News and Views

The working woman should be lauded for her contributions to modern society, and this International Women’s Day, The Great Room had the privilege of sitting down with four such ambitious and highly capable women for their insights, experiences and advice.

Walaimas Jerdmethawut
Sales Manager, Upfield Professional
The Great Room Gaysorn Tower, Bangkok

As Sales Manager at the world’s largest plant-based consumer product company, Jerdmethawut is living her dream of working with a firm that shares her passion for the environment and delivering healthful products to the people.

The difference between men and women in leadership is… Men tend to be direct, and they do not take things to heart after an intense discussion. Women are great in a collaborative setting and at being emotionally sensitive to the people around them, which leads to great teamwork. We just need to be open-minded, as there are skills to learn from both genders.

Women at work should… Empower each other while being mindful. They should speak up for what they believe in, rise above the noise and focus on delivering results. This is how they can stand out from the crowd.

My female role model is… My mother, who taught me about hard work and diligence. In the 30 years, she has worked for our family business, she has only ever given herself one day off a month. She even taught herself English and Mandarin so she could better communicate with her customers. Her work ethic inspires me to never give up and to never stop learning.

Chloe Cortinovis
Co-founder and Managing Director, Bienvenue Factory
The Great Room Raffles Arcade, Singapore

After a 20-year career in brand development, Bienvenue left Europe for a new eye-opening adventure in Asia. She co-founded Bienvenue Factory in 2018, and is changing the retail landscape with omni-channel trade strategies.

A good leader is… Someone with sharp emotional intelligence, and who can bring people together through an inspiring vision and an unswerving exemplarity!

My hope for women today is… That they be allowed to take control over how they want to manage their personal and professional lives. In my time, recruiters would dare to ask me during interviews if I was planning on having a third child. I very much hope this has now stopped.

My superwoman power is… I can juggle thousands of responsibilities at the same time. I am immune to stress.

I would like to celebrate International Women’s Day by… Replacing all the world leaders with women and see how the world works then.

May Yin Lee
Account Manager, Teads Hong Kong
The Great Room One Taikoo Place, Hong Kong

A self-professed “people person” with a background in customer service, May knew she would be a great fit in the media industry. After a few years working in agencies, she realised that Advertising Technology (Adtech) was the future, so she joined Teads and now helps its clients reach their audiences in non-intrusive ways.

My advice to those looking to join this field is… Not to be afraid to show your personality — it could be your best weapon. Also, think outside the box because everyone is different and being agile with people is a useful skill. Finally, be nice to everyone. That intern you worked with might become your client one day.

Gender equality means… Allowing everyone the opportunity to be whomever they want to be. Women as leaders are rare in this male-dominated industry, but so important, which is why I’m aspiring to be one.

My female role model is… Sabrina Cannon, a manager from my days working for Harrods in London. She was charismatic and smart. I really looked up to her. Despite her busy schedule, she was always looking for ways to maximise her team’s potential. She gave me the drive to be the best version of myself, and played an important role in shaping who I am today.

Maria Karacheva
Director of Sales & Marketing, Ramada Resort by Wyndham Khao Lak
The Great Room Gaysorn Tower, Bangkok

Leading three departments — Sales, Marketing and Distribution — for an established big name hotel is no walk in the park, but it is all in a day’s work for industry veteran Maria Karacheva. After a decade working for another international chain, a hunger for change and an opportunity to learn something new led her to the Ramada Resort by Wyndham Khao Lak.

The women I think have moved the needle for female empowerment are… Malala Yousafzai, Greta Thunberg and Mari Copen, just to name a few. I am very impressed with this generation of women who aren’t afraid to speak up and demand change for a better future. We have a long way to go to achieve gender equality, but I have no doubt that female empowerment is in the good hands of these bright, young women.

On International Women’s Day, I want young, career-minded women to know… That it is not going to be easy, but it is absolutely possible. Besides, what would be the fun in doing anything that is too easy? I also feel like some women, myself included, feel easily discouraged in the workplace. We should stop taking things personally and just strive for the best. If we don’t stand up for ourselves, nobody will.

My superwoman power is… Super multitasking. My schedule is packed daily both inside and outside the office. This may surprise you, but the more I have planned, the more I am able to achieve.

