Bata Malaysia's marketing chief Diana Wong departs

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Bata Malaysia's head of marketing, Diana Wong, is leaving her role after more than four years with the company. Wong (pictured) first joined in 2017 and was responsible for marketing initiatives and trendjacking such as Neelofa's wallet-friendly slippers and Mahathir Mohamad's Bata slippers. Before Bata, she was the senior marketing manager at Hush Puppies and marketing manager at Lewre International, according to her LinkedIn. A+M understands that a replacement has yet to be named.

Wong told A+M that her first order of business when she joined Bata was to pivot the brand to digital. "I was one of the leaders who pioneered Bata Malaysia's digital transformation. Previously, the brand has been traditional in its marketing approach, mainly using traditional media and below-the-line activations," she said. According to Wong, her journey with Bata has been an interesting one and the strongest learning curve came when she reported to Bata's global CMO Isabelle Sakai. "She came from the FMCG industry so she brought plenty of her learnings from there and created a more structured and more disciplined form of marketing," Wong explained.

Wong also found the sharing of monthly global sharing of best practices among the marketing teams helpful. Some of the memorable marketing initiatives for Wong include the Raya campaign collaborations with celebrities in 2018 and 2020, as well as the viral post about Mahathir's slippers in 2018. "It is the most talked-about campaign until today, even BBC picked it up. It was also during the year he won the General Elections so it was a very iconic trendjacking initiative for us," she explained.

Bata had a moment in the spotlight a few years ago when Mahathir was spotted wearing a pair of slippers from the brand. One user previously said Mahathir was a humble man who did not require any Gucci or Hermes, instead a pair of Bata slippers was good enough for him. Bata then described the pair of slippers in a Facebook post as "Ramadan 2018 hottest selling accessory".

Separately, Bata was also catapulted into the spotlight recently following the Olympic win of cyclist Azizulhasni Awang at Tokyo 2020. Several netizens took to the brand's Instagram and Facebook pages to enquire if Bata will be selling its Power Sports shoes won by the cyclist. The shoes were provided to Olympic athletes as part of Bata's sponsorship with the Olympic Council of Malaysia. Wong told A+M previously that the brand received more than 100 private messages on Instagram and about 150 direct messages on Facebook concerning the shoes. It also witnessed a 30% increase in website traffic compared to a normal Monday as a result of consumers searching for the limited edition Power Sports shoes.

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