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Wednesday 15 January 2014

My new adventure – I’m joining Philips!


I’ve been blessed with a great career at some of the most amazing brands in the world. In 2012, I joined the biggest brand in Asia and the world’s largest technology company, Samsung. It was a great ride. I had the great pleasure of working with some of the best and brightest minds in marketing on some of the best products ever created. My role matched my passions – leading marketing transformation in Asia, doing great work in digital, changing the game in social business, introducing e-commerce to the region (for Samsung) and building a great brand. Unfortunately, at the end of 2013, I was retrenched by the (at the time) new regional leadership at Samsung as part of a management restructure. The move was widely reported in the media including Campaign Asia, Mumbrella and Marketing Magazine.

It’s tough going through such a sudden change, both professionally and personally. For the last couple of months I’ve taken time out to reassess and focus on what’s important in life – friends, family, being healthy, giving back to the community and sharing my knowledge. It also gave me a unique opportunity to focus on finding a new role at a company that was more closely aligned to my values – a company that focuses on helping people and improving people’s lives.  I was fortunate to be approached by Philips. I’ve always been a huge fan of the Philips brand, which I believe is one of the most innovative and caring companies in the world. It’s a brand that is helping the world, as you can see from their company profile:

“Royal Philips of the Netherlands is a diversified technology company, focused on improving people’s lives through meaningful innovation in the areas of HealthcareConsumer Lifestyle and Lighting. The company is a leader in cardiac care, acute care and home healthcare, energy efficient lighting solutions and new lighting applications, as well as male shaving and grooming and oral healthcare.”

I’ve accepted the role of Regional Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer for Philips ASEAN & Pacific. I'll be part of the regional management team, reporting to the well respected CEO of Philips ASEAN & Pacific, Harjit Gill. It’s a big role, focused on three key areas – building the Philips brand in the region (it’s already number 40 in Interbrand’s top 100 global brands), implementing best-in-class communications and social media practices, and making Philips a digital marketing leader. I’m very excited as I strongly believe three key things:

  • Brands are not built by a 30-second TVC or by advertising. Brands are built by engaging customers and driving advocacy. I’ve had a lot of experience in brand storytelling and engaging influencers and advocates – a discipline that I’m surprised that more brands aren’t embracing.
  • Social media has fundamentally changed how brands engage customers, shareholders, media and other stakeholders. Brave brands, like Philips, are embracing this tectonic shift in communications and are investing into social media. This is an area I will dedicate myself and my team to becoming a best practice leader in.
  • Digital marketing is the future. I’ve worked in digital my entire career and I’m very honoured to be one of the few digital marketers to breakthrough into a senior level marketing/CMO role. While I appreciate and support specialists, I personally don’t understand the need to have separate digital teams as part of the wider marketing organisation – I want Philips to become the best digital marketing organisation in the world. I plan to bring my extensive experience in this area to my new role.

I start my new, very exciting role in February 2014. If you're interested in working with Philips and joining me on this adventure, please check out the Philips Career website here: http://www.careers.philips.com.sg/

I’m only one person but I believe in the power of networking and value the ideas of others. If you have any thoughts on Philips, specifically on what I can do to help grow the brand, improve communications or drive digital transformation across the region, I’d love to hear from you. Please let me know what you think in the comments section below or feel free to email me directly (damiencummings@gmail.com).

16 comments:

Andrew Darwitan said...

Hi Damien, this is wonderful news. Definitely looking forward to read more about your amazing works in this new role. Wishing you the best!

Unknown said...

Congrats mate, amazing news and I know you're going to be such a tremendous driving force at Philips - enjoy the ride!

Ari Fadyl said...

Awesome Damien! Congrats Mate. I'm sure you will build the best Digital Team @ Phillips :)

Cheers

Anonymous said...

Very good information thanks for sharing.

Nicolas marie said...

Great news Damien and thank you for sharing the context. Sincere congratulations!

Michael said...

I will be riding with you as you share your knowledge and experiences in your new journey, Damien. All the best! :-)

Marcos Luis said...

Regard, Damien.
Here are the ideas.
First to create the completed Marketing strategy, I think that you and your team needs to collect more data about your target audiences in the APAC market. I would concrentrate in three major markets:
- Singapore
- UAE for the Middle East
- China

I love Singapore annd what the country is doing for the constant economic growth, so that should be traslated to more income for Singaporean and an explosion in the Real State market. That could be a good opportunity to grow Philips´s market focused on Smart Homes, Offices and Cities, and make an true impact for Lighting´s products sales like MultiGlow (City Lighting), DaveWave (Office´s Lighting) and LuxSpace (General Lighting).

The same thing could happen in UAE, particularly in Abu Dhabi and Dubai for its massive growth.

China is another great example because they are investing heavily in clean solutions due the pollution in the main cities of the country like Beijing and Shangai.

Said this, what I would do?
- Create a Data-Driven Marketing Strategy (I love the approach that Lisa Arthur, CMO at Teradata Apps said on her book[1]) focused in highly targeted audiences to build the brand for Philips´s Smart Homes

- Philips has a strong presence in Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest, so that could bring very good benefits

- Tumblr with its new Sponsored Post could be a very good platform to spread the word about the company´s products

- Google + Ads could be another good platform to contribute to SEO. Did you see the announcement?
http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/09/google-starts-testing-paid-post-ads-for-google-content-with-launch-partners-toyota-and-cadbury/

- Another thing that I could do would be a Facebook´s app or a Mobile app focused on iPads or Android-based tablets to use a wider space; focused in the creation of Smart Homes with Philips products. Think in something similar what Motorola did with the MotoX and Ford did with the Mustang Customizer[2][3]

Every entry should be shared in Facebook and Twitter with a targeted hashtag (like #DesignYourDreamHome) and the winners will be the entries with more likes, comments and shares. And the best 200 ideas could be a new Pinterest´s board for inspiration.

This could bring a main benefit:
- A visual approach for the brand could become in free generated content machine for the brand, ready to be shared with the world.

What do you think about this?
Best wishes and I hope that the ideas were well received in your team.
Thanks for your time.

[1] http://dataddict.wordpress.com/2013/12/23/big-data-marketing-book-for-cmos/
[2] https://www.motorola.com/us/motomaker?pid=FLEXR1#exterior/backplate
[3] http://www.ford.com/cars/mustang/customizer/

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