Photo: Swedish PR guru shares secrets to his success

Johan Bjorksten

(BEIJNG, April 28). As the founder and general manager of Eastwei Relations, Swedish businessman (and former TV and radio personality) Johan Bjorksten knows a little about success. Well, perhaps he knows a lot. After living nearly 16 years in China, Bjorksten speaks Chinese fluently enough to pose as a local on the phone, and his relatively young firm, Eastwei, is at the front of China's ever-developing public relations industry.

The secret to his Chinese success is simple: patience and commitment. "When I was young, my father taught me to learn a language by sitting instead of thinking, because patience is as important as cleverness," he recalls in an interview, conducted in Chinese, with Beijing2008.cn. "No matter how fluent my spoken Chinese is, I am still on the same level as a primary school student," he says, "If I want to settle down permanently in Beijing, I can't stop studying. I've realized now that my study of Chinese should be life-long, since Chinese and Chinese culture is so extensive and profound."

The secret to the success of his business requires more elaboration; it begins, though, with openness. Bjorksten learned early on that his company had to combine strengths of both Chinese and foreign business practices. He recalls a struggle Eastwei had a few years ago with retaining employees, a problem that was widespread in Chinese companies at the time. While some advised him to adopt the more authoritative, formal approach that other bosses used in their companies in China, Bjorksten's instinct told him to go the opposite way. He took down the glass dividers between desks and moved everyone, including the director, into an open work space as a way to encourage everyone to get involved in the management of the company. The results were staggering: turnover dropped from 40 percent to three and Eastwei, says Bjorksten, became the fastest developing company in Beijing.

"What did I learn from this?" he says, "You asked me just now, what I can contribute while running my business in China. Anything that I can do, a Chinese person can do better, unless I can bring something unique to the table. I've really learned a lot from my Chinese colleagues, but I also believed that I had to be persistent about the unique things I had to give. That is to say, we must borrow the best management practices from others to serve our own company for its better development."

Bjorksten has applied the same type of openness to his team meetings. "Every Monday at our weekly meeting, I was the only one who always talked, and the others took notes," he said. "So the atmosphere was very serious and rigid. From my point of view, working in a consulting company for public relations, everyone should have a sense of leadership and everyone must represent the company while meeting our clients."

To solve the problem, Bjorksten secretly asked two junior consultants to challenge him at a meeting. When they did, the response from the other employees was at first shock and fear, but six weeks later, the meetings had become a lively place in which everybody was contributing ideas. "I later told them that I had planned for that meeting to create a lively company culture. Now that this kind of atmosphere has become our company culture, it will be passed down from generation to generation. Now it is easy for newcomers to fit in with our company."

Bjorksten, who uses his Chinese nickname "Big Dragon" even with his employees, also highlights relationships as important in Eastwei's success. But, he says, this too requires elaboration. "When we started our business, all the people were talking about 'relationships' [guanxi] and how 'relationships' mean everything [?] But gradually we found there was something wrong because "relationships," a frequently discussed topic, are a prerequisite, but not necessarily a sufficient criteria. If you have good relationships, you still need to be able to attract a bigger audience and more readers."

"We came up with a concept called 'Knowledge-Driven Media Relations,'" he continues. "Personal relationships are used to develop professional relationships, which means that we have to share a common understanding and mutual interest with journalists and media and we must know what they need. Meanwhile, we should know more about our customer and consumers. Then we can combine the three parts together to produce news reports of great value. In this sense, we can bring our customers the best media exposure in China."

Bjorksten says the key to a company's corporate strategy is knowing what to give up. "If you pin your hopes on high-end clients, and some low-end client wants to court you for a joint promotion, you say 'Ok, let's do it.' Actually you are wasting your energy and zeroing your strategy because you are doing nothing," he says.

"When we opened our office in Shanghai, I refused suggestions to cooperate with small clients and their 'one-time projects.' We wanted to talk about a knowledge-oriented company and establish long-standing relationships with our clients. Our colleagues in Shanghai did have a slow start in the first two to three months but finally some companies started to contact us on a long-term basis, and they became one of the top-ranking PR companies in Shanghai. We need to invest in long-range projects with long-term clients and we cannot afford to do everything."

As for the personal traits that make a successful PR person, Bjorksten has plenty of insight here, too. "You must have a keen interest in learning, have a high EQ, be easy-going, be good at expressing yourself, have team spirit, be sincere and helpful to others," he says, "PR is not something a person can accomplish alone; it will forever be a team [effort] and every member of the team should bring their own characteristics to the team to ensure smooth operations and the best results."