Visa promotes Karen McGregor to APAC consumer brand marketing head

Visa has promoted Karen McGregor to head of consumer brand marketing, APAC. In her new role, McGregor (pictured) will steward the brand to support business growth, champion Visa’s strategic brand evolution efforts, and provide strategic leadership across brand, campaign, content and media, Visa's spokesperson told MARKETING-INTERACTIVE.

She will also represent APAC on Visa’s global brand council, and remain on the APAC marketing leadership team, reporting to Danielle Jin, SVP, head of marketing, APAC. McGregor was formerly Visa's head of marketing for Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand for close to two years.

According to McGregor's LinkedIn, she has over a decade of experience in the banking sector. She was previously at DBS Bank for six years, where she was SVP, group strategic marketing and communications, and later SVP, consumer banking group regional marketing.

During her time as SVP for group strategic marketing and communications, McGregor was responsible for defining, shaping and communicating the bank's brand positioning both externally and internally; her LinkedIn stated.

She was also head of regions, wholesale banking brand and marketing at Standard Chartered Bank, where she was tasked with analysing and developing strategic marketing and communications plans for seven different regions with varying levels of market penetration, based on business and revenue objectives and their alignment to the bank's global vision. She had also spearheaded the development of a client database that maps marketing activity to the sales and revenue cycle for better analytic tracking.

McGregor has also previously worked at companies such as Admerasia in New York City, LINC Media in Tokyo, and The Direct! International in Singapore.

Separately, Visa underwent a brand refresh in July last year in a bid to prepare itself for the future of digital commerce and show that it is more than a credit card company.Done in collaboration with global brand design firm Mucho, the new identity features refreshed colours for digital impact, a custom font created for optimal digital experiences and an updated brand symbol designed to express the purpose behind the organisation. 

The latest refresh comes seven years after it removed the gold "V" in 2014. The refresh also taps on over 60 years of experience and branding that Visa has built and ties in with the founding vision of "What if money became fully electronic?"

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