CMO Chats with Farzeen Quadir-Hegde, Head of Marketing for Asus

Thank you so much, Farzeen for joining us. Can you share a little bit more about what does your company do?

At Asus, we very much follow a vision that is “in search of incredible” for everything to enhance a digital lifestyle everywhere, for anyone. We very much live by this vision, and it is the foundation of everything we do in terms of product development and R&D, from how we take the product to market to how we engage with our customers.

In terms of what Asus does, we’ve got a very comprehensive product portfolio, and we offer comprehensive laptop solutions, regardless of what an end user’s need may be: whether it’s for commercial use, for education use, for day-to-day computing, entertainment, gaming, or content creation. No matter what your needs are, there is an Asus laptop for you.

In addition to our laptops, we also have a range of mobile phones, handheld gaming devices, and different form-factor mobile computing solutions. What we continuously do as a brand is that all of these mobile product solutions, we consistently enhance them with the latest and best technologies, like AI, OLED space in laptops, intelligent cooling technology, military-grade durability, and things like that. Yeah, that’s, in a nutshell, what we do.

Thank you. Since this is an interview about CMO chats, I wanted to get to know you better, and as the head of marketing in your company, what is currently your main marketing focus?

If I were to group my current focus areas into three areas, the first would be customer-centric innovation. So innovative products are at the heart of everything we do—but just simply having the product is not enough. When we bring these new technologies and innovations to market, it is essentially with a purpose: to enhance our end users’ lifestyle and computing experience. From a marketing perspective, it is quite important for me to be able to communicate that through effective marketing in terms of what benefit it is adding to a consumer’s lifestyle. How is it enhancing their digital lifestyle? So, that customer-centric message is quite important to me.

Secondly, keeping global brand DNA but with a localised approach. ASUS has a very strong global brand identity worldwide, but what makes our marketing strategy quite successful is to have that localised approach that resonates with ANZ consumers. While keeping the global brand DNA, we still need to localise our efforts within the local region.

And thirdly, which is a key focus for us, is the whole world of AI, which has a lot of buzzwords around it. AI leadership is essentially a transformative technology with the potential to revolutionise how we live and work. So as a brand, we see a lot of opportunities to tap into this hype and also position ASUS as the go-to brand for cutting-edge technology. We believe that, you know, really tapping into this technology and being able to talk to our customers in a language they understand in a customer-centric manner is what’s going to be able to take our brand to the next level.

I love hearing about being customer-centric and obviously making sure things are localised, as well as using AI as a means of furthering what you already have right now and expanding it to better use. That’s really nice to hear, Farzeen. What I wanted to ask now is if you can tell me about a particularly innovative or successful marketing campaign your team has recently executed,

In my last five years, there have also been quite a few campaigns that I’ve been fortunate enough to be part of, and I am very proud of the team for being able to execute them. But I guess today I can talk about one of the most recent launch events that we’ve had, which is our very first Asus Co-pilot+ PC, which is the People Book S15 launch.

The launch just took place about a month ago. The reason it was quite a milestone and special to us was because it was straight off the back of a huge global announcement made by Microsoft. Essentially, Microsoft has announced a whole new segment of laptops, which is called the Copilot+ PC. What it essentially is is that AI functionality is built into the laptops for customers to use. The reason the launch was so special and successful, from our perspective, was that we were able to launch that within 24 to 36 hours of a global announcement, which is quite an achievement locally because, from a big global announcement, there is a bit of a lack to bring products to the local market. For us to be able to do that was fantastic; it was a media launch event. The media who attended were absolutely thrilled to be able to hold the devices and be the first media globally to be able to hold a product in their hand and touch and feel the products. It’s been an amazing launch event. We had great attendance, and following that launch, we’ve also taken to market more awareness and education-based campaigns through content, social media, digital, and PR to educate the market because it’s a relatively new technology to get them to understand the benefit of what it means for them to have an AI-based PC. The launch of the campaign has been very successful, and we are very pleased with how it’s tracking. Of course, there is a lot more to come, but it’s been quite good so far.

That’s really good to hear. Congratulations. Farzeen, you know, definitely a lot of the effort that is built into these campaigns is because of your team and how in sync everyone is, especially it being a global launch and whatnot. I wanted to ask the specific questions because with success also come challenges. So, what are your biggest marketing challenges at the moment?

