Anri Urano, Bridging Cultures Through Advertising

Anri Urano is an Accounts Manager for Hylink USA and has been with the company since 2019. She has grown up traveling and experiencing various cultures and environments. Using her experience, she was able to bridge cultures and grow her career in advertising. 

The Early Years

I was born in Tokyo, Japan. My dad is Japanese, and my mom is Chinese, so they wanted me to have a diverse education. I grew up in various Chinese cities and Hong Kong, moving every few years due to my parents’ jobs. I attended an international school with an English curriculum.

After graduating High School, I moved to the U.S. to study marketing and have remained here since. 

My upbringing in a multicultural environment has shaped my global perspective.

While pursuing a marketing minor in school, I didn’t have the opportunity to take advertising classes despite my keen interest in the industry. When I discovered an internship opportunity at Hylink, I eagerly seized the chance to gain firsthand experience. 

I started as a Japanese-speaking intern and was hired to assist a functional foods client aiming to establish a Japanese website. 

The company wanted someone capable of conducting competitive research and understanding the design/content preferences of the Japanese audience at that time.

Throughout my internship, I collaborated on projects involving travel and health clients. 

My enthusiasm for the sector deepened at Hylink, prompting me to complement my internship with additional online advertising courses to expand my knowledge. This experience led to my transition into a full-time role with the company. 

Being part of Account Services presents unique challenges as we function as the intermediary between clients and internal teams. We must comprehend the client’s desires and requirements and effectively convey this information to our internal teams so that they can contribute to achieving the client’s objectives. Clients may need a clearer idea of what they want, requiring our expertise in guiding them toward their goals.

One notable accomplishment to date has been the collaboration on unique limited-edition gift boxes featuring a deconstructible playbox and 3D LGG characters for a probiotics client, aimed at enhancing the brand’s visibility in South Korea.

This project won the 2021 Summit Creative Awards Gold for Package Design and Bronze for Health/Medicine Marketing Award. This became the first campaign that I worked on that won an award for.

If I could give any advice to new advertisers, it would be that the only constant in advertising is change. Expect to learn a lot of new and different things on the job, it changes daily making it exciting but challenging.