Mr CHAN Eugene
Assistant Professor
Email eugeneyhchan@thei.edu.hk
Eugene is an accredited member of the Canadian Public Relations Society and has extensive knowledge of social media and maintains good relationships with key online media and social media platforms across the Greater China Region. Given his rich experience and direct involvement in the evolution of local social media, Eugene witnessed that social news took only five years to become the norm, half the time which IBM predicted in 2010. Eugene is one of the very few key players in the public sector, during his MTR Corporation employment, utilizing and maximizing social media and digital communication, both for stakeholder engagement (proactive) and issue management for crisis prevention (defensive).
Eugene’s career includes 15 years of agency, branding, higher education and municipal brings a well-rounded perspective to his work in Corporate Communication, Digital Marketing and Social Media mixture; Eugene was head-hunted by Creative Consulting Group Ltd as Agency Partner (Social Media & Digital Strategy), and MTR Corporation Ltd (MTRC) as head of the digital communication unit. Prior to joining THEi, Eugene worked in CHEIL Pengtai Hong Kong (Samsung Group Cheil Worldwide subsidiary) as Group Director in Digital Marketing, where he led a team in strategy development to ensure effective staffing levels and staff quality for required social media and digital deliverable for Samsung’s brands.
As a first Digital Communication staff in Edelman Hong Kong and Taiwan, Mr. CHAN has led digital engagement and online brand communication campaigns for clients such as Fidelity, Savannah College of Arts & Design (SCAD), Astra Zeneca, Microsoft Xbox, Hewlett-Packard, BDO HK, CLP Group, G-Market, Facebook HK Office and ZTE.
On public affairs, Eugene had rendered advisory service to three governments -- Taiwan’s Presidential Office, HKSAR and the Singapore government. In March 2010, he was appointed adviser to Taiwan’s Presidential Office on e-communication and subsequently e-engagement. In Hong Kong, Eugene has served the Chief Executive’s Office in launching the “Upper Albert Road” and the Tendering Committee of the Food and Health Bureau on Public Consultation of Health Care Reform in the summer of 2010. In July 2012, Eugene served on the Media Development Authority in Singapore to fine-tune its media policy on using social media and e-engagement with external targets.
As for training, Eugene designed and provided customized programmes for ZTE (in using social media for global PR integration); Morgan Stanley (in detecting negative public sentiments to its service/products); Occupation Health and Safety Council (in Social Media Trends and Campaign Design); The University of Hong Kong (in Social Media Strategy Design) and The Canadian Advertising Marketing & Media Association (in the impact of Social Media to Marketing Communications.); Standard Chartered Bank (in Fake News & Emerging Technology Trends).
Passionate about serving his community, Eugene has been volunteering actively as a grassroots leader over the past 15 years. He was the Chairman of Shau Kei Wan Community Office, Incu-Lab (Incubation) Executive Committee, and the Eastern District Community Association Committee in the constituency.
Eugene is currently conducting research studies on Social Media and Government Sector for his doctoral studies. Meanwhile, he works closely with the graduate programs at the CUHK Medical College, The University of Hong Kong and College of Business and Finance in HKUSPACE.
His research interests include political communication & social media sentiments, social media analytics and government interest, digital public relations, and social media use within the public relations discipline.