---
title: "Former Pepsi and Master Kong CMO Richard Lee: How to View Brand Marketing in This Era"
description: "Richard Lee, who led marketing at Pepsi China for 20 years, shares his insights on brand marketing, emphasizing the importance of creating brand IP, using entertainment marketing effectively, and adapting to changing media landscapes."
author: "谷晓丹"
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published: "2020-10-18"
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# Former Pepsi and Master Kong CMO Richard Lee: How to View Brand Marketing in This Era

> Richard Lee, who led marketing at Pepsi China for 20 years, shares his insights on brand marketing, emphasizing the importance of creating brand IP, using entertainment marketing effectively, and adapting to changing media landscapes.

Richard Lee's marketing career at Pepsi China began in 1997 and lasted 20 years, during which the marketing campaigns he led influenced the youthful memories of a generation.
In 2004, the "Pepsi Nine Stars" advertisement gathered the hottest stars of the time: Aaron Kwok, Jolin Tsai, Jay Chou, Sammi Cheng, Edison Chen, and F4 (Jerry Yan, Vic Chou, Ken Chu, Vanness Wu). In 2011, the "Bring Happiness Home" (把乐带回家) advertising series was launched and continued for 9 years, becoming Pepsi China's most famous and enduring advertising IP. The "Monkey King Family" episode starring Liu Xiao Ling Tong moved countless people. The Pepsi Music Chart (百事音乐风云榜) featured popular Chinese singers and hit songs, becoming a spiritual treasure for music enthusiasts...
△ "Bring Happiness Home" "Monkey King Family" episode
In 2017, Lee left his position as Chief Marketing Officer for PepsiCo Greater China and Master Kong Beverage Holdings Co., Ltd. He then became Chairman of Live Nation China, a world-leading entertainment company. Currently, he serves as a senior consultant for the Master Kong Group, providing brand guidance to the instant noodles, beverages, and Pepsi beverages divisions.
As the mastermind behind marketing campaigns, he is different from most CMOs. Besides the marketing circle, Lee is also well-known in the entertainment and advertising circles. At his core, he has an artistic side in addition to his business acumen.
Lee grew up in Hong Kong during the golden age of Hong Kong cinema. However, like many stories in Hong Kong films, when faced with career choices, he yielded to family pressure and chose to study business at a prestigious university—the University of California, Berkeley, majoring in business administration. After completing his MBA at Harvard, he embarked on a marketing career. But Lee does not regret this; instead, he feels fortunate that his love for movies has positively contributed to his work.
Because of his different perspective, Lee approaches marketing with more boldness and innovation, which helped Pepsi China gradually establish multiple marketing IPs to convey brand value and content to consumers. However, technological changes in the media environment have increased pressure on today's marketers. The era of creating mega-stars is gone, making entertainment marketing and celebrity strategies for FMCG brands different from the past.
In Lee's rich marketing experience, which marketing ideas and values remain applicable today, and how does he view brand marketing in this era? YiMagazine from China Business Network (CBN) talked with Lee.
Y=YiMagazine from CBNL=Lee
Y: **What are the three marketing campaigns or advertisements you are most satisfied with during your time at Pepsi?** L: The ones I am most proud of are "Pepsi Nine Stars," Pepsi Taobao, and "Bring Happiness Home." In 2004, "Pepsi Nine Stars" invited nine stars of different styles and used a movie-making approach to shoot the advertisement, which was very rare at that time.
The 2004 "Pepsi Nine Stars" advertisement
Using "micro-movies" for advertising is related to my love for movies; my other advertising works are also conceived from a cinematic perspective. The creative idea was my own. At that time, the entire production team of over 100 people flew to Jordan for the shoot, and the advertising budget was enormous. I believed that good content would spread organically, so I reduced media spending. Although securing the budget was very difficult, I was willing to take a gamble and risk convincing the company. If that advertisement had failed, I would have been finished. In 2012, Pepsi and Tmall jointly built a creative lifestyle platform for young people called "Pepsi Taobao." Unlike a brand flagship store, this platform did not sell Pepsi products but gathered trendy brands favored by young people.
Pepsi Taobao homepage | Image source: Richard Lee
Pepsi Taobao mainly consisted of four sections: Shopping World, Entertainment Space, Food World, and Original 108. Here, young people could shop, have fun, share experiences, and engage in creative entrepreneurship, similar to today's "Xiaohongshu" (Little Red Book). At that time, Pepsi hoped to attract more young consumers on the e-commerce platform with the value of "Create for Desire," achieving innovation, creativity, and self-creation. The "Bring Happiness Home" advertising series has continued for 9 years since its launch in 2011 because it revolves around the concepts of "happiness" and "home," allowing different stories to be told, which is why it has lasted so long. When creating this advertisement, we considered three main aspects:
First, during the Spring Festival, competition among major brand marketing is fierce, and traditional advertising is ineffective, so we had to find better ways to communicate.
Second, Pepsi had many different brands under its umbrella at the time, such as Pepsi-Cola, Tropicana, and Lay's potato chips. Putting them together in one advertisement was more cost-effective and overall more efficient.
Finally, I believe brands should have a sense of mission. Not only should they bring brands and product functions with the character "乐" (happiness) back to their "small home," but also bring happiness to the country as a "big home." Many people opposed this idea at the time, but stepping out of the "small home" precisely highlighted the difference from other brands.
The 2012 Spring Festival "Bring Happiness Home" Y: **What marketing lessons can today's FMCG brands learn from this?** L: **I think building a brand must bring consumers "heartbeat, emotion, and action."** "Heartbeat" means the brand is the most memorable (Top of Mind). "Emotion" means the brand's values earn respect. "Action" does not mean encouraging people to buy products, but rather actively spreading content; "spreading" is more important than "broadcasting."
