Execution Leadership: The Role of Leadership in Strategy Implementation

The NUS MBA Marketing Club and NUS MBA Consulting Club jointly present Execution Leadership: The Role of Leadership in Strategy Implementation, a talk by Robin Speculand on 26 August 2010 (Thursday) at 6pm. The event will be held at Seminar Room 3-5 of BIZ1, Mochtar Riady Building, 15 Kent Ridge Drive at the National University of Singapore, Kent Ridge Campus.


Interested participants may register here.

Branding as Recipe for Future Success of Asian Businesses

by Markus (exchange student from Spain)

On Monday (05 April), the NUS MBA Marketing Club welcomed Martin Roll, a business and brand strategist, for a presentation about "Business & Brand Leadership" in their beautiful, new Mochtar Riady Building. Martin (INSEAD MBA alumnus) is a thought-leader on value creation through brand equity and the author of the book Asian Brand Strategy which was named "Best Business Books 2006” by Strategy+Business magazine.

In an inspiring and interactive session, Martin started his talk by asking the participants to name leading Asian brands. After several minutes of discussion, the about 45 strong group of full-time MBA students, faculty members and guests from the corporate world agreed that there are only a few leading global Asian brands - if we exclude Japanese brands as well as some brands from South Korea such as Samsung and LG.



Importantly, the most profitable Asian companies focus on intangibles such as human capital, exploiting network effects and creating synergies based on brands, rather than investing in tangible assets according to a McKinsey study. However, many Asian companies are challenged to follow this approach due to their path dependency with less focus on innovation, dominance of large diversified conglomerates, excess capacity and Asian specifics regarding IP and trademarks. Thus, the challenge for Asian companies is to build brand equity in order to capture a larger portion of the value creation in the value chain and in order to catch up with Western icons such as P&G, Apple, McKinsey or Goldman Sachs.

Martin enthusiastically shared with the group his opinion about the weaknesses of the Marketing function such as a lack of marketing representation in the boardroom through a Chief Marketing Officer. He outlined that functional attributes, points of difference, emotional values and a strong brand are needed in order to create a real connection and a strong global iconic brand. Having discussed the basics, the group learned from successes such as Banyan Tree, Amazing Thailand campaign, Jim Thompson, SK-II what is needed to develop a strong brand. HSBC, Lenovo, Hero Honda, Laneíge, Huawei, Uniqlo were further examples to illustrate parts of strong brand leadership of Asian companies.

For the students of Asia's global business school NUS, the example of excellent brand leadership at Singapore Airlines helped to deepen their learning about self-motivated creativity (success & outperformance) within an organization which is mainly instilled by organizational alignment in a three step process: building awareness, generating acceptance and sustaining commitment through performance management, feedback as well as intensive training.

At the end of the presentation, Martin successfully inspired the participants to take an active role in shaping a bright future for Asia and for Asian companies through mastering Marketing and leading Asian brands to great regional and global recognition. Thereby, they would follow many Asian leaders who return from overseas back to Asia in order to leverage their global mindset and experience creating arising global brands and building highly-profitable businesses through brand equity.

For those of you who are interested in more information about Asian Brand Strategy, I would recommend to watch the 5-minute speech of Martin on Youtube or to consider buying Martin's awarded book Asian Brand Strategy.

Business & Brand Leadership: A New Approach to Success for Asian Business

The NUS MBA Marketing Club is pleased to present world-renowned thought leader Martin Roll in a talk on Business and Brand Leadership: A New Approach to Success for Asian Business.



Kindly register your attendance here.

Business & Brand Leadership: A New Approach to Success for Asian Business - What's it about?

The face of business in Asia is changing faster than one can blink one’s eyes. Asian companies that used to be back-end workhorses, manufacturing consumer goods cheaply for Western companies, are slowly realizing the benefits of brands and innovation. A rapid changing landscape will emerge in Asia over the next 5-10 years, where the opportunities for Asian companies and therefore Asia will benefit from better and stronger competitive positions than ever before.