I wouldn’t say a challenge. I would say it’s probably more of an opportunity to work from a marketing perspective. But one that I can think of at this moment is really, as marketers, the ability to demonstrate our Asus premium product range in a market that is quite price-conscious. At the moment, with the cost of living and everything going up, it is very much driven by price, so in a while, we believe that price is certainly a key deciding factor in a laptop purchase. However, it is not the only one. So, our focus has very much been on educating potential customers on the benefits of investing in a premium Asus device, and some of those benefits could be superior performance, which could enhance their productivity, enhanced durability and reliability, which could make the product last a lot longer, therefore saving money in the long term for consumers, or stronger customer support and service, which gives additional peace of mind and a positive consumer experience. We feel that it’s not a challenge, but in fact, it’s an opportunity for us to be able to effectively communicate these added values, where we can reinforce the premium perception of Asus while still keeping it appealing for the price-sensitive consumer target audience.

I couldn’t agree more. I think a lot of it falls on, obviously, the information that you provide to potential customers or even those who are interested in educating them. This is one of the ways that I would very much agree with being able to continue marketing your product. I wanted to ask this question next: How does your company stay ahead of its competitors in terms of marketing?

We have quite a few approaches to ensure that Asus is always at the forefront of marketing. Going back to my earlier points, global strength and local relevance are quite key to us. Our global reach grants us access to a wealth of resources and insights, which we leverage. But what we still do is use a combination of global assets and insights. We have combined that with local market insights and crafted our GTM strategies to make sure that what we are taking to market is relevant for ANZ consumers.

We strongly believe in a strong partnership. Like any company, there is always an industry ecosystem. You know that the ecosystem is built with our distribution companies, our partners who are selling our products, such as retailers and resellers, and our media network industry vendors and partners. We work together to gain insight and best practices from them, and we often go to market together with the solution. We believe that enables us to stay ahead of the curve and stay more relevant. And, of course, data-driven decisions, so we constantly monitor consumer behaviour, consumer buying patterns, and the performance of our marketing activities, and then optimise our future activities to make sure that we’re getting the results we want.

I love it. Speaking of marketing activities, what I want to know now is, in your opinion, what the future of marketing looks like.

From my perspective, there is no doubt that the future of marketing will be AI-driven, and we are very excited for Asus to be at the forefront of this new era of marketing. Fundamentally, AI has a powerful set of tools that can really transform how we connect with end users and consumers and how we deliver value and communicate with them. Whether it’s from a marketing perspective, whether it’s enhanced efficiency and productivity, automating repetitive tasks, or, you know, data-driven insight on steroids, you can say. AI has the power to go through vast amounts of data that no humans can do, which, in the end, gives you a much deeper understanding of consumer behaviour and patterns. therefore, you can craft a lot more targeted marketing campaigns, which then drive better business results. So I do feel that AI will absolutely empower us to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time. So it will be quite crucial from a marketing perspective in the future.

It’s really nice to see how positively driven you are with, you know, with the use of AI, and being able to utilise that, with how efficient things have been with your team and even your marketing plans for the year. So first, I want to ask this question: What is the role of the CMO in one word for you, and why?

I would say orchestrating. The amount of different elements that a marketer or a CMO needs to sort of navigate through to create the ultimate marketing strategy to drive business results is a lot, so it’s really orchestrating different elements. Understanding the consumer journey, which is constantly evolving, means understanding the different touch points and how we can interact at a brand level with them. In order to do that, internal collaboration is also very important. Cross-department alignment is absolutely critical across departments. By that, I mean marketing with sales or product teams or supply chains, as well as finance customer service, because they’re all tapping into those customer touch points to ensure a unified customer experience. It’s quite important to have that internal collaboration and agree on the consumer experience that we, as a company, want to deliver. Absolutely, I would say orchestrating would be the word, and orchestrating these elements as a CMO can really lead to driving the marketing strategy and ultimately driving the business goals. I

I love that. It kind of reminded me of how a conductor would make sure that each instrument played a perfect symphony in an orchestra—a wonderful answer. Just one of our last questions here: what career advice would you like to give or share with other marketing leaders?

Look, I would say, embrace lifelong learning. Learning never stops. It really doesn’t matter what role you’re in or how many years of experience you’ve got. The marketing landscape is constantly evolving. The technology we use to market is constantly changing. The way a consumer buys and the consumer journey are constantly changing. Constantly upskilling yourself would be quite absolutely crucial. Secondly, would be campaigning marketing as a strategic driver for the company. In today’s world, there is often a mindset that the marketing department could be an expense centre, whereas that perception really needs to change, and marketing really needs to be a strategic driver from an overall company performance perspective. Thirdly, agility and adaptability are absolutely crucial in the current business environment. The ability to pivot strategy and adapt to a new direction and circumstance is quite critical as a marketing leader to be able to navigate your teams through uncertain times. And last but not least, always lead by example for your team.