Edelman today announced the appointment of Jeffrey Yu as CEO of Edelman China. Yu, former Greater China CEO of Publicis Worldwide, will be based in Shanghai and lead Edelman China’s offices across Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Part of Yu’s remit will be the continued development of Edelman China’s creative, planning and analytics capabilities as well as further strengthening of its corporate communications offer with specialized services. He will report to Bob Grove, CEO of Edelman North Asia.
“Edelman China has grown significantly over the past year and is now one of the largest businesses across our global network,” said Grove. “This achievement is due to our strong leadership team and their focus on creating an environment that attracts and keeps top-tier talent across a broad spectrum of communications and specialist marketing disciplines. Jeff’s extensive management experience in the creative marketing industry and expertise in data analytics will help accelerate the development of our business and differentiate our offering.”
Before joining Edelman, Yu led a start-up named RMConnect that uses UnionPay data and an advanced social CRM tool for precision marketing. At Publicis Worldwide, Yu served as Greater China CEO for more than two years where he consolidated the agency’s advertising, digital and marketing service offerings in a restructure. Prior to this, Yu served 25 years with the Bates ad agency, where he built Bates 141 (now Bates CHI & Partners) into a WPP-owned network dedicated to Asia over more than 10 years as APAC Chairman.
“The changing media landscape requires an unprecedented convergence of marketing specialties,” said Yu. “Data, insight, creative, channel and content must come together seamlessly to address the unique challenges and opportunities presented to today’s marketers and those charged with enhancing and protecting reputation. Edelman China is in the best position to lead this change with its integrated PR, digital, social and experiential capabilities. I am thrilled to join Edelman as it has a truly unique offer and the scale and commitment to be transformative for the industry.”
Edelman currently has more than 320 employees across China. In December 2015, Edelman China won Campaign Asia Pacific’s Greater China PR Agency of the Year Silver Award.