The primary objective of boardrooms is to build and sustain shareholder value, and deliver competitive returns to shareholders. At the same time, branding is a very effective catalyst for better leadership and helps the boardroom to drive a shared vision throughout the organization.

The boardroom must manage by metrics, and balance short- and long-term perspectives and performance. The growing emphasis on brand strategy to drive shareholder value and competitiveness will move up the boardroom agenda and become one of the most prominent value drivers in Asia in this century.

The most important factor for building strong Asian brands is the mindset of the Asian CEO and boardroom. Branding is a boardroom discipline and successful brands can be built only when the boardroom, led by the chairman and the CEO, understands, appreciates and commits to treating branding as a strategic discipline and devotes the resources at the company’s disposal to support the brands in a continuous manner.

The same is true for any government trying to build a strong and sustainable competitive position through a strong nation brand.

Martin Roll will provide case stories on Asian brands, and illustrate how the Asian company can employ branding as successful catalysts for leadership and long-term performance to grow new markets.

Offering insights, knowledge and perspectives on branding as a strategic tool for the Asian businesses, Martin Roll will define The 10 Leadership Principles that will drive breakout success, sustain profitability and financial impact for Asia in this century.

Who is Martin Roll?

Martin Roll is a world-renowned thought-leader on value creation through brand equity driven by tremendous global experience and insights. He facilitates business leaders and organizations to think bold for future strategies. By focusing on building and managing successful businesses through iconic brands, Martin Roll helps boardrooms to enhance shareholder value and create sustainable competitive advantage.

Martin Roll delivers the combined value of an experienced international business strategist and senior advisor to corporate boards and marketing executives of the world’s largest companies including many corporations in Asia. He brings more than 20 years of management experience. Martin Roll holds an MBA from INSEAD.



Martin Roll is not only a highly accomplished speaker and presenter but as well a talented and well trained moderator of panel discussions and roundtables. He is a valuable contributor to any senior management discussion on the subject of leadership, innovation, growth, organizational excellence and brand equity, its close link to management and how it drives outstanding performance through shareholder value.

He strides the industry-academia continuum and delivers superior value to his global audiences. Every year, he travels 500.000 miles on all continents and speaks at more than 100 global top-level conferences. He is also a frequent guest lecturer at INSEAD, Nanyang Business School, CEIBS and several other global business schools.

Martin Roll is the author of the global bestseller Asian Brand Strategy, a very compelling book of frameworks for Asian branding and the winning formula for any boardroom. Asian Brand Strategy was named “Best Global Business Book” by Strategy+Business magazine.

What's a typical day for a Brand Manager?

Curious to find out what a typical work day is like for a Brand Manager?



Interested students may register here.

(Image Credit: Getty Images)

Changing Youth Marketing

You are invited to be part of this groundbreaking conference happening on 20 March! See details below.



Get featured in a youth panel and directly address the CEOs, VPs and directors of your favourite brands. Be part of a full business conference and meet the people behind the campaigns in person! We'll select about 5 panellists to share their honest insights, and a leader who has deep knowledge of the subject will moderate the session in a neutral yet engaging fashion.

Simply create a post on your blog entitled "How I Want Brands to Connect with Me" . Alternatively, create a facebook note with the same title. Tell us why you deserve to be on this panel, and what you want to change. Use any method you want - words, images, podcasts or video!

At the end of your post, please leave your age and school/organisation. If you like to keep your privacy (like Tiger Woods) then email your entry to us at lydia@conferences.com.sg

Once you're done, just create a link on our wall and we'll go check it out immediately.

May the best post win :)

Last entries are on 9 March 2010, and 5 lucky winners will be announced the next day and notified via a fb message.

Participation Requirements:
16-25 years of age
Outspoken and engaging
Of course, stay available for the panel!

