Melissa Chen

Head of Marketing Communications
Uber

Taipei

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“Even the smallest campaigns can have the biggest impacts if you think outside the box."

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Melissa Chen’s work at Uber has turned Taiwan into a critical strategic market for the company, often used as a testing ground for global campaigns that are developed under Chen’s watchful eye. These include Uber’s first mass media grocery campaign, fueled by collaborations with local supermarket chains, along with membership retail, product delivery brand campaigns and the ‘Pride of Taiwan’ social effort. Chen initially cut her teeth at Uber Eats before taking on broader marketing communications leadership, and also serves a culture lead at the company, helping to develop the ‘Manager Academy’ global initiative to develop future leaders. 

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How do you define innovation?
One of my favorite quotes doubles as Einstein’s most famous: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” My remix of this for innovation is “consistently doing different things over and over and documenting the difference in results that transpires.” Innovation without accountability is cooking without a measuring cup.

What is the most innovative PR or marketing initiative you've seen over the past 12 months?
I want to shamelessly vote for the campaign my team brought to life. To champion our category-leading local selection credentials, we launched “Pride of Taiwan”, a social-first campaign where we rallied the people of Taiwan to vote for what they deemed to be the most iconic Taiwanese dish to be put on the world stage. Taiwan voted, and as promised we featured bubble tea in Times Square in the heart of New York City. The pride of Taiwan was brought to life by the aptly named campaign.

In your opinion, which brands and/or agencies are most innovative in their approach to PR and marketing?
Innovation is in our DNA here at Uber and Uber Eats, with Bold, Direct, With Heart as our tone of voice. We have partnered with a fantastic agency village and together are a force of fearless optimists through every touchpoint and through every form of communication.

Describe a moment in your career that you would consider to be innovative.
When I had a cross-sector assignment from J&J consumer to J&J medical sector, I tried to generate the buzz and awareness of the launch of a new bone nail product to fix hip fractures by making the product demo model into (very real and still tasty) cupcakes in the largest orthopedics annual congress in Taiwan. It created a high volume of cut-through in the congress and surgeons were drawn to our booth in droves to get to know more about our product. Furthermore, we also generated a massive amount of user-generated content by surgeons with photos of them holding cupcakes shared in their social media accounts!

Who do you admire for his/her approach to innovation?
Lucinda Barlow aka Wonder Woman as we know her within Uber circles. She’s a catalyst of innovative ideas in her daily job as APAC Head of Marketing at Uber. A recent case is that she scaled her inspiration beyond the marketing organization to all APAC staff by launching the “Snowstorm” initiative to empower everyone in Uber APAC to brainstorm ideas, no matter how big or small, as she believes everyone is born creative and can become more creative in our everyday work and lives. She is the heart, soul and very creative mind behind our greatest and most innovative ideas.

How do you get out of a creativity rut?
I just dance Les Mills BodyJam in gym classes and lose myself (and literally lose weight in the process) with moves along to upbeat music.

What advice would you give to the PR industry around embracing innovation?
Just test, learn, and optimize. Never feel you have to be all set to start to innovate. You can start with campaigns of any kind of scale. Even the smallest campaigns can have the biggest impacts if you think outside the box.

What would you be doing if you weren't doing your current job?
Supporting social enterprise to build a sustainably self-funded business model is something that I’m passionate about and might seriously explore in the future.

Which book/movie/TV show/podcast/playlist/other cultural source has provided inspiration over the past year?
Top Gun: Maverick. Best movie of the year for providing inspiration for personal development, leadership, innovation, and just being highly entertaining.

How would you like to see work culture, and the role of the office, evolve?
The RTO (return-to-office) initiative is not optimized for productivity and efficiency, but to facilitate better collaboration and more opportunities for innovation with collective wisdom from real interactions. There is no substitute for the chemistry that comes to life when you get brilliant minds together in one place.

How can the PR and communications industry harness innovation to make more progress on diversity, equity and inclusion?
Acts not ads. And the progress has to start within the org and its work culture, we should always encourage diverse thinking and points of view.