Exclusive Interview with CHEN Rong, Founder of Prosperity Academy: The greatest growth dividend for future enterprises lies within the founders themselves.

Text by | Azhi

Before the National Day holiday ended, Chen Rong, who was on vacation in Los Angeles, suddenly changed her itinerary. She rescheduled her flight and flew directly to Guangzhou to personally guide an entrepreneur client in shooting his personal short - videos.

"He had shot more than 100 short - videos, but none of them were finally released. You know, as an entrepreneur, he has such rich experience, opinions, and insights. But in the end, it was the copywriter who wrote some trendy scripts for the boss to read, turning him into a'reading machine'. The founder himself would feel that this approach was wrong," Chen Rong said. In her view, many founders have taken similar wrong paths when building their personal brands in the past because the underlying logic was flawed from the start. "Most IP - building teams in the market today are mainly focused on traffic manipulation, rather than treating IP as a brand."

Based on her years - long understanding of the company and its founder, Chen Rong helped the CEO re - organize the logic of personal brand building. She formulated a comprehensive content planning and execution plan around the strategic goal of the group's brand upgrade, aiming to create a super personal brand.

In fact, this is also the first full - case client that Chen Rong decided to personally handle after the establishment of Prosperity Academy last June, marking the transition from strategy to implementation.

Since entering the Internet marketing industry in 1996 and joining OgilvyOne in 2000, becoming one of the earliest advertising professionals to grow in an international top - tier 4A company in the Internet era, Chen Rong has been deeply involved in the advertising and marketing field for 30 years. She has started her own businesses, including a quality education brand and an MCN. In 2021, she returned to Ogilvy China as the Chief Growth Officer and served as the President of Ogilvy Beijing the following year, fully responsible for business innovation and regional strategies.

After officially retiring from Ogilvy China in 2024, this senior advertising professional who has been active in the front - line of brand marketing for 30 years is still "stirring things up".

From the Internet, mobile Internet to the AI era, technological changes have reshaped the media and the audience. Chen Rong has always been searching for the best path for brand building and growth in each era. In the current situation where there is widespread anxiety about traffic and marketing budgets are tightening, Chen Rong has found that the greatest growth dividend for enterprises today lies in the founders themselves. This is not only the origin of her founding Prosperity Academy but also the goal she wants to achieve: Through the promotion and theoretical practice of the "super personal brand" concept, she aims to refresh the industry's understanding and find a brand growth path for entrepreneurs to survive economic cycles.

I. "Mistaking popularity for trust is a problem in the entire Chinese brand industry"

From the "storm - like" advertising bombardment in the traditional media era, to the centralized portal exposure in the Internet period, and then to the pursuit of immediate conversion in live - streaming e - commerce in the mobile Internet era, each round of technological iteration has given rise to new marketing miracles. With the further improvement of the platform ecosystem and user maturity, the market has entered a mature stage, which means there are no longer explosive growth dividends and no shortcuts.

Why do many people find it difficult to do business? Because the traditional growth models are no longer effective.

With the disappearance of the traffic dividend and the increasing fragmentation of the media, the profits of live - streaming e - commerce and short - video product promotion, which were once regarded as the golden rules by many brands, have become thinner. Once the advertising investment stops, the sales volume will decline. This reflects a cruel reality: Generalized traffic does not bring real user loyalty and brand influence. After the hype fades, it is still difficult for products and brands to stand out.

"Mistaking traffic and popularity for trust is a problem in the entire Chinese brand industry," Chen Rong believes. Brands built on traffic strategies have not achieved truly effective communication. Once a company faces a crisis, users know nothing about the brand's values and product value, which will put the brand in a passive position in public opinion.

After closely observing the limitations of traffic - based marketing and the consumption of brand assets, Chen Rong believes that when multiple variables such as user behavior, consumer groups, platform models, the market, and policy environment change simultaneously, brand marketing must enter a new paradigm - returning to content and rebuilding trust. In future brand building, people are the core.

Chen Rong believes that in the next at least five years, entrepreneurs and founders must learn to build public influence and construct their personal brands through high - quality content.

There are more than one billion short - video users in China, and the average user spends 156 minutes a day watching short - videos. In Chen Rong's view, personal brands have extremely powerful influence in the content ecosystem centered around short - videos, and it is also the most cost - effective way for enterprises to improve marketing efficiency at present. "In the future, the building of corporate brands will shift to revolve around the founders' personal brands. This trend will also affect the development paradigm of the entire brand marketing and advertising industry."

