Out to Lunch: Life in the fast lane

It’s noon when I make my way to meet Jo-Anne Loi at Buyan, a recently opened Russian restaurant on Duxton Hill. The restaurant’s owner Julia Sherstyuk, who also publishes the Russian-English bilingual publication 103rd Meridian East, recently made news for buying the world’s oldest Veuve Clicquot.

The restaurant looks like a quaint old European cathedral with its tainted glass and brilliantly painted ceilings.

As we settle into a cosy nook in one of Buyan’s upper floors, Loi, general manager of marketing for the Porsche, Opel, Saab and Mini brands at Trans Eurokars, says the place reminds her of a trip to Russia in her days of marketing for CapitaLand.

A familiar face in the local marketing industry, Loi has been in various marketing positions, including at Chijmes, Clarke Quay, CapitaLand and STB, before making her way to Eurokars.

Loi says she’s not overly hungry and we share an order of tomato stuffed with cheese, a salmon salad and a hearty beef stroganoff.

Having come from a background of mainly tourism and retail marketing (Loi tells me she was part of the team that helped start Chijmes), I ask her if it was tough making the switch to marketing cars. And whether she is a huge car buff? “Well, prior to this job, my interest in cars has been purely aesthetic”, she says, tucking into the salmon salad, which comes lined with a base of mashed potato.

“But marketing principles are the same everywhere. It’s all about marketing lifestyles.”

For Porsche, much of the marketing efforts consist of below-the-line initiatives such as direct mail and public relations.

Loi says since she has come on board, she’s seen a greater shift in investment from traditional advertising to public relations.

She estimates the company now spends 60% on traditional advertising and 40% on PR, where previously traditional advertising would receive about 80% of the budget.

Why? I ask her, as she moves to the stroganoff. Does she think traditional ads are no longer as effective? She says they are, but they need to be used with new media these days.

“Different media reaches different audiences. You just need to choose the right media to reach your audience.”

She sees PR as another aspect of the marketing function, and still believes in roping in their partner agencies in the strategic process of marketing. She says: “Ever since I came on board, I changed things a little. What I’ve done is give them a business brief, for example, I ask: how do I sell X number of cars in year? Then I let them come back with an integrated solution.

“I believe in not limiting them in terms of creativity, but letting them come back with their own solutions.

“Therefore, I believe more in giving a business brief than just asking for say, a print ad, A4 size, which unfortunately, is what I think a lot of marketers do.”

According to Loi, this formula has worked, with the company selling more than 400 Porsches last year.

With the growing luxury market in Singapore, Loi says her marketing strategy has also shifted, with a greater focus on customer relationship management.

“We see huge possibilities in this segment. For example, if we have a customer who purchases a Boxer model from Porsche, in a few years he will likely grow with the brand and eventually need an SUV.

“This opens up to a new segment for the consumer. We move with the consumers’ lifestyle and (we will have an) instant extension of the customer base.”

We end lunch touring the quaint interiors of the eatery, before Loi speeds off to her next meeting in her trusty lime-green Opel.