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 Healthcare, Consumer 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).

Why I love Samsung and why Apple has lost its cool

Firstly, there are a few things I need to get out of the way. I work for Samsung. I joined in 2012 and I’m the Regional Marketing Director, looking after digital marketing and go-to-market initiatives in Asia (I wrote about my awesome new job at Samsung here). This is my personal perspective as a marketing leader working inside Samsung and paying particular attention to some of Samsung’s key competitors – including players like Apple, HTC, Nokia, and RIM/Blackberry. It’s in no way an official company statement, just my personal opinion.

So with that said, I’m immensely proud to work at Samsung. The company has become the number 1 brand in Asia, and according to Interbrand’s global survey Samsung has rocketed to number 9 position. Samsung make amazing products that I use every day (my 55” SMART TV; my Galaxy SIII, etc.) and has revolutionary products on the horizon, such as the Ultra Definition TV and the Youm flexible displays that were showcased at CES 2013. The reason I love the brand is related to why I no longer like Apple. Sure, Apple still produce fantastic products. I’ve owned a Macbook Air, iPhone and iPad – as well as the ill-conceived Apple TV. Most of their products are great – so why is Apple losing its cool (as suggested by WSJ’s article: “Has Apple lost its cool to Samsung?”) and what’s changed with Samsung?

I see it as three things:

1.   Attitude – Apple simply aren’t listening and don’t seem to care. Samsung do.

Apple think they know what you want, even when they’re wrong. As Forbes identified in their article “Five Dangerous Lessons To Learn From Steve Jobs” - Throughout his career, Steve Jobs famously eschewed market research and relied on his intuition. In a 1985 interview with Playboy, he said: “We built [the Mac] for ourselves. We were the group of people who were going to judge whether it was great or not. We weren’t going to go out and do market research.” Twelve years later, he told Business Week: “A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”

The problem with this approach is that you’re right – until you’re wrong. We’re now seeing that with iPhone 5. It was a disappointment.  Not because it wasn’t a good phone, but because our needs have moved on. People are demanding larger screens, new features and open access to new Apps and their own data/App ecosystem. We no longer live in a world where are needs are dictated to us. With the rise of social media and the obliteration of barriers between consumers and brands, this type of attitude is not acceptable.

2.   Apple are anti-social and shun media (traditional, PR and social media). This is an area Samsung have embraced with success.

From a marketing standpoint, it’s even more pronounced. For many years Apple have simply refused to engage with the media and to engage customers. Apple are one of the few major corporates that are completely anti-social. They have no Facebook presence, do not engage via Twitter or LinkedIn and certainly have not opened communication via Weibo or other social networks in China or in regional communities in other markets across the world. 

Samsung on the other hand have invested heavily into engaging with customers via social media. Using both in-house people and our agency partners Leo Burnett, Cheil Worldwide and Starcom, Samsung have put in place Community Management and social customer engagement in 47 countries. 

It also helps that social networks, such as Facebook, are now generating some serious ROI for Samsung (in this case, for the launch of the Galaxy SIII).

3.   Winning hearts and minds through marketing – Samsung are now simply better marketers than others in the consumer electronics category.

As identified in the Wall Street Journal article “Has Apple Lost It’s Cool To Samsung?”  Samsung’s “The Next Big Thing” campaign has struck a chord with consumers.

The campaign swayed consumers including Will Hernandez, an Apple iPhone owner who bought a Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone about three months ago after seeing Samsung's ads."If you see this stuff on TV enough, it gets you thinking," said Mr. Hernandez, a 34-year-old resident of Somerville, Mass., who adds that he likes how his Galaxy has a larger screen than the iPhone. "Now, when someone gives me an iPhone to look at a picture, it looks so tiny."  The marketing onslaught is helping Samsung widen the gap as the market leader. Samsung is estimated to have held 28% of the global smartphone market last year, up from 20% a year earlier, according to IHS iSuppli. Apple's share, meanwhile, isn't rising as quickly, moving to 20.5% in 2012 from 19% a year earlier.

