Quiet Leadership, Earned Ideas, and China’s Creative Evolution with Wendy Chan
m25 continues its conversations with the judges and creatives setting the pace regionally. Recently, Chris Thorp sat down with Wendy Chan, Creative Partner at EXE Group. Having known and worked alongside Wendy for many years, and as a fellow Hong Konger, it was good to reconnect and retrace her path through the region’s evolution – and, importantly, explore where she feels our industry is heading.
From setting her heart on creativity in elementary school to leading cross-disciplinary teams across traditional, digital, pharma, and PR, Chan has consistently pushed the boundaries of earned media. Named to Adweek’s Creative 100 and MM&M’s Global Top 50 Influencers, spearheading GSK’s Cannes Lions Grand Prix-winning Breath of Life campaign and has presided over global juries at Cannes Lions Health, ADFEST, and Spikes Asia. Through it all, her core rule hasn’t shifted: the best creative work doesn’t just chase attention, it earns a place in people’s lives.
1. Quiet Leadership
Thorp: When starting out, you were told that advertising was no place for a woman, yet you went on to preside over the Cannes Lions Health jury. You have spoken about the power of ‘quiet brilliance’ proving that a soft voice is not a weak one. How have you used this quiet conviction to lead teams and command global jury rooms?
Chan: I never self-identified as a “female creative”; my passion was always the work itself. I only became aware of being a minority when a younger Taiwanese woman asked me how a woman becomes a creative lead. That question made me look back and reinterpret my own career.
My voice isn’t loud, I’m not tall, and even worse, I’m an introvert. In 2012, I served on the Cannes print jury, my first time as a juror. Ten jurors from around the world, only two women, both Asian. That was quite normal for the industry back then. I disagreed with something and knew I’d regret staying silent. I spoke up, but there was no reaction. I gathered some courage and repeated the point from a few different angles, until the other woman joined me. Then the room started listening, not because I got louder, but because the point held up. Later I supported her when she spoke as well. I didn’t let others’ reactions discourage me, and finding a way to be heard gave me a new understanding of myself.
Early on, I really envied people with loud voices and tall presence. Being tall was something I couldn’t do anything about, but I did try to imitate the loud style once. It didn’t fit. I discovered that when I’m loud, I listen and understand less. Understanding the problem and providing the right solution is what matters more. Nowadays, collaboration is the operating model, and that shift plays to strengths women often bring.
A soft voice is not a soft mind.
2. Breaking Through Pharma Guardrails
Thorp: Healthcare and pharma are complex spaces, with strict regulations and heavy compliance. Yet your work on GSK’s ‘Breath of Life’ won a Cannes Grand Prix, proving health creative can deliver world-class storytelling. How do you turn these constraints into creative magic rather than momentum-killers?
Chan: In China, pharma can’t make any product ads or show the logo. So the usual playbook from other categories doesn’t work here. But like any communication, connection with the audience is the key: care about them, understand the culture, walk a step further. For COPD patients, the disease is invisible; the only feeling they have is being out of breath. So we turned the invisible into something visible: breath became blown-ink art, a traditional Chinese art form where you literally paint by blowing ink across paper, housed in a WeChat Mini Program.
At the beginning, and even in the middle, many people said it was impossible. That’s normal, especially when it’s an idea no one has done before and you can’t even find a reference to show. Be patient and prepare to do a lot more work: prototype it, demo it, bring in expert support. Earning trust from the client and the team takes time, but it’s the key that unlocks everything.
People may see Breath of Life as a big success, but they don’t see how many ideas never had the chance to come alive.
Keep trying, just make it happen.
3. The Mechanics of an “Earned” Idea
Thorp: Your career spans traditional advertising, digital, pharma, and PR across Greater China and APAC, most recently leading health creative at Edelman. You advocate for work that earns a place in people’s lives rather than just buying reach. In today’s media landscape, what actually builds a campaign into an authentic earned idea?
Chan: In the age of print and radio, with fewer competitors, top-down communication was enough. Today, with the explosion of paid and earned media, even a big advertising budget can be like a pebble thrown into the sea: barely a splash.
Social media has made the environment far more complex, and consumer behavior has changed with it. Communication has evolved from top-down, to engagement, to involvement. An earned idea is one that gives people a reason to engage: be part of their lives, care about what they care about, solve a relevant problem. Attention is no longer bought; it’s exchanged for value.
For example, during COVID over Chinese New Year 2022, the TV brand Skyworth came to us with a minimal budget. Instead of making another emotional mini-movie, we made the brand name itself meaningful for that moment. Skyworth’s Chinese name, 創維 (Chuàngwéi), became 創圍 (Chuàngwéi), “create togetherness,” and 圍 is also the character in 圍巾, scarf. So the brand’s top management came together to knit one long scarf, a symbol of warmth and connection when families couldn’t be together. The result was massive earned media. We didn’t just connect with consumers; for the first time, all the top management came together too.
