CMO Chats with Donovan Chee, Head of Marketing & Communications, Asia Pacific at Bureau Veritas

We continue our knowledge-sharing mission through a series of interviews with marketing leaders from all over the world, and we are thrilled to have Donovan with us today. Donovan, please introduce yourself. 

Hi, Sabrina. Hi everyone. Welcome to CMO chats. My name is Donovan Chee, and I’m the Head of Marketing and Communications at Bureau Veritas for Asia Pacific.

Can you tell us a little about yourself and your role in the company? 

Bureau Veritas is a French company and a global leader in testing, inspection, and certification services. We have more than 80,000 employees across 40 countries worldwide, and my remit is the Asia Pacific region, which contributes to nearly 30% of the group’s revenue. What we do here is really amazing and very interesting; our services span across a wide range of sectors and industries.

To make it more layman, let’s take the building and infrastructure sector as an example. Sabrina, for the office building you’re in, obviously, you want to make sure that the building is safe and built to last, ensuring that foundation-wise, it will withstand any natural disaster. The kind of work we do is to make sure that when we inspect, certify, and verify the building, it is safe so that any occupant will be safe from any disaster that may strike and impact the building. So that would come under the building and infrastructure sector. Now, if you look at more personal consumption businesses, when you go to a restaurant and see on the menu that what you’re eating comes from a sustainable source, Bureau Veritas verifies that. We are there to verify and make sure that our independent third-party stamp, our BV logo, helps maintain trust and transparency between our customer and the end user. So that’s essentially the kind of service or work we do: to broker trust between our customers and society at large. In my function, as I mentioned, it is marketing communication. What we do here is to drive how we operate and how we position ourselves in this industry, ensuring that we rise above the noise our competitors are making and that ultimately, we position ourselves as a thought leader and become the trusted partner for our customers. Fundamentally, our marketing activities are all geared towards that. Now, what do we do to create that? There are a couple of things we need to do. One would be the storytelling aspect. To me, B2B marketing should predominantly be about storytelling: the kind of stories we tell and how they resonate with our customers. More importantly, the stories we tell should not just touch the customers but also ensure they understand we are there to solve their problems. Often, when it comes to B2B marketing, people see it as boring or not exciting enough because we are not selling shampoo, so advertisements are more factual. But the truth is, we are also selling to people, and these are key decision-makers who have to make decisions that revolve around profitability for their companies. We need to understand our customers, and in doing so, the marketing we do must have the right message and the right stories to reach out to them. Of course, the question then is, in terms of the marketing activities we do, what kind of returns will we have? Because if you talk to senior business leaders, they will ask what kind of returns or investments you expect from marketing. So obviously, we need to back it up with data in terms of the opportunities we would have when we do certain activities, what kind of sales, what kind of revenue, and so forth, so that we always come back to doing the fundamentals of marketing but, at the same time, support it with data that drives the company’s business. That’s important for all of us. 

Of course, with Asia Pacific being such a big region, the question that arises is whether we are doing the same thing for all countries or if we will be doing very customised activities. The truth is, every country has its own cultural nuances. We all know that different countries do business differently; the kind of messaging and the kind of angle all have to be very customised and tailored to our target audience. While the overarching theme is predominantly the same everywhere, the way we approach marketing will be tailored to the general needs of the markets to ensure that we do not lose sight of cultural sensitivity, for example, and also respect our markets. That is it in a nutshell.

What is your main marketing focus at the moment?

Our main objective is really to rise above the noise. I always tell my marketers that when you are in an industry, you obviously have competitors, and they are competitors because they are all selling the same kinds of things as you, whether it’s your products or services. They are competitors because you are all vying for market share. How then do we rise above this noise, where all of us are saying the same thing and selling the same things? For me, it’s important to be very purpose-driven. The brand must have a purpose. And when I say purpose, it’s not just about saying that we have this service to solve your challenge. What’s critical here is what kind of brand image we want to present to our customers, where they can go out there and say, I’m certified by or have been using Bureau Veritas. That is the purpose we have: making sure that we are a brand that is trusted, not just by customers but eventually by the end user. That is very important to me. Why do I say that, even though we are a B2B company? I liken it to this: even though we are a B2B company, if a person on the street recognises your company’s name, I would say that means your marketing is on point. Because, as a B2B company, there’s no inherent reason for the end user to know what you’re doing. However, if you are able to transcend across all sectors and boundaries, where men, women, even yourself, Sabrina, if you are staying in a building and you see it’s been certified safe by Bureau Veritas, this means you now know what we’re doing. And this means that you will feel much more confident that the building you’re staying in has been verified by a company you are very well aware of. That means, marketing-wise, we’re right on point; we’re doing very well. That is very much a key focus for me: to make sure that we are very purpose-driven. But again, it goes back to how we are going to convey that purpose through storytelling, how we are going to ensure that we resonate with our customers by making sure that everything we do allows them to understand how we will solve their problems, how we will help them achieve their objectives, and ultimately help them become a better company in the eyes of their customers.