II. "People are brands, and brands drive growth"

Based on her judgment of the current industry trend, Chen Rong put forward the concept of "super personal brand", which is a brand - based growth system centered on business strategy and carried by the founder. This is also the methodological foundation for Prosperity Academy to help founders and enterprises build brands and achieve business growth.

"The super personal brand is the biggest dividend at present. We should build a super personal brand in the same way as building a corporate brand, rather than just creating an IP," Chen Rong emphasized in many of her speeches. She clearly pointed out the differences in the connotations and extensions between a brand and an IP. "Building a personal IP is based on a traffic - driven logic, aiming for data and immediate monetization, which may turn the founder into a'marketing consumable'. In contrast, building a personal brand is based on a trust - driven logic and is a long - term asset. Its ultimate goal is to empower the enterprise's business and drive growth."

In Chen Rong's view, when founders build their personal brands and use self - media, they take control of the channels to voice their opinions and protect their enterprises through their public influence. "The traffic and influence of founders do not need to be monetized on the platform immediately, nor will it affect the company's existing sales system. Instead, it will be monetized within the entire business cycle. Once successfully established, this trust and influence will empower the entire sales system and drive enterprise growth."

To translate the concept into practice, Chen Rong independently developed a systematic methodology and supporting tools. Among them is the "Personal Brand Personality Archetype Test" tool with 132 combinations, which is used to explore the original starting point for building a personal brand. She also developed the "Six - Pointed Star" super personal brand building system with six modules to ensure that personal brand building is centered on brand - based strategies and can break through the limitations of online platforms in a systematic way.

Left: Personal Brand Personality Archetype Test; Right: "Six - Pointed Star" Super Personal Brand Building System

In addition, to maximize the efficiency of content implementation and execution, Prosperity Academy has also developed an intelligent agent to help personal brands produce brand - based content. Based on the founder's brand strategy and personal brand personality archetype, it can customize a unique content creation tool for the founder, enabling him to express himself at any time and anywhere. Most importantly, these expressions must conform to the founder's genes, values, and tone, and be well - versed in various content expression forms such as short - videos and official accounts.

This logic actually combines the classic brand - building methods with the content dissemination techniques in the current short - video era. It treats individuals as brands to formulate brand strategies, then implements them into content strategies, builds a large - scale personal topic library, and can efficiently generate video scripts and shooting plans at any time, minimizing the time the founder spends on content production. Simply put, it starts with understanding the person, does a good job in brand positioning and content strategy, and then achieves efficient execution with the assistance of AI tools.

"I'm really excited because what I'm doing now is exactly what we brand professionals are most proficient in and have the most experience in," Chen Rong said. The essence of this method is to build the founder as a corporate brand, and the difficulty lies in "understanding that person". Digging and refining values, and building content and communication strategies based on them are the essence of traditional brand strategies.

During the few days when she flew from Los Angeles to Guangzhou to guide the shooting, Chen Rong had in - depth discussions with this entrepreneur who had been in the beauty industry for more than 20 years. Based on the "hero + sage" personal brand role archetype, she formulated a comprehensive content strategy around the six modules. In front of the camera, she dug out, guided, and presented the founder's most authentic personal stories, thoughts, and observations.

The thorough pre - shooting communication and the unexpectedly good on - site shooting results made this founder, who had previously "abandoned" more than 100 short - video footages and was hesitating, firmly determined to build his personal brand again.

Another recent case that Prosperity Academy is handling is a scientist - turned - entrepreneur.

"What's the biggest problem with technology - based founders? They 'don't speak in plain language', and what they say is difficult for the public to understand," Chen Rong said. Therefore, she and her team formulated a comprehensive strategy.

First, they restored the scientist to a real person. Starting from his values, personality, humanity, expression tone, and personal stories, they formulated a systematic personal brand communication strategy through the "Six - Pointed Star" system, clarifying his personal brand image, his target customers, the strategies for his products and services, his content strategy, and the suitable platforms and traffic systems.

Through the exploration of personal stories, they created a personalized topic library and hundreds of topic reserves centered around the founder (all based on real - life content). Then, the founder can use the intelligent agent developed by Prosperity Academy to directly generate reference video scripts, allowing him to tell his research in the most daily - life way at any time and anywhere with his mobile phone.

"Now is the right time for personal brands to develop on platforms. Many founders have interesting stories and insights but don't know how to express them. What we can help founders and enterprises with is the problem of 'how to express'," Chen Rong said with confidence. In the current continuous transformation of the brand communication industry, advertising professionals are witnessing the second return of content value.

