NTUC FairPrice's Vivek Kumar steps down as marketing and omnichannel director

Vivek Kumar is stepping down from his role as NTUC FairPrice's director, strategic marketing and omnichannel monetisation. Kumar (pictured) led two portfolios for FairPrice Group in that role: strategic marketing for the group's convenience retail business and omnichannel monetisation for FairPrice Group Media.

At FairPrice, Kumar led the marketing transformation for over 160 Cheers and FairPrice Xpress stores across Singapore, including at all Esso service stations. In his role as head of omnichannel monetisation at FairPrice Group Media, Kumar was also responsible for monetising media assets across supermarkets, cafes, online commerce and loyalty business, his LinkedIn said. Kumar was also responsible for developing the business blueprint, forming a partnership ecosystem and leading P&L for FairPrice Group Media.

In total, he spent 11 years under the NTUC brand, starting out as assistant director-general at NTUC in 2011. During his time there, Kumar said he and his team led helped grow NTUC membership by three times Singapore's workforce growth rate year-on-year. He also led P&L for NTUC membership, offered leadership to over 100 professionals across marketing and membership engagement, sales as well as operations, product development, and CX. According to his LinkedIn, Kumar was also an executive board member at NTUC Link.

"This has been an amazing journey of 11 years in the labour movement. I have been quite blessed that NTUC gave me the opportunity to scale up existing businesses, such as NTUC membership and the marketing transformation of Cheers and FairPrice Xpress. I have always had the opportunity to start something new and to really be in the start-up mode," Kumar told MARKETING-INTERACTIVE. 

Aside from NTUC membership, Cheers and FairPrice Xpress, Kumar was also involved in creating new associate programmes for NTUC, which he said brought together professional bodies together under one umbrella. Kumar was also glad to have been the founding director of FairPrice Group Media, which he said is a first for a major retailer in Singapore to bring together an omnichannel retail network. 

"We have brought together the data, media and tech, as well as a series of partnerships and advertisers. It has been a fantastic run and a great time by all accounts," he added. Kumar explained that he is leaving because a sense of purpose has always driven and brought the best out of him. According to him, an opportunity knocked on the doors and this one was equally purpose-driven and seemed like the one he was looking to for the next phase of his career. 

Before NTUC, he was with Shell as head of retail marketing, APAC and Middle East based in Kaula Lumpur for more than four years. During his time there, Kumar said in his LinkedIn that he managed a marketing budget of SG$50 million and directly led a team of 40 marketing professionals across Singapore, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Oman, among other countries. He also gained operational support and cooperation for marketing initiatives by negotiating with Coles in Australia and 7-Eleven in Singapore, his profile added.

Kumar also has experience on the agency side, having helmed leadership roles at WPP, Starcom, and Mediabrands. MARKETING-INTERACTIVE understands that there is a team in place at FairPrice Group Media that is ready to ensure all projects are followed through. MARKETING-INTERACTIVE has reached out to NTUC FairPrice for comment.

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Read the rest of the interview here:

MARKETING-INTERACTIVE: What were your memorable moments and major learnings at NTUC?

Kumar: There were three major learnings. First, the imperative is to be very focused on the needs of the customer. whether it was at NTUC side where we had to understand the professionals or at Cheers and FairPrice Xpress. My first remit was to run a research project with Nielsen to uncover consumers' expectations for the convenience format.

The second one is to pull the organisation together, marketing cannot operate in silos. It would not go very well, nor would it achieve success. Try developing a joint vision and go for it. That was what we saw in the case of Cheers and FairPrice Xpress. Marketing initiated the conversation around insights and the product fit conversation while the product and operations teams, who were part other conversation, brought in our unique offering together with chef Justin Quek in a ready-to-eat format. The operations team also launched the first AI-powered unmanned store. Marketing needs to think about how we can make things better for shoppers. Bring your colleagues together and marketing can then have a real impact. 

Lastly, it is critical to have people in your team who look at things differently from you and have the humility to spend time to understand their point of view and bring it altogether. I have sometimes struggled with that. When you are in a role long enough, you think you know it all so you need to have a sense of humility. I don't know how things are changing so I need to keep listening and learning. I have been very blessed and inspired by my team.

In the more recent stint, I have had interns from SMU and NTU working with me, and they have amazed me. Trust them as a member of your team and trust them to lead things and come up with a solution. I am learning reverse mentoring as I go along.

MARKETING-INTERACTIVE: How has COVID-19 changed marketing?

Kumar: COVID-19 hasn't changed is the need for a marketer to understand customers' missions and get under the skin of consumers. However, the pandemic also changed a range of digital tools and possibilities that are available to you to meet those needs. Take Cheers and FairPrice Xpress, for example, some of the key customers for convenience formats include tourists, kids going to school, working professionals going to the office, and when COVID-19 hit, this traffic either disappeared or reduced to a trickle.

We had to understand what is going on in the lives of customers when they are not on the streets. Then we understood that actually, moments such as home-based learning could be a source of stress or celebration if we can define the moment as such. Hence, we came up with Cheerful Moments campaign and urged kids to have a treat after home-based learning is completed.

We need to think through the end-to-end customer journey. You need to do that extra work to ensure you can help the customers meet their mission. 

MARKETING-INTERACTIVE: What are some gaps agencies can help fill during a time such as this?

Kumar: As clients are rethinking the customer insights and how their customers' missions are changing, it will be very important to work out a way to be part of that discovery process. We have been blessed with agencies have always been curious to find out from us what are the customer insights: Hogarth, Havas Media and Brand Cellar. 

Brands have a lot of customer insights nowadays and agencies need to be part of that. The second gap is resourcefulness. It is quite important that as a customer themselves, marketers begin to rethink the customer journey. The agency has the capabilities and talent to be part of that thinking process, as well as offer services that could then help client compete that process. That is not easy because obviously everyone is busy and agencies more so. But that is something agencies have begun to do. 

Also, it is important to bring agencies into the conversation about first-party data, given that it is coming together with customer insights and communications. Marketers need to ensure that they are looking at the customer from multiple lenses using a common set of data.

MARKETING-INTERACTIVE: What is a marketing trend we should take note of next year?

Kumar: Sustainability and climate change. What I am realising is that we as marketers do not yet understand the implication of what is coming our way.

Climate change will test our integrity as marketers; the expectations for marketers to be able to tell the customer truths in the boardroom.

Nothing would have prepared us for it because climate change puts you in the hot seat to be accountable for that customer voice and what's changing. It is not something you can ride on and needs to be thought through. I talk about our integrity as marketers because when we introduce something new and green, we are expected to think through the whole journey if we are making changes to our communications.

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