Yes, doing advertising has become more difficult, but we all need to change. Earned plus paid can be the future of advertising.
4. China’s Creative Evolution (2001 to Today)
Thorp: Back in 2000, you helped win China’s very first Cannes Lion, and you have watched the region transform into a hyper-digital, tech-fueled market. Looking across those two decades, how has the core identity of Chinese creative work evolved, and where are global brands still missing the mark in the region?
Chan: I joined Saatchi & Saatchi Guangzhou in February 2000, my first move into mainland China after a few years in Hong Kong. From the outside, there wasn’t much to see. A few tall buildings, hardly any restaurants around the office. But inside, the culture was rich. As the biggest agency in China, we attracted talent from every province, and they all thought differently, ate differently, bought differently. I was learning something new every single day.
P&G was our main client, and they had quite a strict playbook. But as creatives, we pushed a little further every time; we must have presented hundreds of initiatives over the years. Then we finally got the chance to sell the Head & Shoulders ‘dandruff’ print series. It won China’s first Cannes Lion in 2001, and it surprised everyone. Guangzhou and P&G were not exactly the fanciest names in creative circles back then. This changed how others saw us. But more importantly, it changed how we saw ourselves. We started believing we could produce world-class creative.
Being in China for the last two decades, I witnessed the changes, from borrowed Western formats to a creative language of our own. China became the most pioneering digital market in the world, with hundreds of social platforms and e-commerce ecosystems unlike anywhere else. That gave Chinese creatives their own playground, and a completely different media environment changed the way of communication. At the same time, the consumer changed. You see it in the guochao wave: young Chinese consumers who are genuinely proud of Chinese brands and Chinese aesthetics, who don’t necessarily treat ‘international’ as automatically premium. Today, there is a lot of great work by locals, rooted in Chinese culture and Chinese insight.
Which brings me to where some global brands still miss the mark. Some are still porting over global campaigns when the insight, the challenge, even the culture in China are completely different. Some even use cultural elements in the wrong way and create crises. The social ecosystem is another blind spot; you can’t just transplant a strategy built for other platforms. Another problem is structural: local teams often can’t get bold work through global approval.
The global brands winning in China are the ones with strong Chinese teams who are trusted to bridge global equity with Chinese culture.
5. Process, Obsession, and the Next Generation
Thorp: When judging D&AD and other festivals, you noted that creative excellence requires genuine obsession. You also live by a clear personal formula: 100% intention, 100% action, leaving the rest to the universe. For young creatives entering an industry increasingly driven by speed and automated prompts, how do they inspire and cultivate that sense and personal craft?
Chan: Creative excellence is like turning a stone into a crystal and a crystal into a diamond. It’s the same material; what transforms it is the amount of care you put in. That’s not about long working hours. It’s about caring for the details nobody else does.
100% intention + 100% action, and leave the rest to the universe, that’s my personal formula. Do the best you can, and try to enjoy the process. You don’t always get the result, but at least you learn something and enjoy the journey.
As for AI, yes, it raises the floor. But it also allows you more time to think as it shortens the execution. The old-school way of taking a brief is still completely necessary. Understand the brief, the client, the product. Do research. Put in time to find the true challenge, then brainstorm. AI changes the speed, not the steps. Don’t jump the steps.
Follow your gut, and do what excites you most at that moment.
6. The View From Every Jury Room: The Industry’s Next Chapter
Thorp: Having sat in jury rooms across virtually every major show from Cannes, D&AD, and LIA to Spikes, Effies, NYF, and MAD STARS you have gained a unique perspective of global output. Looking at how work is being evaluated today, what do you think will be the biggest shifts in the industry over the next few years and what will separate the agencies that survive from those that stall?
Chan: Having sat in all those jury rooms, the clearest shift I’ve seen is in the question we ask. Ten years ago, juries were impressed by a beautiful or clever idea. Today, on top of a fresh idea, we look at the media strategy, the figures, the evidence… we’re looking for proof that the work changed something, that it provided a real solution to the brief. Impression is not the key; action is.
The best brand work increasingly doesn’t look like ‘advertising’ at all. It engages people and becomes part of their lives. And marketers are learning this balance the hard way. In China, for a while, a huge share of advertising budgets went into livestreaming to sell product. But that’s a short-term fix; that money does little for the brand, and can even harm it. The marketers who understand this are now finding a better balance between brand-building and sales.
A lot of agencies say they are ‘ONE’ agency, but I haven’t seen much real ONE yet. In my experience, separate P&Ls across departments don’t work, but a single P&L doesn’t work either. It takes top leaders who genuinely understand every aspect of what the client needs and bring the whole picture together, not individuals who only answer to the KPIs of their own department. The industry is facing a structural change, it’s not easy, we are all learning, and I believe the agencies that thrive will be the ones that figure this out.