By Ugnė Mikalajūnaitė
On Tuesday, October 25, 2016, Yenching Academy hosted the China-Mexico Business Seminar. Titled “A Seminar on Branding, Entrepreneurship and Start-ups,” the event was organised by 2015 Yenching Scholar Hector Zavala (National Autonomous University of Mexico) in cooperation with the Mexican Chamber of Commerce in China.
The business seminar featured many prominent businessmen from both Mexico and China. Hector Zavala opened the event by outlining the main reasons for having such a seminar. John Holden, the Associate Dean of Yenching Academy, followed by highlighting the importance of building bridges between nations and people. Efren Calvo, the Executive President of MexCham, gave the final introductory speech.
The seminar itself consisted of two sessions, with a short coffee break in the middle. The theme of the first session was “Branding and Marketing Strategy,” during which three representatives of various organisations and institutions gave insights on identity, marketing, and branding. The session was moderated by Victor Cadena, the Vice-President at MexCham, who gave an introduction for the panel. After the introduction the audience welcomed Ivan Chiu (Bimbo Group), Iran Monroy (HNA Group), and John Holden (Peking University). The main takeaway from this panel was that each company has to build their identity and marketing strategy on the basis of their past, present, and future. Only by understanding the founding ideas of the company and thinking about the ways to please the customer in the future can an organization – especially one working across cultures – succeed in the present. During the Q&A session, Mr. Monroy perfectly summarised the lesson that a brand is not merely a name, but rather a symbol and an idea that should give the client a feeling of safety and quality.
After the Q&A session, the speakers received small gifts and certificates from Yenching Academy and continued the discussion informally during a short coffee break.
The second session, titled “Entrepreneurship and Start-ups in China,” continued with four additional speakers. This panel was moderated and introduced by Antonio Riva Palacio, who works at the Beijing Representative Office of CURTIS. The introduction was followed by speeches from Bo Song (Softtek), Alan Olvera (Hurakan), Pablo Mendoza (Bi’An Project), and Wang Geng (Weiresearch). The topics were varied and far-reaching, but the main theme was the importance of synergising completely different cultures, both internally and externally. All these companies have staff from both China and Mexico, making the unification of diverse professional cultures a necessity for successful operation. At the same time, the products are released to both Asian and Latin American audiences, requiring them to be both globalized and also adapted to dissimilar clienteles. Like the first session, the panel continued with a short audience discussion, and acceptance of gifts from YCA to the speakers.
The event ended with some great closing remarks from the representatives of MexCham and a group picture of the participants. Overall it was a fruitful and exciting event, which introduced not only the business relationship between China and Mexico, but also important insights into effective marketing in a globalizing business world.
