Women to Watch 2021: Viva Wang, Weber Shandwick

Viva Wang

Senior vice president
Weber Shandwick
China

Viva Wang’s unique origin story begins as a transportation engineer in 2007. Nearly 15 years later, she has helped automotive brands such as Buick, Cadillac and Chevrolet rise to become some of the most-driven on Chinese roads today. She cut her teeth in this niche area of automotive communications at MSL, where she was tasked with handling the Saab account. 

After a short career break to pursue a master’s degree in 2015, Wang rejoined the industry at Weber Shandwick, where she grew the agency’s business with an American auto-brand by seven-fold and subsequently, her team size by 200%. Presently, she leads a multi-dimensional team working on all aspects of brand engagement—including ecommerce, digital, CSR, media and production—for a growing portfolio of brands. 

Despite the challenges of Covid, Wang has managed to win every pitch she’s led and has overseen the expansion of the GM business in China. She also spearheads Buick’s CSR initiative, for which she helped to execute a 3500km test drive route to connect ancient astronomical sites with modern space hubs across China to highlight the region’s achievements in space tech. The integrated campaign generated 22 million engagements, a Weibo readership of 210 million, and the brand’s highest sales numbers in two years.

Wang’s path to success for clients lies in a teachable methodology called ‘out of the circle’ or OOC, which she’s used to nudge brands such as Cadillac, Starbucks, Mastercard, and Nike out of their comfort zones. This methodology proved so popular, Wang was invited to deliver a lecture on it, selling a cool 500 tickets within an hour of sale. 

On top of that, Wang seems to possess something of a Midas touch on livestreaming after driving campaigns on Taobao, Douyin, Weibo, Kuaishou, Zhihu, and Bilibili. For instance, in a market where the average view time for livestreams is just three minutes, Wang’s team kept viewers stuck to Buick’s livestream feed for a record average time of 30 minutes, a feat that was called “mission impossible” within the industry.