Capturing the Chinese market is every marketer’s dream. More than a billion potential customers in a newly open society that continues to grow more and more infatuated with brand-name goods? We can certainly see why everyone’s so interested.

So what are the world’s largest companies doing to familiarize the Chinese public with their products? Well, 2012 found them executing a lot of sly promotional campaigns via social media. Jeremy Webb (@thepekingorder), co-lead of Social@Ogilvy Beijing, recently provided us with his list of the year’s top 10 brand posts on Weibo, the Chinese micro-messaging equivalent of Twitter. It’s a fascinating list that shows us how PR/marketing practices in China are quite similar to those in the Western world.

In fact, we’d say that speedy, topical posts offering clever takes on the day’s “water cooler” topics are even more valuable in China than in the United States. Take, for example, the year’s most-shared post, which predictably concerned the Summer Olympics: It’s a Nike ad with a message about fairness, indirectly referring to the fact that many Chinese citizens believed the London judges to be biased against Chinese athletes.

Damage control is important in China, too:

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Earlier this week we posted on the deal that Ogilvy PR Worldwide signed to promote the new health insurance law in the state of California.

Now we have a piece of follow-up news: The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has hired Weber Shandwick to “raise awareness” about the other state-based healthcare insurance exchanges–those that will be managed by the federal government.

Here’s the lowdown: these exchanges are essentially virtual marketplaces enabling citizens to compare and choose between competing providers’ plans, and they’re one of the central components of The Affordable Care Act, which requires states to create them by January 2013. In states that do not set up exchanges by that date, the federal government will create its own “federally facilitated” exchanges by default—and these are the exchanges to be promoted by Weber Shandwick.

Here’s the challenge: To date, only 13 states and the District of Columbia have agreed to manage their own exchanges.

This is a particularly big get for Shandwick, which was recently named PR News’s “Digital Firm of the Year” just after winning the title of “Global PR Firm of the Year” via The Holmes Report.

The future of the insurance exchange project will be interesting to say the least.

The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity has announced the full jury that will be passing judgment on this year’s entrants for the PR Lions awards.

The organization had previously announced that Fleishman-Hillard president and CEO Dave Senay will lead the panel. Among those on the panel are Christopher Graves, global CEO of Ogilvy PR Worldwide and Renee Wilson, president of MSLGroup‘s northeast region. The full list of jury members is available after the jump. More info about the Cannes Lions available here. Submissions will be accepted through this Friday.

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One of the more fascinating PR reads on the Web today is the story of John Chihi (pictured at left), who has played a big role in the burgeoning PR industry in Uganda.

While PR is a global enterprise, Africa is still an evolving market with countries in their early stages of building an industry. (Chihi only began his career in Uganda in 2003.) This story from the Daily Monitor goes beyond Chihi’s CV and looks at the roots of the Ugandan PR industry. Interestingly, Chihi is the founder of the firm Mediage PR, which counts P&G and AIG among its roster of clients and partners with Ogilvy PR Worldwide, according to its website. With all of the changes happening across the continent, Africa promises to play a significant part in the PR industry’s growth.