There’s some great brand building, emotionally engaging stories that Samsung are creating. LeBron James’ day with Samsung Note II was a viral video sensation, with over 40 million views to-date. In Malaysia, Samsung have been working with local music artist Yuna, a collaboration that lead to "Sparkle Project": http://video.sparkleproject.my/ 

This helped Samsung lead as one of the top 10 viral video brands in 2012 (even ahead of the great work Old Spice are doing). 

---------------------------------------------------

I realise that technology, particularly with brands like Samsung and Apple, is a passion of many people. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the three points above so please add your comments below.

It’s time to move on: Farewell Dell, hello Samsung

I write this blog post with some regret, as I’ve really enjoyed my time at Dell, but also with a lot of excitement as I’m moving onto to work at the number 1 brand in Asia, at a time of massive growth.

I have made mistakes in my career, particularly during my early career in Australia. Sure, nothing major – more missed opportunities, paths not taken and the pettiness of office politics as you climb the corporate ladder. But sometimes I think back and wonder “what was I doing?”. I have been given some amazing opportunities to work on some of the best brands in the world (such as Coca-Cola, Citibank and Australia’s own NRMA) but I either I feel that I hadn’t worked there long enough to really do more (I’d love to spend many years really building out great digital initiatives), or that I didn’t have the authority to make lasting, positive change.

Because of this, I made a very deliberate decision to work my arse off, be more than just an employee and do my absolute best to bring a lot of value above and beyond the job description to my next employer. I then made the best decision of my life – I moved to Singapore. This is where it has all started to pay off.

I believe my last 5 years in Singapore have been the best of my life and my career. When I moved to Singapore to join Ogilvy & Mather, I loved it! The country, my role(s) and the brands I had the privilege to work with. At Ogilvy, I was encouraged to network, discuss the cutting edge of what’s possible in digital, and actively promote Ogilvy’s work through social media. This later became the foundation of my industry thought leadership work (that I’ve continued through my role at Dell and now at Samsung). During my time at Ogilvy, I was honoured to be the first leader of Neo@Ogilvy in Singapore, and I founded Ogilvy’s digital and CRM conflict agency, Soho Square.

Then came my time at Dell. Wow! I have sincerely enjoyed working at Dell as their Online Director – Asia Pacific & Japan and Global Social Media Director. I love Dell’s products - sure, there have been some misfires but I believe Dell is on the right track. In my opinion Alienware is the best laptop or PC you can buy (I own 2 of them). Dell is also doing very well its transformation to become a B2B software, services and technology solutions provider. As far as job scope, I managed their online sales and marketing in Asia. Of course, Dell is the pioneer of e-commerce (the first company to hit $1m/day in e-commerce revenue, one of the first to launch eSupport and online discussion forums) and across Dell.com, eTail partners (Taobao, 360Buy, Suning, Amazon, eBay, etc.), mobile and social commerce Dell makes well over US $1 billion in online sales in Asia. It was my job to manage and grow this revenue. As far as I know, it’s the biggest e-commerce job in Asia (well, except for the guys running Amazon, eBay or Tencent of course). And it’s been an amazing experience. In addition, I’ve had the pleasure of leading or being involved in many of Dell’s social media sales & marketing initiatives. Dell is the number 1 social business and has been a pioneer with initiatives like IdeaStorm, DellSwarm, monetising Twitter, Dell TechCenter, socialising the Dell.com purchase path and the launch of Dell’s Social Media Listening Command Centre (to listen and respond to over 25,000 social media conversations every day about the Dell brand).

Now I’m moving onto Samsung Asia. I’m starting on Monday 6^th August. My new role is Regional Marketing Director, Digital & Social Media. This is a newly created role that comes with both a lot of expectations and a fair degree of aspiration. I aim to help transform Samsung into a digital powerhouse. My ambition is that Samsung will be recognised as the leader in social media and that the digital marketing bar will be raised well and truly to global best practice level. It’s a tough ask but I’ve got a huge advantage because Samsung is already the number 1 brand in Asia, and one of the top 10 in the world. They also have top notch talent and great agency partners.

If you have any ideas, are already working at Samsung or at one of Samsung’s agencies, please reach out – I’d love to hear from you on how we can make Samsung the digital leader. It’s a really exciting time in my life and I look forward to working with you.