Marshall Tory: Naj, thank you for joining us for this month’s Eat Takeaway. Let’s dive right in. You’ve worked at the heart of some of China’s most powerful tech firms, with brands that have seen incredible growth, but, in many instances, a fair amount of scrutiny, over the last decade. When growing so fast, are there common lessons when it comes to building trust at scale?

Adam (Naj) Najberg: Absolutely – and one of the biggest is that you can’t escape geopolitics. It doesn’t matter how strong your product is or how well your business is run. If you’re entering a new market from China, there will be baggage. There’s often a baseline of mistrust you have to work against – so a focus on trust has to be baked in from the beginning.

What I learned inside Chinese tech companies is that the default mode is speed. Growth. Revenue. You’re laser-focused on KPIs because that’s how success is measured internally. But when you’re trying to break into new markets, especially in the West, that mindset backfires. You’re going in blind. You don’t know the consumers. You don’t have the cultural reference points. You don’t have the trust.

So I always said: slow down. Your KPIs should change. You need to think long-term. Trust is your most important metric in year one. And the way you build it is through human engagement – excellent service, transparency, and generosity. I used to point to Apple. Before AppleCare became a profit center, it was a cost center. They gave away replacements. They apologised. They overdelivered. That’s what earned loyalty. Chinese companies want Apple’s brand power, but they often miss that part of the story.

MT: And when it comes to comms specifically – how proactive do you really need to be?

Naj: More proactive than most companies realise. Especially in new markets. One of the biggest mistakes I saw at Tencent, for example, was silence. Ghosting journalists. Choosing not to comment. When I joined, the comms team would say things like, "Let’s sit this one out." That was the go-to strategy. But sitting it out just means someone else tells your story.

So we started making small changes. Getting off the record. Building media relationships. Helping journalists understand what we were doing. And gradually, we shifted from being silent to being engaged – even if we couldn’t always go on the record.

But it goes beyond media. Proactive communications also means CSR. If you know a market like Bangladesh has gaming addiction concerns, don’t wait until there’s a crisis. Get ahead of it. Invest in community programmes. Partner with local NGOs. Show up before your product even launches. That’s how you demonstrate that you’re not just there to extract value – you want to be a part of the solution.

MT: So, in practice, what has launching something like a gaming product in a market with concerns actually looked like for you?

Naj: Take Bangladesh again. PUBG Mobile was popular there, but it also got tied to some very tragic incidents. The media would cover a case where a teenager hurt themselves or their family after gaming for hours. Suddenly you’ve got calls for bans. Politicians get involved. And the narrative is: this game is dangerous, addictive, and foreign.

Now, that could become a reputational nightmare. But what if, six months before launch, you put $100,000 into a safe gaming fund? Work with local youth groups. Host community forums. Get academics involved. That kind of engagement builds massive goodwill. And it’s not spin. It’s real. You’re showing that you understand the local context and that you want to be part of the ecosystem, not just a vendor.

Too many companies think CSR is something you do after you’ve made money in a market. But in many cases, it should come first. It’s your entry ticket.

MT: That’s a powerful shift. But changing that mindset internally – especially inside a hierarchical Chinese organisation – must be hard. How do you convince leadership?

Naj: Slowly. And usually by showing results. In most of these companies, comms is not seen as strategic. It’s a support function. You don’t have a seat at the table on day one. So what I tried to do was earn it. Prevent a crisis. Get good media coverage. Highlight how a reputational issue got defused. I even built PowerPoints showing what we didn’t say and how that avoided a firestorm. It sounds silly, but it worked.

You have to remember, these companies are deeply top-down. Loyalty matters. The people who challenge are often seen as troublemakers. So comms people like me – we’re the ones saying, "Yes, but..." or "Have you thought about..." That’s not always welcomed.

But over time, if you deliver enough wins, you gain credibility. One day you’re being asked to approve a multimillion-dollar budget and given headcount because leadership finally sees the value. But it takes patience.

MT: What about localisation of leadership? Do you think that’s the next step Chinese firms need to take?

Naj: Without a doubt. You can’t scale globally if every major decision still gets made in Shenzhen or Hangzhou. I’ve seen companies hire great local CEOs in Europe or North America, but then send someone from HQ to shadow them. That doesn’t work. It undermines trust. It creates a power struggle. And it prevents local teams from being agile.

There’s a term in Chinese – “Mao Dun” – which means contradiction. That’s what this is. Companies want global reach, but they don’t want to let go of control. Until they solve that contradiction, they’re going to keep hitting walls.

In the long run, the solution might be hiring global Chinese talent – people who studied in Berlin, Toronto, or Tokyo but still understand the company’s DNA. Maybe they’ll be the bridge. But for now, the mindset shift hasn’t happened.

MT: And yet, you still seem bullish on their potential. Why?

Naj: Because the talent is there. Inside China, competition is brutal. You have to move fast. Even if you’re one in a million, there are 1,000 like you. That creates sharp instincts. Killer instinct, even.

If these companies ever get the runway to operate overseas with the same access to data and the same strategic patience that Western companies enjoy, I think they’ll outperform. But they need to build trust first. And they need to localise leadership. Until then, they’ll keep getting in their own way.

MT: Naj, it’s been great chatting with you and hearing your thoughts on all things comms, China, growth and trust. Any final thought you want to leave our readers with?

Naj: When talking about China, and the tech companies there, these companies are run by incredibly smart people. Jack Ma. Joe Tsai. Pony Ma. Martin Lau. These are world-class visionaries. But the middle layer of these organisations is where things can get stuck. Too much yes-man culture. Too much deference. Not enough upward challenge.

If I were advising these companies long-term, I’d say: create a real talent development pipeline. Empower people who think differently. Reward the ones who take risks and challenge orthodoxy. You’ll get better results, better ideas, and stronger global outcomes.

That’s how you make these companies unstoppable.