Understanding Cross-Border Marketing With Francis Bea, MD of Eleven International

Yeah, Hong Kong.

Hong Kong, Beijing, and New York is the best way to put it around.

Yeah. So technically born in New York City, and then ended up growing up in Long Island later. I actually am technically a dual citizen—so Canadian-American. But my parents are Korean.

Then I went to school in Wisconsin, and also high school in Massachusetts. And then I’ve been in Beijing, China—I think starting about eight years ago or so—and then about a year and a half ago, ended up in Hong Kong.

I mean, just four people. It’s my sister, my father, my mother. My sister’s actually back in New York City. She’s a nurse there, and she had to deal with the coronavirus. I flew over some masks to her, I believe about six months ago, when things started breaking out in the States. That was interesting.

Well, I mean, it’s the least I should do.

Yeah, so I actually went to college in Wisconsin. But growing up, to be honest, I was just—you know, it’s weird because I ended up in China, and that was a little bit not originally intended.

Frankly speaking, I probably didn’t really know where China was before I ended up there. So yeah, I mean, just typical growing up, you know. I just lived in suburbia, with my sister, and obviously we had a lot of fights growing up. It’s typical—nothing out of the ordinary.

I was trying to figure out my life back then. I think it was—what is it—I studied English and Art History. To be honest, I don’t think I took anything from that.

I did end up later—I started my career as a blogger. Sorry, I should call it a journalist for some tech publications back then. I also wrote for like CNET, Digital Trends—some tech publications that are more consumer-facing. But yeah, nothing out of the ordinary.

Honestly, I don’t know if I am necessarily glad with that background, but to be honest, it did kind of get me to where I am.

Back then I was kind of lost—you’re a college student, you’re like, “What am I doing with my life? Am I going to be able to get a job?” All those questions are passing through your mind, especially senior year. Eventually things worked out. But my parents were definitely—they were definitely concerned.

Yeah, Asian parents, right? So it’s like, they want you to become the stereotypical doctor, lawyer, whatever. My father still sometimes brings up the lawyer thing. But, you know, eventually turned out okay.

First job out of college—I was actually working briefly as an intern doing PR in New York City, and then eventually ended up mostly full time working as a writer at Digital Trends.

It was great, because when you’re a journalist or blogger—whatever you want to call it—you get access that you didn’t have before. You get to talk to a lot of CEOs, a lot of executives about their companies.

Eventually you build rapport. For me, as a fresh grad—I professionally knew no one—so that kind of gives you a launching point for your career. Those relationships eventually help you move to the next level.

Frankly speaking, that was one of the reasons why I ended up with my first job in China, which originally I didn’t intend. I was kind of running around like a chicken with my head cut off.

But one of the editors I worked with at a publication called The Next Web actually introduced me to the first opportunity—a content marketing opportunity.

So yeah, I guess, all in all, at the end of the day, the English degree did technically help.

Yeah. Proud Asian, yeah, exactly.

Yeah, so actually, I used to work at a drone company. I was general manager and head of marketing over there.

I’d been working internally at various startups, tech companies, for some time. You put your life’s work into that and you feel great about it—but when it comes to stock options and the things everyone wants out of that experience, sometimes it can be a disappointment.

After years of that—and burnout at the same time—I just felt like I wanted to branch off on my own and give it a shot.

It kind of started a little accidentally. People had heard that I was leaving that company, and I had a couple folks reach out. My first client was Castbox. I’m pretty sure you might be familiar with them?

Okay, so they’re the podcast company. Back then, nobody really knew about them. The CEO was struggling a bit to figure out a way to promote the company—they’d made some attempts.

I was like, “Okay, I’ll give this a shot. I know you guys need help.” She was a friend of mine as well.

So I worked with them internally for a bit, helped build the brand, especially on the PR side, and helped her think through how to build what the podcast brand is today—which I’m proud of, to some degree.

Back then, I was working out of Beijing with them, which is where they were based. I think now they might have a San Francisco office.