Can you give me an example of a marketing strategy that has yielded the most success in terms of engagement or lead generation?

In today’s day and age, where digitisation is almost the key channel for all content, one of our biggest achievements was a campaign done in person, and that was after COVID. We were trying to launch a new service, and we wanted to ensure that, post-COVID, which had been dominated by webinars, webinars, and more webinars, we could move away from that. We wanted to go out and meet customers. We wanted to figure out how to continue to network and build and enhance relationships with them, which is so important. 

Just to sidetrack a little, customer experience is a very key part of how we should do marketing because customers are going to be your promoters through word of mouth, and nothing is more important than customers going out there and saying, ‘Hey, I hired BV. They’re great.’ 

Going back to what we did, we held a technical seminar roadshow where we brought two subject matter experts to meet our customers. It was important that we were not just hiding behind a screen or simply meeting customers to say, ‘Hey, this is our latest brochure. This is our sales deck. Come take a look. I’m going to share certain things with you.’ No, we wanted to educate customers. We wanted to share with them how these services would benefit their businesses. Being in Southeast Asia, companies or customers tend to be a little more traditional and conservative because they don’t know how such services, especially when you start using technology to augment your traditional manpower services, will affect their business. We had to put on a show and tell, present case studies, and ask them to come and try. It was a great event, not just in one country but in four countries across Southeast Asia, because we went out there, met many customers in one place, and showed them what needed to be done. To be honest, nothing of this scale has been done, not just within Southeast Asia or Asia Pacific but within the entire global sphere. 

What we achieved was a case of us being able to network and enhance customer relationships. The other thing was also being able to bring our subject matter experts to show and tell. The third thing is that we were not there to sell. We were there to educate and demonstrate how our services would be valued by their businesses. And the last thing was to ensure that, in a post-COVID world, we go out there, make our faces seen, continue to strengthen our relationships with customers, and hopefully, they will continue to think of us, which then obviously brings me to the next point: how we position ourselves as a thought leader and capture mind share. All of these activities at this roadshow allowed us to show and tell, as I mentioned earlier, and capture a mind share they had never considered before. Because nobody had ever done that for them before, and on such a major scale, going to four different countries and meeting 10 or 20 different companies all in one area. When they know we are doing that for them, they will then expect the same from our competitors and other companies. If they don’t do that, their expectations will be, ‘Okay, BV can do this. Why are the other companies not able to? Is it because BV thinks better of us? Do they treat us better as customers?’ So when you have all these questions being asked by customers, you allow yourself to be there, to be seen, to be taught, to be heard, and that’s very important for us. 

There’s also another important thing about such events: you get to meet your customers in a more informal setting, and that’s where you start to understand or find out certain information that may not have been readily available, such as what kind of future projects they may have. These are important nuggets of information for salespeople. One thing I’ve always realised is that even though marketers like us tend to just focus on organising the event, I always encourage my team to go out there and speak to the customers, network with them. Because, surprisingly, customers tend to let their guard down when they speak to a marketer as opposed to a salesperson. When you speak to a salesperson, they think, ‘Ah, they’re going to sell me something. I’m not going to tell them anything. I don’t want them to follow up.’ But when you speak to marketing, they think, ‘Okay, you’re just doing marketing.’ And then it naturally starts with, ‘I like this event. This event is good.’ I’m keeping my fingers crossed that they felt that way. The lead into the conversation is less formal, more relaxed, and it allows the marketer to then pick up nuggets of different information to go back and feed the sales team, saying, ‘Hey, I got this little piece of information here, which he said might happen in two years.’ But you might want to know that during these conversations, the marketers will also be able to better understand the customers and their challenges, and this allows us to step into their shoes and create content that is relevant to them. Otherwise, we’ll always be hiding in a well or behind a wall and saying, ‘I don’t know what they want. I don’t know how to craft my messaging.’ I would say, go out there, meet your customers, talk to them, understand what they’re thinking about, and bring that perspective back to create the content you need

What do you believe is the current biggest opportunity for CMOS today that might not have been available in the past?

Wow, this is a great question. The first thing would be the way marketing has evolved. I’ve been fortunate enough to see the different stages of how B2B marketing has evolved from its initial days to where it is now. Even though I’ve been doing this for 15 to 20 years, when I first joined, B2B marketing wasn’t considered exciting. I’ll be very open here; one of the key reasons I wanted to do marketing when I was studying was because I loved watching TV advertisements. I found them so interesting because they were always telling a story, often unexpectedly, which made them memorable. I always wanted to do that, perhaps in advertising or B2C marketing. That was my initial dream. As fate would have it, none of those companies hired me, so I ended up doing B2B marketing. But it doesn’t mean I lost out, because 15 to 20 years ago, B2B marketing was essentially very standard: trade shows, customer events with brochures, corporate gifts, and pull-up banners. If a customer wanted sponsorship, you’d just do it, like pasting a sticker on a van or glass panels.

