Tag: public relation

Harvest Queen: Every day is bountiful for tireless PR maven and sports mentor Esther Ma

Esther Ma makes her entrance at one of her favourite Chinese restaurants so quickly and quietly that few realise she has arrived until she is tucked away in our makeshift dressing room. Rocking black from head to toe, she appears almost to the minute of our agreed call time – a rare feat for personalities of her stature.

“I was just built like this; discipline has always been with me, especially with time,” she says. “I always make sure that every minute of the day is used to good purpose.” Flashing a brilliant smile as she hangs up her clothes and lays out her accessories and makeup, she adds: “I do my cardio religiously first thing in the morning – I guess this is what makes me feel young, energetic and alive.”

Esther Ma is best known as the PR genius behind Prestique, an agency she created almost 30 years ago that has represented, practically from A to Z, the world’s leading names. In fact, she wrote a book on the subject – one of five she has penned – called, simply, The A to Z of PR. She also co-founded Harvest Sky in 2016 with her husband, Harvey Lee and good friend Christina Gaw. The sports management company takes care of 30 of Hong Kong’s best athletes, including Olympians and Asian Games medallists, in a venture that leverages her long-held passion for branding and mentoring.

With all her strengths reflected in an impressive resume of professional projects that distinguishes her colourful career in PR and marketing, one can’t help but wonder what, if anything, is Ma’s weakness? “My daughters. I definitely give in to my daughters,” she answers sincerely. “On one hand I do things to inspire them; on the other hand I let them manipulate me.” She and Lee have two teenage daughters who are both attending boarding school in the U.S.

Then, switching almost instantly to laughter, she says: “I don’t know. Is it wishful thinking that I still hope they will take over my business by the time I retire? I really hope so. But see, as a parent, our job is to support them whatever their dreams may be. So I won’t pressure them to become my corporate successors. I want them to pursue their real passions.”

Middle Riddle

As the only girl and middle child in a traditional Chinese family, Esther had to be self-sufficient to become the woman she is today. Born in Hong Kong and raised in a Christian household by parents who were doctors, she quickly learned to negotiate a very rigid living environment.

“At home, it was all about having proper etiquette. After dinner, I would go straight to my room to do more studying. I know this is weird to hear now, but back in the day, only my two brothers had tutors. I didn’t. I excelled academically on my own,” she confesses.

“Whereas at school, it was a totally different story. I always found school to be an escapade, like the fun haven that I escaped to. Sometimes I can be very mischievous – it’s kind of like a therapeutic outlet for me.”

It is a Ma signature to deliver telling insights in a self-deprecating package. But press a little and she states plainly what her legacy will be. “Confidence and self-belief,” she says. “Even during my formative years, I made my own decisions without consulting my busy parents. Is it a middle-child thing? Maybe. But I guess it all worked out in the end for me.” She laughs: “Even when I applied to boarding schools and universities, I only told my parents that I got in because I needed their financial assistance. I never discussed my school list with them”.

Her Cup of Tea

Creativity is the very essence of her being and it extends to using a teacup to hold a mirror she needs while doing her own makeup. Multitasking as ever, she recounts her success story in the world of PR. Initially, she worked at an investment bank in New York after gaining an economics degree from the University of California, Berkeley. However, the long hours and number-crunching didn’t inspire her to continue along this path.

“I worked 16 hours every day. So one day I just said I had enough of this. I took the subway to Columbia Business School and talked to the admissions director. I told her I really wanted to switch careers and I didn’t think finance was my cup of tea. And given that I’m such a personable girl, I really wanted to get into something more related to human connections and interpersonal relations.”

She took an MBA in management and marketing at Columbia and then she got herself a summer internship with Procter & Gamble. Winning them over, she was offered a permanent position in Hong Kong and was assigned to lead a Japanese beauty brand called SK-II. That was when P&G bought over Max Factor and the brand was renamed SK-II.

“That job required a lot of PR skills,” she recalls. “I was so excited to write press releases and come up with gimmicky, creative ideas for the campaign. I had to train the team and I really loved it. I was very proud to be called ‘the woman behind SK-II’ and ended up receiving the Regional SK-II Brand-Building Award from Procter & Gamble.”

Additionally, she co-chaired the Women’s Committee at the Columbia Business School and built a fundraiser for the Pan-Asian confererence room at the new campus.

Spin to Win

As Ma’s career evolved, so did her interests. As she is a self-taught interior designer and cook, she designed her own ‘Harvest Menu’ – a play on the couple’s first names, Harvey and Esther – and is an avid golfer, a singer and an art lover among many other hobbies. She spins the lazy Susan on the table as a means to explain how she finds the time for the multiple accomplishments and diversions in life. Mimicking selecting dim-sum delicacies from the turntable, she elaborates on the rewards of doing so much.

