Anna Choi

The Innovator 25:

Anna Choi

Head of Strategy & Communications

Siemens
Hong Kong

"I believe I can learn something from every individual and from every single thing"

In charge of corporate strategy, cross-division business development, communications and government affairs at Siemens in Hong Kong, Choi has demonsrated a rare ability to integrate corporate strategy and engagement, which has helped to elevate the company's core mission. A strong advocate of smart cities and innovative technologies, Choi also leads Siemens' 'digitalization' strategy, including its partnership with startups and its efforts to drive cultural change. Selected as one of the 40 most impressive marketing professionals under 40 by Campaign Asia in 2015, Choi joined Siemens in 2010.

How do you define innovation?

Innovation is bring novelty to your product or your company to serve underlying customer demand.

What brands and/or agencies are most innovative when it comes to marketing/PR?
Facebook.

Describe a moment in your career that you would consider ‘innovative.’
Bringing in innovation to the traditional communications/PR function — by combining the function of corporate strategy with communications. We elevated our mission to serve bigger purposes — strengthening the brand image, yet closely tied with business to achieve measurable and tangible business results. This started from our team — we poured a lot of creativity and innovation into our daily work, and made a significant impact in terms of changing the company culture to highly innovative, backed by strong ownership.

In what area of marketing/PR do you see the most innovation?
Content & creative.

How would you describe the communications/PR industry’s level of innovation?

About the same as other marketing discipline.

Where do you see the greatest opportunity for marketing & PR to become more innovative?

Planning & analytics

Who most influences how innovative a brand’s marketing/PR is?
CCO

Who is your mentor and why?
I have lots of great mentors along my career. But to name the most influential one, I would say my mentor is my mother as she demonstrates intrinsic human values and provides me with an environment to pursuit my dreams.

How do you find inspiration?
I set no boundary to myself and indulge myself in different disciplines — as I believe I can learn something from every individual and from every single thing.

Advice for people seeking to bring new ideas, ways of doing things to their organizations?

Build your creditbility and gain rapport with your organization from top to bottom, realize your new ideas.

In your opinion, what’s the most innovative place in the world?

Actually I would say the concept of a "'smart city" is the most innovative concept leading us towards the future. Innovation in digitalization, technologies, sustainability opens up lots of possibilities for communicators and marketers in content development. While enabled by technologies such as AI, VR, AR across diciplines, I believe these will bring significant change in the ways we make purchase decisions and the way that we live our lives.

What’s your favorite time of day and why?

Early morning when I wake up with sunshine and the peace of mind, all good ideas and thoughts come right out of me.

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