Luann Alphonso is the managing editor of vastly popular online portal LifestyleAsia.com and the head of digital content for Singapore and Malaysia at top international publishing house, Burda International Asia. Here, Ms. Alphonso, who is also a passionate auto enthusiast and respected motoring journalist, reveals the lessons she’s learned at the wheel of the world’s fastest cars — as well as wisdom gleaned steering LifestyleAsia and Burda International Asia’s regional content strategy.

The Great Room: Luxury sedan, high-performance supercar, efficient hatchback, reliable family wagon… If you were to liken an effective piece of content to a car, which type would it be, and why? 

Luann Alphonso: I would go with high-performance supercar. Many supercars are hand-built, specialised vehicles with advanced structuring, which demonstrate passion. Likewise, a credible, engaging story is painstakingly put together after hours of research and provides value to its readers and consequentially strengthens relationships for the brand.

TGR: Which skills, honed behind the wheel, have you applied to your role as Head of Digital Content with Burda Singapore & Malaysia?

LA: Not so much a skill but rather, a habit — adjusting your mirrors to cover your blind spots. Very often, smaller problems tend to go unnoticed and can snowball very quickly. To prevent that from happening, I check in with the team regularly and liaise with different departments to make sure we get a clear view of impending problems.

TGR: What are the most important factors to consider when crafting a piece of content? 

LA: Target audience, the purpose of the content and the value and longevity of the article.

TGR: What should non-specialists (start-up founders, for instance) do to ensure the content they publish on their own blogs and social media channels captures the audience’s attention? 

LA: Depending on the capability of the platform, measuring and analysing responses and reactions from past articles is a good way to adapt one’s content and constantly improve.

TGR: In your opinion, do all businesses today need to evolve to become ‘pseudo publishers’, constantly pushing out content? 

LA: If a particular company does not have the ability and resources to execute proper content with the help of functional departments, it is advisable to reconsider publishing, as poor content can greatly decrease brand loyalty.

TGR: Why is it important for a business to create content that engages, entertains and educates the customer — rather than simply trying to ‘sell’ to them?

LA: It’s a game of patience. Well thought-out content is about giving, not selling. When we give the audience a memorable read, it builds positive brand association which can, in turn, generate sales.

TGR: Editorial vs. content marketing vs. advertising — what’s the difference? 

LA: Using a car as an analogy, I would say that editorial is the engine, the heart that drives emotions, and content marketing is the steering wheel with the destination in sight. And finally, advertising is the sleek exterior — complete with a glossy finish.

Jupe Tan is Managing Partner, Asia Pacific, at Plug and Play — an investments and innovation platform that helps startups in areas including fintech and insurtech, mobility, travel / hospitality and supply chain connect with corporate investors. Here, he explains three key points corporations must address and startups take under consideration before sealing a deal.

In the two decades since the first dotcom boom, technology has become increasingly pervasive in a growing list of industries around the world. From agriculture to aerospace, from personal to professional services — today, numerous existing products, solutions and entire business models are being disrupted.

As access to information and technology increases and product development cycles and time to market decreases, startups are engaging with more industries than ever before. Corporations from around the world — from publicly listed companies to privately held conglomerates — are working with and investing in more and more startups to complement internal efforts to innovate.

At Plug and Play, we constantly engage with corporations and startups through our open innovation platform, with over 50 accelerator programs running in 25 cities around the world. While every engagement between a startup and corporation is different, here are some best practices that we can share:

1. Ensure alignment from internal stakeholders

Innovation in a large corporation requires support on many fronts. Top down, management-level desire to explore potential new solutions and technologies from outside the organisation is essential. Management can have blind spots or may be unwilling to acknowledge external threats to their business. An excellent example is Blockbuster. The American company known for its brick-and-mortar movie and video game rental services identified the threat of Netflix too late and shut down after almost 30 years in business.

With management support, resources can be allocated and a team (or teams) can be tasked to act as champions to interact with relevant business units. Heads of business units must also be supportive and in sync with management.

2. Streamline collaborative efforts

Corporate business units should be empowered to look internally at potential technology and business gaps and then work to translate them into specific problem statements that startups can explore and help answer.

Startups are constantly working on refining and improving their products and solutions with successive iterations. Depending on the state of the startup, corporations have to provide feedback, data and other relevant resources to help shape a potential pilot engagement or proof of concept.

