China Continues to Develop Its Marketing + Product Management

Speaking to my friend Fion at Timev, the Xiamen China SEO company that organizes various internet meetups in China, she helped translate my Social Media presentation in Xiamen.

I have been in touch with her on weibo (Chinese twitter) and its great she is explaining there are more developments in Chinese marketing and internet promotions.

As I have said over and over…as the global economy gets more “flat”, equal, and competitive — currencies evening out (US dollar declining) , inflation (China labor and raw materials are skyrocketing), and education / information flow (internet and telecommunications) — there is no longer “easy money” for Chinese factories…they will have to apply more “soft skills”, management skills, use a CRM (client relations management) system. All those things a factory manager would laugh and say “no need” years ago. The customers were banging down their doors in the past, giving them wire transfers quick and easy…

Times have changed.

And Chinese businesses, especially factories for the export business, need to adapt. Fion, at Timev asked me to let people know about their upcoming PM (project management) event in Beijing on June 17. I really wish I could go, but I’ll be having events and meetings down in South China. Anyway, here is her shared info on the event:

It would be more than great if you can say something about this Beijing PM meeting, which is scheduled on 17 June. The website is http://pm.timev.com. As you may know, Product Manager isn’t so “familiar” to Chinese Internet world yet. Some people just don’t know what PM means, or how important this role may play in a company. Maybe you would like to discuss this topic a bit in your blog? 🙂

And please do mention our PM meeting in Beijing. We have invited almost 20 senior Internet PMs to be our speakers this time, including Chairman and CEO of Qihoo 360, CEO of meitu.com, VP of 58.com, founder of 8684.cn, CEO of EICO Design, and more from Bing, Motorola Mobile Devices, Baidu.com, qunar.com. We believe this meeting will be China’s biggest PM meeting so far. And we expect all speakers and participants will enjoy a good time of learning, sharing and meeting.

Even I was not exactly clear what she meant by PM (product management), I normally think of PM as a PROJECT manager.
Here she calls PM as a product manager, a person who manages a specific product. Not necessarily a PHYSICAL product, but in the internet world, a web platform, a web service, as a platform. Fion goes on to clarify on a product manager:

Well, that’s a typical question, I’m actually not sure whether I understand product manager correctly A product manager is sometimes considered as a bit similar to Project Manager. There’s saying that the difference between the two. A Product Manager is required to “think”, about the design of his product, about what the users may need, about how better user experiences can be created and about whether this product may make profit for the company; while the project manager is focusing on the execution and the performance under certain conditions concerning time, cost, resources, etc.

A product manager is responsible for the overall and ongoing success of a product. In the internet world, a product could be a website, an APP, a software… But I believe product manager can be find in any industry. I read an article on http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/11/ff_bloodwork/2/ about how to redesign a blood test report and help people read it more easily. This, as I understood, could be a work by a product manager too. 🙂 Read this item on wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_manager. And just write what you think about PM. Actually, you kind attention and interest to this meeting is itself an support to us.

And, here’s another interesting thing. I @ you at sina weibo earlier, telling you that I replied you email and asking if you’ve see what we do to promote the PM meeting. Then a friend of mine, who’s actually my previous colleague @ me and said it’s wired I’m talking to you like that, and suggested that I could have private messaged you. Ya, isn’t it an interesting thing? I actually did @ you openly on purpose to test/utilize the openness of weibo. But in some way I think this story shows that most people are still using and considering weibo as private, amusive and even a small circle of his friends…

Still, my main point here is that China continues to make progress in marketing and “white collar” skills. Moving away from making widgets in a factory, and more high tech products and services. Its natural in the development of any country, and for Americans, it means we (as Americans) have to keep on top of our marketing and sales skills to be competitive globally.