Turning and facing the change

Olivier Fleurot has always been open to change. Trained as an engineer, he ended up managing newspapers and is now developing a global public relations network.

"There's no longer such a thing as 'forever' and nor should there be. The world we live in is going through a radical transformation," he wrote in a recent article Don't Welcome Change, Be the Change.

Fleurot, chief executive officer of MSLGROUP, a Publicis Group company, was in Beijing recently sharing his insights about communication and marketing on social media in the digital age.

Fleurot says transparency is a new law because people can have access to all kinds of information, so trying to hide something is the wrong strategy.[Photo/China Daily]

"Asia in general, which is mainly China and India, will represent about 30 percent of our business, which is almost as much as the US. It is growing the most. It has seen about a 20 percent growth rate every year. It will become more and more important in the future," he says.

Three years ago his company had a staff of 50 in China. Now the number is more than 800.

Fleurot was born in France in 1952. His father was a pilot in the French Air Force, which meant the family moved home almost every two years.