports Goods Co, for instance, is a customer of Leo Burnett's Beijing office, and the two sides have established good relationship after years of cooperation. Li'Ning Sports has recorded fast growth in sales, while its brand recognition and credit standing are also on the rise, and the company itself is also growing stronger. Our other Chinese customers include famous firms such as TCL, Zhejiang Mobile Communications and Midea. Leo Burnett Shanghai Advertising will, as ever, make each effort to provide and efficient advertising service for famous Chinese firms, helping them enhancing their brand recognition and credit standing.

III

Advertising agency is a special service sector that provides “knowledge” service for clients. Advertising is a planning activity that includes different stages of activities, including getting into contact with customers, data gathering and analysis, advertising decision-making, advertising planning, advertising execution, assessment of advertising effect and information feedback. A high-caliber team must be established first in order to provide excellent advertising agency services for the clients. Leo Burnett Shanghai Advertising has, since its establishment, placed much emphasis on recruiting, retaining and fostering talented staff, and also paid attention to the creation of an imaginative workspace that will benefit the development of young employees while cultivating the sense of “to aspire higher”. The employees of Leo Burnett Shanghai Advertising are all proud of being an employee of the firm.

Leo Burnett Shanghai Advertising followed a transparent design in its office, with the customer department and the creation and design department working in a spacious and "kept-open" office. All of the employees maintain a friendly and amiable relationship with each other. The general manager also works overtime sometime and eats the same fast-food as the employees when there is a pressing job. All the colleagues here support and cooperate with each other, and you could find the embodiment of “team spirit” here at Leo Burnett Shanghai Advertising.

Leo Burnett Shanghai Advertising has been keeping a certain number of high-caliber overseas employees over the past 10 years in order to maintain a professional team with high service standards. These overseas employees have, on the one hand, served to provide high-quality service for our clients and on the other hand, played a role in the training of local employees. Along with the gradual improvement of the service standards of local employees, some of them have taken over positions once occupied by overseas employees. The cultivation and employment of local talented staff is one of the Human Resources principles of Leo Burnett Shanghai Advertising, and the company will continue to stick to and further carry out this recruitment policy. Leo Burnett Shanghai Advertising should be a school that cultivates talented employees in creative thinking, brand knowledge and management capabilities.

IV

In retrospect, the past 10 years of Leo Burnett Shanghai Advertising was a decade of development and expansion. Over the past decade, Leo Burnett Shanghai Advertising has carved out its own niche in the Chinese advertising market along with the country’s opening-up process, set up its own client base and established its well-know brand and credit standing. These are the most precious things to be cherished, and looking forward, Leo Burnett Shanghai Advertising is fully confident of the promising prospect of the Chinese market.

On the back of its relative success in the development of the Chinese market, and blessed with a relatively stable customer base, the company will from now on take the strengthening of internal management, cost cutting and revenue broadening as one of its work emphasis in order to improve profitability. The company has adopted some measures on this respect and has achieved some initial success.

Looking forward, Leo Burnett Shanghai Advertising should also be an excellent advertising firm in terms of profitability and social contribution.