Women to Watch 2022: Sandy Wu, Saatchi & Saatchi

Sandy Wu

Managing director, Shanghai
Saatchi & Saatchi 
China

Since joining Saatchi & Saatchi Shanghai six years ago as business director, Sandy Wu has helped transform the agency from a brand strategy and traditional advertising business to a multi-dimensional brand marketing partner that offers digital and social media marketing and integrates online and offline channels. Her efforts earned her a promotion to managing director in 2021.

Wu was business director of the Porsche account. She has retained the brand as a key client for over seven years and leads the team working across strategy, creative, digital and social offerings.

Over the years, her teams have made Saatchi & Saatchi one of the top-performing agency brands in Publicis Groupe China, maintaining a turnover rate of under 2.4% in the past three years for above-director levels and keeping a 100% pitch-win rate in 2022.

As one of the youngest agency leaders within Publicis Groupe China, its executive chairman and managing partner Arto Hampartsoumian believes that she “not only contributed to the growth and success of Saatchi & Saatchi Shanghai but to the growth of the Groupe”. Wu goes beyond business KPIs, he notes, and “engages with individuals with a genuine interest in what they have to say, knowing how to listen and not just hear."

Wu not only helped clients but profoundly changed the agency’s management system. She helped reorganise the agency by breaking creative team boundaries, encouraging collaboration and resource-sharing, facilitated by a new capacity tracking tool and transparent weekly department meetings. This tracking tool was later adapted to other agencies within Publicis Groupe.

Under Wu’s leadership, Saatchi & Saatchi Shanghai won a Bronze at the Greater China 2021 Effies for a Siemens campaign and the 2021 AutoVision China Silver award for Porsche's 20th anniversary in China. She is also a jury member for the 2022 Greater China Effies in the auto category, for the 2021 & 2022 ROI Festival, and for the 2021 Shanghai International Advertising Festival. Before Saatchi & Saatchi, she worked at Ogilvy and Dentsu in Beijing.