Building a brand should not follow the crowd; you should work backward from the future to determine what to do now. Brands should do "big things." This is not about money but about boldness. Personally, I think "Tmall Double 11" is one of the bolder marketing activities brands have done in recent years. Y: **How should FMCG brands seize opportunities in entertainment marketing?** L: **I believe entertainment marketing includes entertainment techniques and entertainment thinking. Although FMCG products have more opportunities for entertainment marketing than other categories, unfortunately, many FMCG brands do not utilize these opportunities well, mostly adopting conservative and common practices like direct sponsorship or signing celebrities.** The entertainment industry in this era offers more choices, but audiences often have a three-minute passion. Some variety shows are very popular when they first air, but by the end, few people are discussing them. Popular variety shows have high cooperation costs due to many sponsoring brands.
In fact, each variety show has a different tone. Some brands sponsor various shows just to gain visibility without considering whether the brand's philosophy aligns with the show's tone, which can affect consumers' favorability toward the brand. When I did entertainment marketing at Pepsi, I had a different mindset: **establish your own brand IP** and then use it to convey brand value and content. I believe this is the most effective marketing approach.
For example, when we created the "Pepsi Music Chart," we considered that there were not enough suitable celebrities to sign each year. But if we had a platform, that problem would not exist because every celebrity on the platform could become an "invisible advertisement" for Pepsi.
This music chart was launched in cooperation with Guangxian Media. Unlike brands that simply sponsor variety shows, we could deeply engage in the entire upstream and downstream chain, such as investment, offline activities, and record distribution.
The 2005 Fifth Pepsi Music Chart Awards Ceremony | Image source: Visual China
Y: **How should FMCG brands sign celebrities in today's entertainment environment?** L: Today's celebrities are different from the past because there are too few super stars who can stay popular for a long time. Many celebrities are popular for a while and then fade away, and this change is very fast. Once a very popular celebrity emerges, they sign with many brands because no one knows how long they will stay popular. So **they can only monetize quickly by taking on more advertisements in the short term. As a result, the influence celebrities bring to brands is not too significant.** Pepsi encountered a similar problem back then when a competitor signed a very popular celebrity. So Pepsi-Cola turned the story around and signed Wu Mochou, saying they would use the best resources to help young people with dreams. This was very different from the previous strategy of signing super stars, but precisely because of this, it made the market react. When signing celebrities, brands generally consider both tone and traffic. Brands that sign internet celebrities or traffic stars mainly consider traffic or sales capability. Brands do not want to be involved in public opinion controversies, as this can affect brand image. However, it is difficult for brands to avoid risks like a celebrity's "persona collapse" unless they do not use celebrities. This is one of the reasons why the "Pepsi Nine Stars" used a group star strategy back then; doing something bigger can slightly weaken other negative impacts. Y: **What problems do current FMCG brands have in shaping brand image?** L: **I think the problem is that many brands are too short-sighted, which is also related to the rapid sales conversion required by e-commerce platforms. However, with the media environment so fragmented and information so noisy, doing "small things" will make people have no impression of the brand. So you must persist in doing unchanging things.** For example, people cannot watch the "Bring Happiness Home" series every year, but as long as they have heard of it, that is enough.
If you compare traditional international brands with today's Chinese internet-famous brands, such as Perfect Diary, Zhong Xue Gao, and Genki Forest, the latter often focus on young consumers' imagination and fully utilize internet communication topics. Many young people today pay attention to social tone in their experiences, but many traditional FMCG brands still rely on advertising.
Chinese internet-famous brands also pay attention to packaging and storytelling. In contrast, traditional international brands are somewhat conservative, make decisions slowly, allocate advertising budgets scattered, and are not bold enough to take risks. Y: **How do you view the future marketing trends for FMCG brands?** L: I believe that with the development of 5G and AI, digitalization and social interaction will become marketing trends. **In the future, new marketing platforms may emerge, and brands can have more ways to play, but the only constant is that consumers will continue to "search." Since they will search for brand reviews on different platforms, just advertising is useless.**
Therefore, in the future, brand influence will weaken, and word-of-mouth will become increasingly important. When channels of both large and small brands are online simultaneously, the inherent advantages of large brands will significantly diminish. Y: **You have been a marketer for many years. What do you think matters most now?** L: I have always believed that mindset is important because mindset determines attitude, and attitude determines state. My pursuit of happiness now is different from the past; for example, doing yoga makes me happy.
In recent years, many things have happened to me and around me, making me realize that the world is too impermanent, and health and happiness are the most important. Past experiences have taught me that the main reasons people are unhappy are: not knowing who they are and what they want; caring too much about others' opinions; and naively believing the world is fair. As long as you understand these, you can live and work with a better mindset.
As for why many people ask me why I could be bolder in marketing at Pepsi, I personally think it is mainly because my approach to branding is different from most people. Since I wanted to be a film director since childhood, I often look at brands from an entertainment perspective, such as acting and directing, while others may focus more on the product perspective.
Moreover, if you work on a brand for a long time, you naturally gain more trust and have more confidence in what you do. If you switch between different brands, you may not adapt well. So I advise young marketers: once you find a brand that inspires your passion for work, you should stick with it!
Source: YiMagazine from CBN (ID: CBNweekly2008), Author: Jie Ge


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