'A marketer has no choice but to understand every single thing,' says Ng Yau Chuan

Few CMOs make the leap to CEO. Fewer still carry their marketing mindset with them into the corner office.

But for Ng Yau Chuan, now CEO of Golden Scoop (Baskin Robbins Malaysia and Singapore), marketing isn’t a stepping stone, it’s the foundation. With over a decade of experience across FMCG and F&B, and a track record of building brands such as Tealive as its Loob Holding's chief marketing and digital officer in 2022 to 2024, Ng knows firsthand what it takes to connect with customers, drive revenue, and grow loyalty.

Today, as CEO, he's applying the same principles - customer empathy, brand storytelling, and an obsession with outcomes - to steer the business through its next chapter. Speaking at Content360 in Singapore, Ng pulled back the curtain on how his marketing background informs his leadership, why marketers need to stop hiding behind dashboards, and what it really takes to build a culture where people are free to fail. 

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“To be very honest, my perspective of marketing has not changed much,” Ng said when asked if the CEO role had shifted how he sees the function. “At the end of the day, everyone is driving towards business outcomes. Whether you’re in marketing or you have the top job, it’s pretty much the same.”

While many marketers still default to metrics such as Brand Lift or Google Ads reports, Ng said that’s only one piece of a much bigger picture. “There are many other ways to triangulate outcomes. My first go-to isn’t necessarily the dashboards. It’s one of them, but not the whole thing.”

As a former marketer, Yau said he doesn’t “push back” on the marketing team’s ideas, but he does encourage them to think beyond their roles. “Marketers tend to be very role-specific,” he said.

If something isn’t selling, the answer isn’t necessarily more promotions on brand days, eCommerce sites, or sales on platforms like Grab or foodpanda. Instead, the focus should be on simpler questions: Is the price competitive? Is the product good enough? It’s about fostering a broader, role-agnostic approach to problem-solving.

Each week, Yau meets with his marketing team. Rather than giving top-down feedback, he evaluates ideas against three core principles and then leaves the team to assess whether their plans stand up.

“I don’t say, ‘This is awful’ or ‘This is great.’ I just ask: based on these principles, do you still feel good about the plan? Should it be better? Should it be different?," said Ng. This philosophy extends to ownership of insight and data. When asked whether marketers should "own" the consumer voice, Ng said it’s a grey area but one marketing must step into: 

As marketers, you tend to be the ones closest to the consumer. You're the ones listening the most. You're looking at engagements, you're reading comments. So marketers tend to kind of be like the first front line of defense in that regard.

Interestingly, Ng doesn’t buy into the idea that a marketing background automatically makes for a strong CEO. Still, he acknowledged marketing’s edge: “Marketers tend to be revenue drivers, growth drivers, and very close to the consumer. Especially in F&B, where you own everything from supply chain to the end product," said Ng, adding that: 

A marketer in this kind of company has no has no choice but to understand every single thing. That is one advantage.

Rather than dictate direction, Yau focuses on fostering a culture of accountability, even when the data doesn’t offer clear answers. "I do try and encourage a culture of accountability, ownership and action. Always be geared towards action. It's the same at every level, including my level," said Ng.

"I think in this digital age, we are kind of training ourselves to think that data is always conclusive. We pretend that data is always conclusive. But we are in these roles, and I believe most people here in senior enough roles are hired to actually take calls, make calls that isn't fully justified by data. That is the reality," Ng added.

So is data important? Yes, especially when one is just starting out in their career, advised Ng: "You don't have a lot of experience and intuition, you have to rely on something, right? And I would never go to a person straight out of college as well and be like, 'trust your heart'."

When asked how he builds a culture where people feel safe to fail, Ng said it’s less about safety and more about coverage.

In F&B, marketers are rarely the ones on the front lines, said Ng, reflecting on his own experience. “Again I’ve been there, marketers are usually not the front liners. You may be the one who’s doing your research, you are studying your social media and all that, but you’re usually not the one interfacing with the customer.”

At Baskin Robbins, he said, that job falls to the staff at the outlets - the ones scooping ice cream, asking, “What flavour would you like?” or “Cup or cone?” That’s the operations team. “There are many other teams. There’s a supply chain team. There are IT teams, training teams, all these sort of things - and these tend to be more roll-up-your-sleeve type of roles," explained Ng. 

He added, “There will always be the view that marketers are not close enough to the ground. That will always be this view, and me in this role now, I have that same view.”

That’s why Ng believes credibility is everything. “It’s so important for you to get your crazy ideas through. You need a lot of credibility. People need to know that you’re willing to do whatever it takes for your campaigns to go through, that you know what you’re talking about.”

That means being able to anticipate your colleagues’ barriers and frustrations. “So, for example, I will go and work at my warehouse. I will go and work in a store. If you come to Malaysia or even Singapore, on some specific days, I might serve you a scoop of ice cream, because it’s important to do so," said Ng adding that: 

When people see that, then they feel confident that you’re not just in your ivory tower designing campaigns that are kind of crazy, and you don’t really know what it takes to get there. So you have to do the homework. That’s my biggest takeaway.

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