Split personality marketing

Joyce Yip talks to Julie Chiu, sales and marketing director of The Dairy Farm group, about the different personalities she adopts for her “five sons”.

Wellcome’s commercials have had an inconsistency problem.

Specific deals in product-based TVCs would have a two-second popup of the bargain the supermarket offered (such as, five lemons for HK$20); but when it comes to product ranges on sale (for example, purchases of $30 or more of sodas will have a 10% off), the text is stagnant.

For years, the commercials had this issue. And it wasn’t until the 11- year-old daughter of Julie Chiu, sales and marketing director of The Dairy
Farm group, pointed it out that it was finally changed.

“I think she gets the detailed-minded trait from me,” she jokes and adds the pre-teen was also one of the reasons a shot in Wellcome’s latest 68th anniversary TVC was amended because two of the featured personalities didn’t have enough chemistry in the original cut.

Her daughter’s sharp marketing intuition makes sense, seeing that she and Chiu – who oversees what she calls her “five sons”, Wellcome, ThreeSixty, Marketplace by Jasons, Jasons and Oliver’s – are the most frequent on-site quality control personnel.

I won’t go to Jason’s if I don’t have makeup on

“I think the industry I’m in is the epitome of incorporating work into daily life despite that handling five brands all at once does become somewhat schizophrenic,” Chiu laughs.

“For Wellcome, I need to channel my bargain-loving housewife self; for Marketplace, I’m an office lady with a standard for foods; for Jasons, I’m a young couple who likes to throw wine dinners and try new things, for example; for Oliver’s and ThreeSixty, I’m a connoisseur and a chef. Fortunately, I can be all those things.”

Bred from the management trainee programme at Citibank, where she was eventually transferred to the credit car  consumer marketing division, Chiu later took up the local – and soon – regional marketing roles for Shell, where she was in charge of the loyalty and payment schemes (the current tap-and-go credit card solution, for example, was one of her masterpieces), and where she finally took the initiative to buy her first car despite having her driver’s license for years.

“You’ve really got to be the consumer for what you’re marketing: you need to understand their behaviour, their habits, their daily routine, what they like, what they don’t like,” she says.

Recognising customer’s psychology for her each of her “five sons” is the most challenging part of her job, yet it’s also the part she most enjoys and best distinguishes her supermarkets against that of her competitors.

“We make it a point to detach the Wellcome trademark from our other, higher-end offerings because we want to create the ‘like to be seen in’ factor. When I carry an Oliver’s grocery bag in Central, for example, I often see Westerners checking me out; or I won’t go to Jason’s if I don’t have makeup on or don’t have a chunk of my afternoon to spare.”