III. "Whether building a brand or doing marketing, we should return to the era of high - quality content"

After 30 years in the brand industry, Chen Rong has the characteristics that many serial entrepreneurs have: high energy, high stamina, and a willingness to take risks. During her early days at Ogilvy, her English name was Angel, so her colleagues used to call her "Sister Angel". This affectionate nickname has accompanied her to this day and has become one of her unique personal labels.

In fact, during the process of researching and iterating the theory system of the super personal brand, Chen Rong was the first to test the waters in the industry. Her personal video account, "Sister Angel's New Business", has been in operation for one year with almost no advertising investment. By consistently producing professional brand - related content and opinions, Chen Rong has accumulated nearly 100,000 followers on the video account.

In July last year, Chen Rong posted a video on her video account that was casually recorded by her team during one of her offline lectures. There was no makeup, lighting, or post - production packaging. The 7 - minute video was all about the marketing population link topic of brand - based growth in the social media era. It was neither a hot topic nor a popular one, but it had a natural playback volume of nearly 100,000. The quality of the comments was high, and both the interaction data and the follower conversion rate were good. "The most important thing is that almost all the followers gained from this video were CMOs, entrepreneurs, and marketing experts."

This is a typical and successful attempt to find a professional audience through high - quality content.

"In terms of channels, you need to make choices and know where your audience is. In terms of positioning, my main core has always been clear. I'm a professional brand person, and I'm back in my professional field to produce high - quality content and build trust with users. Once the positioning is clear, the content strategy is formulated, the topic library is established, and with the assistance of the intelligent agent, the efficiency will be very high."

In the attempt to build her personal brand account, Chen Rong used herself as a case study and successfully ran through the entire workflow from strategy to implementation of the super personal brand. She believes that aesthetic ability is productivity. In the future, entrepreneurs and consumers will no longer pay for simple, crude symbols, slogans, or brain - washing content. Whether building a brand or doing marketing, the core should return to the era of high - quality content.

In the future, Prosperity Academy hopes to further iterate the content creation logic and create more successful cases while serving founders.

However, in Chen Rong's view, Prosperity Academy aims not only to help founders build their personal brands. She also hopes that through the promotion of the "super personal brand" concept and model, while finding new growth paths for enterprises, it can also find new career transformation directions for brand and marketing professionals.

Chen Rong predicts that in the future, corporate brand budgets will be fully shifted to the founders' personal brand budgets, which means that the marketing department also needs to transform. "The brand marketing department will fully focus on the founders' personal brand building, while the product marketing department still needs to do a good job in marketing and distribution channels to receive the empowerment of the founders' traffic and influence, so that the personal brand can drive the growth of the corporate brand and product sales synergistically."

"Many professional advertising and marketing professionals will have a new career path when facing mid - career transformation in the future: they can become personal brand operators, or even independent operators. More and more founders will invest in personal brand building in the future. After the overall content strategy is formulated, they will need experienced operators to help them implement it." Chen Rong mentioned that an experienced operator can earn a decent income by serving two or three founders.

This also coincides with the first ecological business that Prosperity Academy will soon launch: operator training.

In Chen Rong's plan, in the future, Prosperity Academy will mainly play the role of a "brain", focusing on empowering enterprises through the founders' super personal brand building. In this process, Prosperity Academy is responsible for the core strategies, and the final implementation will still rely on the enterprise's own brand marketing department or professional personal brand operators. This is the long - term solution to ensure effective implementation.

The implementation from strategy to execution is always a systematic and coordinated process, rather than a fragmented one. Therefore, Prosperity Academy will offer professional courses such as operator training to help marketing professionals who want to transform to seize the opportunity of personal brand building and become professional operators. In addition, for the founders' existing brand marketing teams, Prosperity Academy will also provide in - house training to help them streamline their workflows and provide intelligent agents to ensure the quality and efficiency of content implementation.

"Implementing the corporate brand strategy through personal brands and using AI technology to improve efficiency is one of the biggest business dividends in the next five years," Chen Rong firmly believes. More and more founders will invest in personal brand building in the future. This is not only a growth opportunity for enterprises but also the best career transformation direction for marketing professionals.

"In the future, Prosperity Academy will focus on helping brands and founders with positioning and content strategies. It will also continuously train more practitioners with personal brand operation capabilities, promote efficient collaboration among all links in the industrial chain, and create real and long - term value for society with the power of brands and high - quality content," Chen Rong concluded.