It started there. A lot of the companies that work with me have a similar story. They either tried things, or they heard about the work we’ve done. And they have a lot to lose, because of investor pressure. They want to make sure they’re doing the best job—building the brand, keeping investors and CEOs happy.

So people come to us. That’s how Eleven International got started.

I think that was about three years ago, actually—when Castbox came out. That was us—yeah, and the video and everything.

Yeah, so, you know, there are a lot of nuances when you’re working with people that come from different cultures, different backgrounds. And I think what people don’t realize when you’re communicating across borders is—you really have to account for these nuances.

People are like—for example—PR in China is done quite differently. Actually, in China, you can pay the journalists, to some degree. You can pay them a little fee, and you can also control the messaging. But then, when you’re translating that experience to an overseas market—because for us, within Eleven International, we’re very much focused on helping companies build their brands, particularly in the U.S.—you have to do some education. You have to know those little details.

You also have to understand how the clients you’re working with are used to working. For example, in China, there’s something called “996”—they’re used to working 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. And you’ll find that pretty common in a lot of tech companies in places like Beijing or Shenzhen.

For us, we’ve had to work with that. I’ve sort of figured out a model that works for myself and my employees, where we’re not necessarily working 24/7, but we are on call for the clients. Sometimes I’ll be up at 3 a.m. having to deal with various situations because maybe they’re not asleep either.

And when it comes to messaging, there are a lot of cultural nuances you have to be careful about. Because they’re coming from a different mindset, the way they position their product or brand may have worked locally, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll be successful in the States.

So yeah, I mean, for us, one of the things we’re quite strong with is helping build messaging that truly resonates—with journalists or end customers.

Right. So, like, one example is that—I remember back in the day when I was working in-house, the way you might position the CEO in the States… everybody loves the rags-to-riches story, right? Like Apple, Google, Microsoft…

Yeah, exactly. That’s the story you want to build in the States.

But in China, they’re used to an image of someone coming from a really well-off background—one that makes them look like they have some legacy, or like they come from a great family foundation. It’s a very different mindset. People want to aspire to that.

But then, in Silicon Valley, people want to hear that you started out with nothing.

Yeah. I mean, the way I think about it, and when we really try to distinguish the two words—at the surface level, there might not be a huge difference.

But when you look deeper, I think cross-border is more about accounting for the nuances between the regions you’re going from and going to.

Whereas international marketing is more about communicating a single message and trying to apply that message globally. When we work with partners or get RFPs, a lot of these companies have very specific requirements to be perceived as a global brand.

So we try to build a single message, and then have it localized by the local teams. I personally consider those local teams to be more “cross-border marketing” teams—because they’re going from, say, China to India. But the global message may not apply 100%, so it has to be localized to some degree.

Yeah, you know, talking to a client—well, I mean, one of the first things is that there’s a huge education process.

A lot of them are very used to doing things one way. And obviously each market is different. But when it goes from China—where at the end of the day, it’s about money—to the U.S., where yes, money is important, but brand building is equally crucial, it’s a big shift.

There’s a large educational cost—for me too—in terms of time, effort, energy. When you have meetings, sometimes the point of contact brings you in just to educate the CEO on why they shouldn’t approach brand-building the way they normally would in China—where you just pay for problems to be solved.

That means budgets are enormous. But that’s also why a lot of our clients don’t focus solely on the China market. It’s actually more difficult than the U.S. market, which is surprising.

Companies really have to align their internal processes to equip themselves for global expansion. CEOs are obviously knowledgeable about running the company, but there’s a lot of education needed.

That’s a major roadblock. If you misalign expectations, it leads to issues—contractual disputes, payment problems, etc. In China, contracts don’t really matter. It’s about getting the job done. That’s why companies like working with us—we’re straightforward.

There’s one company—actually one of the largest in Hong Kong—they have operations in Shenzhen and are looking to go into China, but they want to build a global brand. And frankly, they’ve never invested much into marketing outside of China or Hong Kong.

I’ve spent the last three months in meetings just doing education with their CEO. It’s been… interesting.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, the contracts—at the end of the day, when the money lands, that’s when the job is done.