Only valid entries with your details will be considered. Certificates of Participation will also be given to those who are selected :) Where you come from doesn't matter - the more variety the better!

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Methods, techniques and formulae from advertising. But do they work?

by Sanat Vallikappen

I’ve always hated marketers who try to sugarcoat the ordinary and sell it to me as the best thing going. So I found it unusually satisfying last week to watch The Persuaders, a documentary in which so-called gurus of marketing were exposed, their methods questioned, and the clutter crisis in advertising evaluated.

For those who haven’t watched the film, the following paragraphs attempt to give you some glimpses.

Presented by the Marketing Club, the film alternated between voices that rhapsodized over the kind of advertising practiced, and equally powerful, dissenting voices that tore these methods apart.

The script writers, Barak Goodman and Douglas Rushkoff, took a rather cynical view of promotional marketing, clarifying in no uncertain terms, the truth inherent in one of the oldest aphorisms about advertising – "I know I am wasting half my ad dollars, but I just don’t know which half.”

When you’re bombarded with it 24/7 – in the corner of the elevator car, the bottom of the cup when you go to pick up the golf ball, through sky-writing, a passing bus or even a subway tunnel which serves as a backdrop to display messages – it’s difficult to break through the clutter, and every effort at it only creates more clutter.

But that doesn’t stop those like Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide to come out with the kind of spiel even the ludicrously naïve would find hard to believe. “Tide’s not a laundry detergent any more. All detergents get your clothes cleaned. Tide’s something deeper. It’s an enabler, it’s a liberator. I guess you’d think about moving Tide from the heart of the laundry to the heart of the family,” he says in the film.

The critics’ take is that these pseudo-spiritual marketing messages that try to strike the innermost cord in the consumer, seldom work. One such instance, well-documented in the film, is about Song, a no-frills subsidiary of Delta Airlines, which decided to focus on women’s needs in its advertising - so much so that very few identified it as promotion for an airline.

Apart from AT&T, Hallmark and Coca-Cola, most companies that have tried to make this emotional connect with consumers have failed, says Bob Garfield, columnist at Advertising Age, and one of the sane voices in the film.

Nike, which said that it was about the meaning of sports, but more than that, it was about transcendence through sports, or Starbucks, which said that it’s about a third place that’s neither home nor work, are probably a handful that can also boast success.

But sample this hilarious, but failed message: “Polaroid is not a camera, it’s a social lubricant.”

Product placement was another area that came in for harsh criticism. The advertiser might want to call it the seamless integration of product and narrative, but Garfield says that whatever MBA euphemism one may attach to it, it was still product placement.

Market research also came under heavy fire in the film. In fact, in an instance of dichotomous questioning (a research method where your answer can either be ‘yes’ or ‘no’) shown in the film, one of the questions was, “When you’re eating white bread, do you feel lonely?” What was that all about?

So what makes advertisers tick? What makes them come up with often-incoherent, often-ineffective messages day after day? “Once you’re in the game, you can’t stop. If for no other reason, that the competition will eat you alive,” is a possible explanation offered by a former executive at J Walter Thompson. That means this noisy chatter will go on endlessly. And whether or not it helps sell the product, at least there’s going to be enough going around for all of us to have fun at someone else’s expense.

Those interested in learning more about the film may visit its website at www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/persuaders.

Photo Source: The Persuaders website

Watch The Persuaders!

The NUS MBA Marketing Club proudly presents its first event of the year!



What's it about?

In "The Persuaders," FRONTLINE explores how the cultures of marketing and advertising have come to influence not only what Americans buy, but also how they view themselves and the world around them. The 90-minute documentary draws on a range of experts and observers of the advertising/marketing world, to examine how, in the words of one on-camera commentator, "the principal of democracy yields to the practice of demography," as highly customized messages are delivered to a smaller segment of the market.

Those interested can register here.

(Source: The Persuaders website)