Digi's head of marketing services Bernard Lee joins U Mobile

U Mobile has appointed Bernard Lee, Digi Telecommunications' head of marketing services, as its head of brand and marketing services. Lee (pictured) confirmed his new role to A+M, adding that he will report to marketing director Navin Manian. His new role with U Mobile is a consolidated one that covers brand, marketing communications, media, digital and social, brand engagement and consumer research across all consumer, B2B and product portfolios.

Before Digi, Lee was with Maxis, joining in 2014 as head of marketing communications. He also worked at DDB Worldwide and Naga DDB as business director and senior account director, according to his LinkedIn. Digi's spokesperson told A+M  that a search for Lee's replacement is underway. A+M has reached out to U Mobile for comment.

In a previous interview with A+M, Lee said marketers tend to underestimate Gen Z and dismiss them as trend followers but as digital natives, the younger generation is more informed than ever. 

"A digitally-savvy Gen Z is more likely to look for additional sources of information to verify their news and will also seek out like-minded people on the Internet to rally around their opinions. This can be both a positive or negative thing – to have a strong community of supporters or detractors," explained Lee. 

Given that Gen Zs are a diverse group made up of very different personalities and interests, a one-size-fits-all approach would not work when targeting them. Instead, Lee said marketers should understand the specific subset of Gen Z that they are trying to engage and modify approaches to best appeal to them.

TikTok and Snapchat are known to be popular among Gen Zs and Digi, in fact, was one of the early adopters of Snapchat. However, Lee said the team discovered that the audience was not aligned with its engagement strategy and has since refocused efforts to Instagram Stories. Similarly for TikTok, Digi was also looking at how the platform fits into its engagement strategy.

Meanwhile, on U Mobile's end, Adam Lee stepped down as its head of digital services marketing in January this year to take on a newly created role of head of marketing, communications and branding at Sathapana Bank. He told A+M previously that he joined to help transform Sathapana into a leading commercial bank in Cambodia. 

At the same time, Jasmine Lee also moved to the new role of CDO after eight years as CMO. Under her strategic leadership, U Mobile rolled out appealing, innovative products and services that disrupted industry norms, launch a financial services ecosystem as well as expand the connectivity business to include fibre, said U Mobile. Lee is currently responsible for building and exploring new opportunities in the digital space, creating new digital experiences as well as data-driven solutions that would benefit customers. 

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