Sam Flemming
Founder

Sam Flemming is founder and Chairman of CIC, the first and leading Internet Word of Mouth (IWOM) Research and Consulting firm in China. Sam has been a participant of China's digital evolution for over 10 years starting with Chinapay.com, the first online payment platform in China.   CIC is at the forefront of exploring Chinese digital culture, helping leading brands in China such as L'Oreal, Pepsi and Nike understand how the Internet Word of Mouth is impacting and can be used to impact marketing communications, product research and development, reputation and public relations utilizing its patent pending text mining and analytic tools which every month make sense of over 60,000,000 naturally occurring consumer comments on Chinese social media including blogs, BBS and social network sites. All told, CIC has analyzed and archived well over 1.5 billion mentions of brands and products from well over 1 billion online consumer comments. CIC has a team of over 65 professionals in Shanghai, including engineers and analysts.   Sam has been interviewed and quoted extensively on topics related to Chinese digital culture, social media and the Internet by media sources worldwide including Businessweek, The Wall Street Journal, NPR and Bloomberg TV. He is also a frequent speaker at well-renowned branding and marketing events throughout the world, such as such as Open Web Asia, The Economist's Branding Roundtable and Ad Tech. Sam was also invited to host an Interactive China series on iTV Asia and is a frequent contributor to industry publications such as Ad Age China. Sam is highly respected by China's Internet industry experts and is considered the leading pioneer of IWOM in China with his blog being seen a "must read" source for timely information on IWOM, PR and Internet marketing in China.

Daisy Zhang
CEO

As CEO of CIC, Daisy leads CIC’s experienced team of consultants, analysts and tech engineers to help CIC’s clients and partners identify new digital marketing opportunities, develop innovative marketing strategies and meet business needs. She guides the team to continuously derive new insight and intelligence from consumer online behavior and net culture, and improve CIC’s research and analysis methodologies, tools and models.   With her extensive background in market research, marketing communications and business management, Daisy has helped to facilitate the rapid growth of CIC. Daisy joined CIC in 2006 as Client Service Director, where she led the team to develop progressive IWOM research and consulting service offerings for cutting-edge brands such as Pepsi and Nike. She also developed CIC's comprehensive product line, designed, built and expanded the client service team, and formulated a structured staff training system utilizing her vast knowledge of management and organizational behavior. After being promoted to Chief Operating Officer (COO) in 2008, Daisy took charge of the company's day-to-day operations, overseeing the client service, intelligence, marketing, tech, finance and HR departments. In addition, as COO, she led the strategic planning for all future company development which aimed to double CIC’s revenue and maintain CIC’s position as the pioneer and thought leader in the social media industry.   Daisy has also played in integral role in forming CIC's unique company culture, value system and work philosophy. She also designed CIC's core client service philosophy - Listen-Know-Participate - which has helped CIC pioneer IWOM and social media research and consulting services and remain at the forefront of the industry.   In September of 2009, Daisy was unanimously elected Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of CIC by the company shareholders and staff. Relying on her unique strategic vision and remarkable leadership, she is now leading CIC to into the next phase of development. She aims to not only maintain CIC’s position as the pioneer and leader in the IWOM Industry, but also to remain devoted to providing third-party objective perspective to both the industry and clients, thus promoting the healthy development of Chinese online communities.   Daisy has wide ranging experience in advertising, marketing management, marketing research and company strategy design. Prior to joining CIC, Daisy served at j.Walter Thompson, Bright Dairy, AC Nielsen and Oracle Added Value (a WPP company), where she specialized in retail measurements and customized research. As a marketer, she succeeded in launching new products and managing the company’s marketing strategy and operations. As a researcher, she created new research methods by combining qualitative and quantitative research methodologies for multi-national companies, leading to new ways for researching marketing channels in China.   Daisy graduated from Fudan University with a BA degree in Business Administration and holds a Master’s degree in Organizational and Social Psychology from the London School of Economics. Daisy is interested in “sinology” as well as “western art”, and is particularly interested blending management techniques from “east and west.” She is also passionate about net culture, likes researching and following emerging trends, and also is keen on taking part in educational training and public welfare related and volunteer activities.