“Balance and time management! You have to find your balance and prioritise. This is explained in my book Harvest of the 7 Human Vines,” she says. “Similar to having different dishes, you just have to keep on spinning it all the time to make room (and time) for each one. Family, career, hobbies, spiritual, personal – all of it. Have a little bit of everything. With this kind of purposeful mentality, none of my dishes will ever be empty.”

Although she constantly replenishes the bowl of life, she is still hungry for more. “For me, it’s that inner drive to live a fulfilling and purpose-driven life,” she adds.

Asked which rule she would secretly love to break, she draws a final metaphor of life and sports. “I think every golfer should be given two free mulligans on every hole. You can play another tee shot, because sometimes, you know, people should be given a second chance, so they don’t repeat the same mistake,” she explains.

It would be easy to assume a confidence like Ma’s is innate, but that would be a disservice to the maternal side of her character that has matured over the years. It enters the scene as soon as the interview ends: “Should I get some food for all of us? The dim sum here is fantastic. Let’s eat together; I’m starving!”

Interview & Art Direction: Joseff Musa; Photographer: Jack Law; Videographer: Jack Fontanilla; Venue: The Summit; Brands: Shiatzy Chen, Versace & Chloe; Cover: Black shirt and black skirt by Versace, Purple fur edge coat by Shiatzy Chen

Life of Prime

A great-grand daughter of the founder of KMB, Amanda Lui began her career with the family business, before launching Prime, now one of Hong Kong’s leading leisure and lifestyle public relations consultancies.

Click here to see Amanda Liu on video

What was your first job?

Working in the Traffic Department of the Kowloon Motor Bus Company (KMB). It was my job to go out and queue up every morning – come rain or shine, in the heat and the cold – and check if the buses were running on time. According to my father, this was the best way for me to get to know how the bus captains and passengers felt. It actually gave me a great grounding. When I later went to work in the PR section – and had to deal with complaint letters – I could really appreciate the overall situation.

What about your parents? What were their occupations?

Well, my great-grandfather founded KMB, so everyone on my father’s side of the family worked there. My mum, though, was born in Australia, then went on to work as a nurse in Sydney. She was just 18 when she married my dad. She then moved to Hong Kong and got heavily involved in charity work.

She didn’t just work as a fundraiser. She actually got directly involved with helping the disabled. A lot of her time was spent at the Caritas Hospital where she worked with cerebral palsy sufferers. Her training as a nurse meant she was able to teach the volunteers a lot about the special care required.

It was through her work that she met and fell in love with a little three-year-old boy with cerebral palsy. My parents went on to adopt him and he thus became my brother. He’s now 27 years old.

Later, when the Vietnamese refugees started arriving in Hong Kong, she used to go to the internment camps to teach the kids English. This improved their chances of being adopted and taken overseas. Even today, she still gets thank you letters from some of those children.

I inherited her commitment to charities. One that I always try to support is the Faith in Love Foundation, run by Gigi Chao – a very great friend of mine – and Sean, her partner. Gigi is now arranging to take my handicapped brother for a helicopter ride for his birthday. It has always been his dream and she’s making it happen for him. She does a lot of good work with severely handicapped children. She truly is one of Hong Kong’s unsung heroes.

Is there any profession you consider particularly overpaid?

Sports players. Especially those footballers who get transferred to clubs on multi-million dollar contracts. While I respect their ability, I genuinely doubt that the players are really worth that sort of money, especially when compared with other specialist professions. In the case of golfers, though, I don’t resent the amount of prize money they can win. They have to put in so much time and effort before they eventually turn professional. It’s really more like a return on their investment.

What is the worst piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

I seek advice a lot, but usually from my parents or other members of my family. I genuinely don’t recall them ever giving me any bad advice. Maybe I’ve just been lucky with the people I’ve asked. My folks have always been my “go to” people for advice. I’ve sought their take on just about everything – work, studies, boyfriends…

For my part, I am often quite hesitant about giving advice, especially with regard to relationships, as I feel I only usually know one side of the story. When someone talks about a problem, they are often really talking to themselves and looking for confirmation about a decision they have already formulated in their own mind.

 

Is there a particular TV programme that you actively dislike?

There isn’t, actually, really much decent TV to watch in Hong Kong these days. I definitely believe the market should be opened up. For the past few days I’ve been watching the new Viu channel. It is really quite good. I have a lot of friends who work at TVB, both actors and actresses, but many of them are now moving to China.

