DMA download: StanChart's Joan Cheong on humanising tech

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Marketing and A+M are bringing to life its first ever virtual Digital Marketing Asia conference this November. The conference has previously been held across Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Hong Kong since 2013. This year, culminating into one, Digital Marketing Asia will be spread out across three weeks – with each week tackling a different theme. These themes are:

10-12 November 2020: Digital Transformation
17-19 November 2020: Data science and marketing analytics
24-26 November 2020: Mobile and eCommerce marketing

The conference aims to take you on an in-depth learning experience, and aims to help unlock the secrets to success when it comes to digital transformation. This year, we will focus on how brands can tackle digital marketing challenges brought by COVID-19 through data and technology that can bring the global economy out from recession.

As part of the conference, we will also be speaking to several of the speakers through our Digital Marketing Asia podcast series. This week, we interviewed Joan Cheong, director, digital wealth management at Standard Chartered. Cheong devotes herself to humanising technology and designing solutions that makes lives better. With her breadth of experience from product management, to a roller coaster entrepreneur journey, Cheong speaks to us about the importance of customer experience at the end of the day.

Listen to the full episode here.

Marketing: What do words such as "innovation" and "transformation" mean to you?

Cheong: These are big words and could be trending words where people might see it from different angles. Some may embrace it some may be afraid of it. But essentially to me, it is all about the mindset. We all need to see innovation more as a mindset, and technology more as an enabler, and we need to see digital transformation more from a human angle. I always emphasise that because if we don’t it becomes a hindrance as it doesn’t take into account how technology can improve the life of people but more of how it may scare everyone away.

Some may see it as investing a huge amount of money but not getting the benefits. So to me, it is all about the mindset and about how you as a person would address the changes that come along the way and how you transform these into how you run your business and organise and manage your team.

So you have to humanise technology and see it from a human angle. […]

Marketing: What advice do you have for our audience that might not have a big team or big budgets?

Cheong: Yes you might feel that I work for StanChart so I have a deeper pocket, but on the side I am also running small businesses of my own. I recently opened my own online bakery because of the COVID situation and I only sell on Instagram.

I work in a large organisation but I don’t want to feel that I am not in touch with what is going on in the digital world today. I never ever want to become a strategist just telling you what to do, and never execute. So this is partly why I decided to run this experiment on my own because I love baking anyway.

Running experiments, when it comes to reaching out to audiences online for small businesses, you must never be afraid of failing. Know that it is part of the experience and journey and run a very small experiment. Like for example, I only sell my bakes on Instagram and I focus on Instagram and understanding how the algorithm works and I focus on understanding what my customers and target audience are like and how they behave on Instagram, what they look at and the hashtags, and how influences impact the way they consume information on Instagram and then I figure out how I should position my product and services on Instagram. After positioning it, I ask “How do I make sure, I use consistent communication and consistent way of interacting with you from experience to design to visual to exact words I use, so its consistent”. So that it is all about [the customer]. […]

All these is about experimentation and accepting that you have to pick up a new skill.

Join us on a three-week journey at Digital Marketing Asia 2020 as we delve into the realm of digital transformation, data and analytics, and mobile and eCommerce from 10 to 26 November. Sign up here!