B2B Marketing for China – Insider Insights that AI Can’t Teach

This event brings together experienced B2B China marketing practitioners to share the kind of ground-level insight — channel decisions, cultural nuances, what actually generates leads — that reports and AI tools can’t replicate. For BritCham members, many of whom are international companies navigating the China market without dedicated local marketing expertise, it offers something directly useful: honest perspectives from people who have done it, and a room where members across industries can compare notes and walk away with a clearer sense of what to do next.

China’s B2B marketing landscape is moving faster, getting tighter, and leaving less room for guesswork. AI is reshaping how buyers discover vendors. Lead generation has shifted from a volume game to a credibility game. The agency model is fracturing. And the playbooks that worked three years ago are already obsolete.

This panel brings together four of the contributors to B2B ’26 — an industry white paper written by practitioners based in Greater China — to unpack what’s actually happening on the ground. Expect a frank, experience-led conversation on where B2B marketing in China is heading, and what international companies need to do differently right now.

• Why the old lead gen playbook is dead — and what “high-velocity trust” looks like in practice for B2B brands in China
• The surprising comeback of the press release: why a well-written release now outperforms Big 4 consulting reports as an AI citation source
• WeChat is not a social platform — it’s the operating system for Chinese business relationships, and most international companies are using it wrong
• Why the big agency holding companies are quietly retiring famous names while their cast-offs are often doing better work, faster, for less money — and what that means when choosing a partner
• How advertising has always transformed in decade-long waves, not year-by-year — and what history tells us about separating real disruption from noise in the AI era

Admission includes tea, coffee and biscuits.

• 2:00 – 2:30 pm | Registration & Networking
• 2:30 – 2:35 pm | Opening remarks
• 2:35 – 3:15 pm | Keynote speeches (10 minutes each speaker)
• 3:15 – 3:40 pm | Panel discussion
• 3:40 – 3:45 pm | Closing remark

* The Chamber reserves the right to alter the above agenda at its sole discretion.

Disclaimer: By joining this event, you agree that photos, video, and audio recordings taken onsite may be publicly shared by the Chamber for promotional and communication purposes.

Notes:

In case of cancellation, please kindly note you must email the BritCham Shanghai Event staff eloise.zhang@britishchambershanghai.cn before 5 pm, 12 May. Due to the service charges of Glueup and online payment platforms, we can only partially refund up to 90% of your ticket price and payment will be processed within 14 days after the event via your original payment method. However, it is non-refundable for a cancellation request made beyond the above-mentioned timeframe.