 

Denis Yu
Managing Director of Technology

Denis Yu is CIC's Managing Director of Technology. He is responsible for managing the daily operations of the CIC Tech Team. Since 2005, Denis has engineered and managed the growth of the CIC’s core technologies. He has integrated the most advanced technology such as data collection, data analysis, data storage, data display and data exploration into the IWOM research and development field in order to set up CIC’s unique technology. Denis is a computer science graduate of Shanghai Jiaotong University and is experienced in many computer programming languages. In addition, Denis brings acute commercial insights as well as a strong technical service sense to CIC. Denis is skilled at integrating diversified technical solutions to meet a variety of commercial needs. Under Denis's supervision, CIC's Tech Team has pioneered the expansion of CIC’s sophisticated IWOM information and analytical platform. This platform supports CIC's day-to-day business requirements and provides a strong technical foundation to accommodate CIC's rapid growth.

 

Violet Fu
Marketing Director

As Marketing Director of CIC, Violet utilizes her extensive IWOM research experience to lead CIC’s innovative digital marketing strategies and social media marketing tactics. This includes using a range of social media tools including SNS, Blog, Group, Wiki, and Microblogs such as Twitter, to promote CIC’s brand image and company products and stay connected with CIC’s clients and industry contacts. Violet’s efforts have raised awareness of CIC and led to an expanded client base across a wide range of industries.   Violet joined CIC in 2004 as one of the first company employees and became one of the earliest social media analysts in China, leading the development of the IWOM industry. She managed customized IWOM research and consulting projects for cutting-edge clients including PepsiCo Beverage, Johnson & Johnson and L’Oreal. Working alongside leading clients, Violet developed new methods and strategies for deriving insight from IWOM and developing innovative marketing plans online and off.   Over the past five years, Violet has witnessed the development of the IWOM industry in China, and worked closely with CIC’s market research and product design teams to develop a systematic customized IWOM research and analysis methodology, evaluation system and strategy for providing valuable insights and recommendations. By conducting research on the ground, Violet build up specific IWOM research and consulting service solutions aimed at serving different marketing needs including PR crisis, market research, digital marketing, and consumer research. As a key contributor to Pepsi’s “Pepsi Creative Challenge” and Johnson & Johnson’s “Super-Mom” online campaigns, Violet gained wide-ranging experience in Open Source Marketing and published a forward thinking article on the concept, “Open Source Marketing in China-the Power of Open Source”, on CIC’s well-renowned company blog. Violet also led projects surrounding issues related to KFC’s Sudan Red incident in 2005, a leading Chinese portal’s products in 2007-2008, the boycott of French brands in 2008, the Sanlu incident in 2008, developing rich experience in both IWOM and Crisis 2.0 monitoring and consulting (To read more about her experience, see her article on Crisis 2.0 on CIC’s company blog “Negative emotions and PR crisis in IWOM”).   Prior to taking on the role of Marketing Director in May 2009, Violet served as Client Service Director overseeing the whole client service team, directing all account operations, upgrading the overall work efficiency and quality, and managing team development, recruitment, setup and performance appraisal. Violet also serve as a mentor and teacher to younger staff through CIC’s unique internal employment-based training program, Shine, in order to help train and give direction to newly graduated employees.   Violet is a graduate of Fudan University in Shanghai. She is passionate about all kinds of social media. In addition, there are three things in life that Violet cannot live without: music, books and coffee. She is also addicted to swimming, badminton and Yoga, which help her feel re-energized.

 

Paul Wang
Tech R&D Director

Paul is CIC's Technology R&D Director. He is responsible for managing the R&D Tech Team, who is continuously evolving and developing CIC's core technologies to ensure that CIC can efficiently mine and categorize millions of online Chinese messages for leading Fortune 500 clients. Since joining in 2006, Paul has been responsible for developing CIC's core technologies, which include the on-line Chinese text mining algorithms (patent pending), distributed text indexing and storage system. In order to do so, Paul has built up a highly qualified R&D team, with expertise in natural language processing, search engine and large scale software architect. In addition, by establishing a Project Development Process, this has allowed his team to efficiently identify, develop and manage tools and services that ensure CIC remains at the head of the IWOM industry. Paul has over extensive experience working within the field of Computer Science and Internet Technologies. Prior to joining CIC, Paul worked as software developer with Attentio SA, a leading European online market intelligence firm, and the China R&D Center of Trend Micro, a global leader in Internet content security. Paul holds a Master degree with cum laude on Artificial Intelligence from University of Leuven, Belgium; and a Bachelor degree in Information Science and Engineering from Southeast University, China.