Senior Manager, Mainland Customer Insights, Analytics & Creative Development

Job Summary

With the full development and implementation of the Club’s strategy in the Mainland, especially the GBA, it has become mission critical to establish connectivity with the Mainland customers, including Mainland public, Young Upper Class, Member/Owner, Corporates, as well as establishing the underlying platform of digital connectivity (esp. social media) and other marketing assets to deliver the Club’s value proposition. This has become especially pronounced with the impending launch of CRC race day and non-race day activities in 2026, and with it, a need for broader Mainland PUBLIC to understand what the Club stands for and its contributions to HK and Mainland Society.

Unlike in Hong Kong, “broader awareness” of the Club is still largely missing – save for the brand equity established for the :1000 members. To that end, two primary FUNCTIONAL objectives underlie our efforts: (1) The need to fully understand the market (via both secondary and primary resources) (2) The need to creatively (yet in a way highly relevant for the Mainland) formulate content and communications to speak to the Mainland Public in order to foster racing interest (without wagering) and understanding and appreciation of the Club.

As a result, the newly established Mainland Customer Insights, Analytics & Creative Development team will lead this effort. Leveraging largely existing staff, this new team aims to consolidate and elevate existing skillsets and unleash creativity potentials to serve the aforementioned critical business needs. Long term, it is Management’s desire to internalize such creative and customer intelligence capabilities to the maximum extent possible

The leader of this team is responsible for the UPSTREAM elements of building public awareness for HKJC and HKJC racing amongst the Mainland PUBLIC. Apart from the more immediate needs of ensuring attendance and rapport for CRC racing, a more general appreciation amongst the populace for HKJC as a World Class horse sports Club with contributions to Society will be a key task. The team will be primarily responsible for several deliverables:

• Generating creative concepts and initial storylines / creative assets for broader public communication – e.g. horse cartoon series, intro to racing, team racing related fun, general HKJC awareness…
• Working with agencies, turn these series of concepts into longer turn IP’s for the Club with regular updated social media, print, and physical content/ storylines
• Act as the general “intelligence center” for Mainland related customer insights generation, social media listening covering all Mainland segments. Such intelligence should be nimbly converted into action which enables the Club to in turn constantly refine messaging and content. This should include both the “before” and “after” elements of market research.
• In the mid term, formulate an applicable (to the Club and Mainland) toolkit for measuring marketing ROI in light of increasingly challenged business and financial environment for the Club.

Major Tasks

• Generate initial concepts and storylines for the Club’s future customer outreach in the Mainland in order to generate Racing interest – examples include horse cartoon series, “funny horse” series, intro to racing series, “heroes series”, team racing related concepts, etc for general management endorsement
• Complete concept sketches (with agency) help of the initial concepts and storylines and form preliminary prototypes for market testing
• Perform primary market research (e.g. KOL testing, select focus groups with consumer testing) of initial concepts and storylines for further refinement
• Finalize a final set of concepts into IP’s with the initial set of digital and physical content ready for social media and physical rollout
• Work together with the relevant agencies, continuously produce new content / episodes of the different series in order to appeal to multiple Mainland target segments on a continuous basis (e.g. Passion Cultivators, Spontaneous Moment Explorers)
• Establish a general mechanism for both one-off / front end market intelligence and consumer intelligence collection and analysis:
  • (a) Establish cadence, frequency and mechanisms for ongoing primary and secondary research with different target segments including Public, YUC, Member/ Owner, Corporate/ Community, etc.
  • (b) Perform one-off / front end customer research to ascertain initial directions for social media reach and physical / offline content
  • (c) (with agency together) formulate mechanisms and key metrics for social media listening
  • (d) continuously execute social media listening (with standardized reports) for all segments
  • (e) Refine communication messages and IP’s based on feedback from the market/ customers
• Formulate an applicable (to the Club and Mainland) toolkit for measuring marketing ROI in light of increasingly challenged business and financial environment for the Club. Periodically produce reports and dashboards of all the Club’s marketing activities in the Mainland measured against such standards for transparent management viewing and decision making
• Construct a repository of creative content and consumer insights in the Mainland which could be readily accessed and leveraged by different BU’s

Education

Bachelor degree in a relevant discipline.

Qualifications

Experience

• 10 years’ experience in a managerial role within a sizable organization in an MNC with a focus on China market development preferred, with a particular focus in strategic branding and marketing communications. Experience in sports marketing and/or related consumer intelligence is preferred
• Experience in creative marketing (especially upstream elements such as creative storytelling and initial concept storyboarding) will be particularly preferred
• Rich experience working with agencies including marketing/creative agencies and market research agencies
• Well-rounded skillset combining verbal / written communications, strategic mind- set, analytical savvy, and ability to implement and work across functions
• Deep familiarity with Mainland China business environment is required, preferably with a large network of business contacts and professional vendor contacts
• Native level fluency in spoken English / Mandarin required; in particular, highly polished/eloquent writing skills in both English and Chinese is a must; Cantonese skills a plus but not required
• Demonstrated experience and skills in problem solving and strategic marketing plan formulation. The ability to put together business case through analytics, strategic articulation and backed up by concrete marketing plan is a must
• Must have demonstrated experience in KPI oriented marketing including proven success cases in driving marketing ROI amongst other metrics
• Proficiency in PowerPoint, Excel and Word required