3. Take or make investments strategically

Startups are usually self-funded in the early days, with subsequent funding from angel investors and institutional investors such as venture capital firms. Corporations, equally, invest in startups for various reasons. Some establish Corporate Venture Capital funds to invest, while others invest off the balance sheet.

Before making an investment, it is important to consider the reasons for the investment and its implications for both the corporation and the startup. For a startup, funding is almost always welcome, however accepting an investment from one corporation may limit them from working with a direct competitor.

From the corporation’s perspective, investing in a startup can yield many benefits, such as ensuring that the startup has the resources to develop the solutions that the corporation wants and that their product development is aligned and prioritized. On the other hand, providing funds for a pilot or a commercial development instead of investing into a startup is often a faster and easier route.

As part of The Great Room’s second anniversary celebrations, Erica Kerner, Tiffany’s VP of marketing and communications Asia, gave a fascinating talk exploring how this storied jeweller so successfully stirs desire in the consumer. These are some of the most thought-provoking remarks Erica made during a half-hour discussion with moderator Christian Barker.

Christian Barker: Today’s topic is creating consumer lust, so it seems apt to begin by asking, how is wooing a customer similar to the art of seduction?

Erica Kerner: A basic fundamental of marketing is, you’ve got to create a relationship and a rapport with your customer and if you can’t do that, you’re not going to bring them into the brand, you’re not going to bring them into your product. So if you can create a romance, create those feelings, those emotions that are like what you feel in a romance, you’re going to build a very long-lasting and passionate relationship with your customer. I’ve been very lucky, because working for brands like Tiffany, Nike and Adidas, you have that passionate relationship with your customers. People are very passionate about each of those brands. At each company, I’d often meet people who’d say that I have their dream job — these brands really pursued a passionate connection with customers, which I feel very lucky about. But it’s also a big challenge as a marketer to keep that relationship going.

Christian Barker: Tiffany’s recent campaigns have been very forward-thinking in championing love in all its forms, regardless of gender, sexual orientation or the type of relationship. Can you tell us a little about that new direction?

Erica Kerner: Well, Tiffany, as you know, created the modern engagement ring — the Tiffany setting, the six-prong ring was created by our founder 140 years ago, when he lifted the diamond ring out of the setting so that it captured more light. So being part of love and people’s joyful moments has always been central to our brand. But I think that as consumers and consumer attitudes are changing, we have to change and evolve with that as well. Today, we always talk about modern love — and that love might be between a man and a woman. Or it might be between two men, it might be between two women, it might be the love of a mother and a child, you know? It’s not just romantic love that we talk about in our campaigns. That’s something I’m very proud of. We’ve done campaigns with same-sex couples and that’s a bold move for a mainstream brand to take. It doesn’t make everybody happy, but I’m very proud that I work for a company that’s not afraid to talk about love in all its modern contexts or whomever you are.

Christian Barker: Are there challenges in running a campagn of this nature in a region like Southeast Asia, where attitudes can be quite conservative? So-called ‘alternative lifestyles’ remain illegal here in Singapore, for instance.

Erica Kerner: It’s an interesting, interesting question. I mean we did a campaign about a year and a half ago where we first had the same-sex couple in the film and we had different edits of that film for around the world, because Singapore is not the only place that couldn’t run it. We didn’t run it in the Middle East either and certain other countries. I ran it in Australia but didn’t run it here (in Singapore). There were some pictures of a couple with a child as the bride’s flower girl, which I couldn’t run in Korea because that was too progressive for that market. So yes, you have to know the cultural sensitivities, but the thing that surprised me is, though we didn’t run the ad here in Singapore, the day the campaign broke, the social media love that came in from Singapore for that campaign was fantastic. There were so many people who then said, we’re so proud of Tiffany for showing this, for taking the stand. People were recreating the film and doing their own versions of it, and so even though we never ran that version here, it still got a great response and exposure.

Christian Barker: How do you promote the romance that is so core to Tiffany’s DNA, without alienating men, who can be a little less enthusiastic about all that flowery stuff?

