Marketing Talent Awards: Why marketers need to be a catalyst for positive change

Next in the hot seat we have Lim Wee Ling, marketing director, Singapore Food at Cold Storage & Giant. With more than 20 years of experience as a marketing director, Lim has delivered multi-million-dollar growth and strategically significant transformative marketing solutions across industries such as travel and tourism, retail, FMCG, F&B and more.A marketer by training and practice, her functional strengths include ATL and BTL marketing, branding, customer loyalty marketing, customer relationship management, data mining, demand generation, digital analytics, digital marketing, e-commerce, integrated marketing strategy, market research and social media marketing. She is currently the marketing director for Dairy Farm Singapore where she oversees all aspects of brand and store marketing for both upscale and discounter format – Cold Storage and Giant, including the company’s digital, social and online platforms.Lim shares with us what she thinks will be her key takeaways from the awards.Celebrate and reward your star employees and teams at the inaugural Marketing Talent Awards 2019 and attract new talent. Entry submissions close on 12 July—start your entries now!Marketing: As a judge what do you hope to see in the submissions for Marketing Talent Awards from the rising stars?I look forward to seeing submissions with individuals that push the boundaries of creativity, not just in terms of big ideas or design, but also excellent or creative execution that once again proven that not all big ideas require big budget.Marketing: What do you make of the awards? It is long overdue that marketers need to be recognised as a specialist in our own field too. This inaugural award will definitely motivate and retain talents as it raised the professional profile of marketers.Marketing: Why do you think talent retention is such a problem in the marketing/advertising community?There is a lot of hard work required in marketing jobs. While marketing might look glamorous on the front, there are a lot of heavy responsibilities that come with it. Sometimes, it might not be remunerated fairly as marketing is often viewed as a ‘cost’ centre.  It takes a passionate person to be able to undertake such a high stress, and high pace job.You need to really like marketing and understand how you can contribute positively to the business, to be motivated and have a strong sense of accomplishment.Marketing: What do you feel has to change to ensure young talent stays in organisations, and you can attract young talent?The new generation of young talent is motivated very differently. They are looking beyond just a good paycheck. They want a job that can zest them up and a leader that can challenge them daily. They will not hesitate to ‘spar’ with you. For any organisation to be a magnet for talent, leader must give enough guidance and wider boundary and parameter for these young talents to test out their new ideas.  Marketing: What about the veteran marketers? What will you be on the lookout for?There is no end to acquiring new knowledge. Many industries have been disrupted and marketers also need to keep up with today’s consumer and technology trend. We cannot rest on our laurels, thinking that we ‘know it all’. We need to be at the forefront of all consumer trends, continue to learn and unlearn and play a strategic role in the company. More importantly, we must continue to be a catalyst of positive change.Marketing: What role do you think veteran marketers play in attracting new blood in the industry?We need to be a role model, lead by examples, and be an exemplified version of what a marketer should do and how they should behave. There should not be any ‘fear’ to impart knowledge to the next generation. At the end of the day, it is about learning from each other and growing knowledge together.Marketing: One important tip for our veteran marketers: Marketers need to be just as comfortable with data as we are with creative and designs. In this technology advanced world, it is no longer sufficient if we continue to rely on our past professional intuition. We need to be able to read and understand data, discover and interpret patterns and apply them in our decision making. Marketers used to do story telling. But this is the era of ‘storytelling’ with analytics.Celebrate and reward your star employees and teams at the inaugural Marketing Talent Awards 2019 and attract new talent. Entry submissions close on 12 July—start your entries now!Read also:Marketing Talent Awards judge Frances Koh on the demanding nature of marketingMarketing Talent Awards: Prudential’s Goh Theng Kiat on talent diversityMarketing Talent Awards: Judge Linda Locke on Singapore’s talent retention