Overcoming the tussle between marketing and legal

We sat down for a chat after what seemed to have been a long day for Gale Choong, head of marketing at Unilever Singapore. Seeing a couple of green Watsons bags I asked: shopping?“No, retail visit,” came the answer. Choong, fresh into the role, was on the way back from a retail stake-out at Watsons where the store was having its members day.“I typically do store visits frequently. Today was a members-only day with huge discounts on products, so I wanted to check out how my competition is faring,” she says. A competitive marketer with about 10 years of experience, she explains that on any average day, it may be hard to see the movement of products off the shelves. But on exclusive days such as this, she gets to gauge first-hand what the competition is up to.After all, she adds, the key to any good marketing is observation.“There is no point in us marketers being boxed up in our cosy offices and on our comfy chairs,” she says.“We have to speak the language of consumers and be in tune with what is happening on the ground. I do store visits, home visits, talk to retailers and if I take public transport, I make sure to observe passengers behaviour. You need to observe.”Coming into the role late in 2015 was not an easy task for Choong. The FMCG giant was facing achallenging year with soft growth in Singapore. Choong, who leads a team of 12 in Singapore, looks over all four verticals of Unilever’s products – namely, personal care, home care, food and refreshment.Last year, several incidents regionally could have contributed to the company’s soft growth. The long drawn out haze period could have been a reason behind the drop in the number of visitors to the retail fronts. Another major factor that could have led to retail stores in Singapore taking a hit last year was the drop in the Malaysian ringgit.According to Choong, many local customers were also seen flocking to Malaysia and stocking up on their household products during this period. So, how does she manage “drinking from the fi re hose”? Well, there are many meetings to begin with, comes the answer as she laughs. The learning curve is steep, she says.“I’m a comeback kid having worked in Unilever early on in my career and my personal philosophy is to see each brand as my own little business,” she says, adding this is why she enjoys the challenge.Before her role at Unilever, she was marketing manager of dairies at F&N Foods for more than a year. Before that she was marketing manager at L’Oréal Paris where she handled the full scope of brand management for the L’Oréal Paris brands.Choong believes in pushing the boundaries – she states that as a society, we have often been taught in our education system to follow the norms. What marketers need to do today is push this boundary and live in the grey – that is where, after all, marketing excels.In a big organisation, of course, certain processes always need to be in place. But Choong is not afraid to challenge these norms if need be, she says. So does legal tie her hands?“Well, in all my 10 years across various organisations, they have all tried,” she laughs. But if there is something she truly believes in, Choong says she will not back down and wait for the higher management to step in.With legal it is always a black or white. There is no grey. But us marketers, we love the grey areas and often attack the grey. We thrive in the grey. So that’s the challenge marketers in general struggle with legal teams.So how does one overcome this tussle? The answer is being able to fi nd the middle ground and that isn’t a bad thing at all.“We have a lot of ongoing conversations with our legal team. We are pretty amicable and it is not a battlefield. Legal is important as it will ultimately help bring us back to line and the occasional friction with marketing helps to push boundaries of creativity as well,” she says.Challenges of being a marketerBeing a marketer today is not by any means simple. While various firms boast being able to track ROI, no one has a holistic offering, says Choong. As it is, it’s hard to grab consumers’ attention and media fragmentation is at an all-time high. On top of that, various media companies have their own measurement systems and metrics.“We work with our media agency and media owners, but the struggle is a lot of these measurement tools are not complete. Each medium also has its own way of measurement, but unfortunately there is no one metric that cuts across the board. In some areas there are gaps, in others there are overlaps. Marketers are simply doing the best they can with what they have,” she says.Another area of difficulty is balancing a company’s KPI with innovation. Innovation is a buzzword taking over the industry right now, but at the end of the day, despite all the glitz and glamour, marketers are expected to focus on the finances and the numbers. Hence, many a time, they would rather embark on a path well-trodden rather than one which could potentially cause a loss.“Sometimes we are so bogged down by the hard KPIs and we are so focused on hitting those numbers, we forget to take risks. But as marketers, we should lead the path of change and do things differently.So I believe we should set aside some budget, even if just a little bit, to explore these newer areas,” she says.After all, if you want to be a great marketer, you need to be both a peasant and a poet. You need to be able to crunch your numbers hard, but still have the flare and creativity of a poet.This article was first published in Marketing Magazine Singapore’s March 2016 print edition. To read more views from senior marketers click here.(Photo by: Lumina)