Erica Kerner: Well, before I actually answer the question, I will correct you a little bit about men not being romantic. I have to tell you, one of the things that amazes me the most is when, so many times when men find out I work from Tiffany, they all want to tell me their story of how they went to the store to buy a ring, or how they proposed, and they often get mushier than women when they hear I work for Tiffany. The other thing is, back in the old days, I used to work for de Beers, the mining company, and we used to do a lot of research in China and I remember we were doing a study on engagement rings with men, and sitting in the room behind the one-way glass listening to all these men as they were being shown advertising concepts. They kept saying, “Oh no, don’t use that concept — I want to use that to propose!” Men can be very romantic. The thing we need to be conscious of is that men tend to be motivated differently than women around the engagement moment. We had a campaign about two years ago where we had two phases: the ‘Will You?’ phase and the ‘I Will’ phase. The ‘Will You?’ phase was pure romance and it was really aimed at the woman. It was advertised in women’s channels and it was really all about that romantic moment of the engagement. But then, the ‘I Will’ phase was more targeted to men and that was more about the value creation of the diamond and the craftsmanship. When they make the purchase, men want to know what they’re getting, that they’re paying the right amount for what they’re getting, that it’s going to hold its value, that it’s a good investment, and things like ethical sourcing and supply chain. And so it was much more of a rational message to men and men’s channels.

Christian Barker: Being a brand with a great deal of heritage, obviously you don’t want that sense of history to be lost, but you also need to stay contemporary and relevant. How do you do that?

Erica Kerner: That’s a great question. Yes, we’re 181 years old. And the beauty of the Tiffany brand is that, no matter where in the world you’re from, the power of that blue box is the same in each and every country. I like to say that we make women’s heart beat faster all around the world when they see that blue box. But staying relevant is incredibly important. And our biggest challenge, I think, as marketers, we have a campaign that just launched, and that would answer part of your question — it is very young and very edgy and not something that you would necessarily expect to see from Tiffany. It’s very much talking to a younger millennial customer. It’s got Maddie Ziegler who is 18, and she has around 30 million followers on instagram. More than the Kardashians. Elle Fanning is also in that campaign, on Insta she has around 3 million followers or something. It’s definitely appealing to a younger audience with a product that has a substantial price point — some of the items in that spot are $50,000 products. So you’ve got a really nice juxtaposition, I think, that talks about Tiffany as a brand that you can wear every day as a luxury customer, or as a young millennial. It’s hopefully speaking to both segments, it’s getting a customer to come in and try a $300 ‘Return To Tiffany’ bracelet and say that’s what I want for my sweet 16th birthday, or to also think about something more significant later in life.

Christian Barker: Speaking of social media, Tiffany is very active in that area, correct?

Erica Kerner: I’m not going to talk about statistics, but a major part of our marketing budgets are in social media these days and that’s all about liking and sharing, and having a dialogue with customers rather than just a one-way conversation. A lot of marketing today is around user generated content. So a great deal of the storytelling we do, we’re not telling the story. We may start the story, but then it’s consumers who are picking it up and people want to tell their story. We have a campaign now for our ‘Love & Engagement’ category and it’s real couples telling their stories. We put them in front of the camera, we curated the couples of course, but they’re telling their stories, we’re not telling it for them. Again, we’re very lucky because it’s a category that people want to talk about, everybody has a story to tell. I think that’s how we keep it authentic, because we’re not telling you (the consumer) something — we’re starting a dialogue, which you’re then finishing.

Christian Barker: Our topic today is consumer lust. Lust is a highly irrational emotion. But clearly, making a substantial purchase, there needs to be some sense of rationality, right?

Erica Kerner: No, not necessarily. It can be purely based on feeling. There are other brands in the market, which I’m not going to mention by name, that talk about their products as investments or the financial side of it, but that’s not how we choose to market our products. However, there are clearly some places that jewellery has its benefits — it escapes inheritance taxes, and jewellery is a mobile purchase. There are a lot of reasons why people buy very, very expensive jewelry. That’s not where we tend to to to market our products, and I don’t think people buy jewellery, for the most part, for a rational reason. You buy it because you feel that it makes you feel beautiful or he buys it for you because he thinks you’ll be beautiful in it. I started first with the personal, because the woman’s self-purchase segment of our business has really grown and continues to grow. Women don’t need him to buy that piece of jewellery for her anymore. She loves it when he does, for sure, but does it need to be that way? I think that you buy jewellery or luxury as a reward to yourself or an investment in yourself or similar personal motivations. It’s not really the rational. Though you can rationalise it. You can think to yourself that you’re going to wear this ring every single day and if you wear it for three years, it’s going to cost you $3 a day. So you can find ways to rationalise it, but shopping isn’t about needing — shopping’s about wanting.