When I was living in Shanghai, I watched only local programmes, largely because cable TV was either too expensive or just not available in many areas. The dramas, game shows and other programme were really good and not because of the use of CGI or anything. They were just well shot, well thought out and had good dialogue.

Sadly, Hong Kong seems to be stuck in something of a time capsule, happy just to copy anything that is coming out of America. The mainland talent shows are just so much better. They put so much effort into them. It’s the same with Korea’s K-Pop shows. In Hong Kong, they just try to turn things round for a quick buck without making much effort.

If you could make your own TV show, what format would you opt for?

Actually, I used to host my own TV show when I was Chief Operating Officer of RoadShow, the channel I set up while I was working for KMB. Initially, we bought programming from the likes of the BBC, but we really wanted to localise our content and decided to create some in-house programming.

At first, we struggled to find the right talent. We then started working with the Emperor Group (a Hong Kong based media and trading conglomerate) and their new singers would come on to do the hosting for us. Our 2.2 million audience of bus passengers meant they were bound to get noticed. By the time they produced their first album, they were already well-known.

I then started hosting my own programme, typically featuring sports, cooking, quizzes and facts about Hong Kong. I really enjoyed it and people began to think that I was a TV host, rather the COO of the company. Some of my friends said I should have had my own talk show. So, in answer to the question, I would love my own chat show, a comedic one like Conan O’Brien’s.

Do you have a Chinese saying you particularly treasure?

I do, but it doesn’t really make sense in translation. It’s chi sin, chi sin – literally meaning “crazy, crazy.” I use it as an off-hand reaction. When I was very young, my best friend – the singer Karen Mok – and I always used that phrase. We took the bus to the Diocesan Girls’ School together every day and we started saying this about anything that bugged us. It wasn’t meant in a bad way but just to vent how we were feeling. Once, after we hadn’t seen each for many years, we met up again in Hong Kong and we immediately started using that phrase again. It was chi sin.

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Who do you regard as one of history’s most formidable characters?

Nelson Mandela. I went to South Africa about five years ago and took a trip out to the prison on Robben Island where he had been held. I stood in the tiny cell that had been his home for all those years and looked out of its tiny window. I was so amazed that, instead of becoming very bitter, he became such an inspirational leader and statesman.

Are you one of nature’s singers?

No. Listen to my voice. I don’t even have a very feminine tone. I clearly missed out on the singing gene. My cousins – James and William – both sing beautifully. James is always making recordings and William can just stand up and sing anytime, anyplace. And he often does.

Are you a keen diary keeper?

That was one of my habits when I was growing up, at least until I went to school in Vancouver. Then I realised that my parents had found them and read them while I was away. When I returned from high school, they knew so much about me that they weren’t supposed to. While they didn’t mean to pry, they did find what was in them hilarious.

 

What’s your astrological sign?

I am a Pisces. My birthday is at the end of February. Typically, we are supposed to be romantic, head-in-the-clouds types and super creative. I think that’s true of me. The sign for Pisces is two fish, one swimming up and the other swimming down. I’ve met several Pisces people that are very laid-back, like the downward swimming fish. I am one of those that is always swimming upwards. I’m very competitive.

When did you last go to a press launch?

Yesterday – I went to the launch of Ruco, Karen Mok’s new line of rubber shoe. She is collaborating with Judy Yu (the founder of Carsac, a luxury products distributor) on the design of a whole new collection. It’s a strange question as I now work in PR myself. After leaving RoadShow, I went off to Shanghai to study Mandarin. I liked the place so much I stayed and opened my own events management company. When I finally returned to Hong Kong, I decided to move into public relations, something I’d been involved with at KMB. The upshot of that was Prime, my own PR company.

Do you have a favourite book?

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. It’s all about 9/11, but you only realise that when you’re quite far into it. It revolves around a little boy living in New York in this imaginary world. It turns out his father was killed during the Twin Towers attack. It’s very moving and one of those stories that draws you back in time and again. I’ve read it about four times.

What would you look for in an ideal partner?

Honesty, first and foremost. They would also need to have good sense of humour, one which matches mine, giving them a good outlook on life. They should also be driven and have a real aim in life, some goal they really want to achieve.

Have you been unfortunate enough to have a near-death experience?

No, but I have had an “awakening” experience while sky diving. I am normally a very happy sort person but, a few years ago, I was at a very low point. I went to visit my folks in Australia and my cousin suggested I do a sky dive. It proved hugely exhilarating. It made me feel so small, but so alive. It put all my problems into true perspective.