Now, while those things aren’t entirely obsolete, we’ve seen significant growth and evolution to the point where today, we talk about B2B marketing having a story to tell, using data-driven insights, integrating AI, and incorporating technical seminars, forums, and customer events to give a better customer experience. What used to be in silos 15 to 20 years ago, seen merely as a support function or a “coloring book department” where the sales team just asked for a brochure or a design, is now integrated. We can even track a customer’s touchpoints on every digital channel. This is one area where I believe marketers today can learn and achieve much more than in the past. The road has been paved, but marketers need to learn and absorb information fast because it’s no longer the slow and uneventful field it once was. Now, everything is fast-paced; just look at how AI is being integrated.

The other thing would then be AI, as I mentioned, and that’s important because technology will drive how we do marketing. You can see how people consume content, even in B2B. Nobody watches a three-minute or five-minute video anymore. Everything is short-form; our attention span is 30 seconds maximum, maybe one minute. How, then, do we get our message across as quickly and clearly as possible in such a limited time? And how do we get our stakeholders, who might not believe in what we’re doing, to really see the value? We need to find that angle and ensure that the stakeholders in our company understand that we’re not just following trends like doing a TikTok for the sake of it; there’s a real purpose. We need to understand how to integrate all this technology, including AI.

The third thing, I would say, is that mentorship is critical. It may seem like a soft skill that doesn’t fit the topic, but to me, a marketer today needs guidance due to all the experience available. Fortunately, I’ve had a couple of mentors along the way, and not just marketing mentors. I would really urge all marketers to find mentors from different functions, whether it’s sales, finance, or HR. There are clear reasons why: for sales, essentially, find a mentor you connect with and can ask questions, because you’ll then understand how your work impacts the sales front, contributes to sales growth, and helps the company grow year on year. Also, if the salesperson can bring you to meet customers, you’ll find opportunities to ask the right questions, interact with them, and even find co-branding or co-marketing opportunities. Again, customers are always your best promoters, and building relationships through these meetings can be very helpful for everyone involved. That’s the first thing with the sales team. Now with other functions, for example, finance. You want to understand the business side of things. Marketers come in many forms: data-driven, creative, and content-focused. The good thing is we can see all these aspects from our unique perspectives and piece them together. However, sometimes we struggle to define what we do in figures and through understanding financial aspects. When you speak to a finance person or your CFO, what are they looking for from our marketing activities? I don’t think they’ll care about whether a tagline resonates. Instead, they’ll ask, ‘Okay, you launched this campaign with X amount of money. What are the returns?’ You need to understand their language and thoughts to frame your justifications and proposals in a way that aligns with their expectations. That’s the second thing.

Now, the third thing, which I did mention, was HR. HR is more about the customer brand experience that your employees have. But having your employees involved, perhaps through an employee advocacy program, will be very important for them to share their experiences with the company. When we talk about marketing now, it’s not just about marketing to customers; it’s also marketing to future customers and future employees. The younger generation today looks for companies that are purpose-driven and have meaning. You want to ensure that the brand image you’re putting out there through your colleagues is one that can attract the talents of tomorrow.

Putting all of this together in terms of mentorship, being able to speak to all these different functions is critical. It gives you a much more rounded view of how marketing can support not just business growth and brand awareness but also bring everyone together towards a shared vision.

Our last question: how would you describe the role of the CMO in one word, and why? 

I almost call the CMO role the CCO, Chief Collaboration Officer. The reason I use ‘collaboration’ is because I see the Chief Marketing Officer or the Head of Marketing as the person who glues and binds all these different functions together. Each function in the company plays a very important role in its own way, and that’s not to be denied. But when it comes to marketing, we are often seen as playing a supporting function, not really a critical one. How then do we bring all these different functions together and make sure we’re doing the right thing, something purposeful, and something the company needs? A lot of times, we’re going to each of these departments to say, ‘Hey, I need your help. I need your support. Can you help me do this? Can you help me do that?’ And that’s where your people skills will be on full display to ensure you can collaborate with each of these different functions and get them on board with a shared vision. As I mentioned earlier, in terms of how we are going to work with each of these functions, it’s really to get us to where we are as one whole company.

For example, we speak to sales. We want to ensure that the campaigns we’re doing are aligned with sales. We can’t just be running around, doing a campaign that has no impact on the company’s growth eventually. There, we are collaborating with them. But having said that, can we then bring finance in, perhaps as part of this campaign to support us in other ways? Maybe we might say, ‘Okay, because sales have these certain targets they need to hit, and marketing has certain objectives. Can we then have your support to increase the budget so that we can do certain things?’ A partner comes into collaborating on this campaign, and perhaps, then, how can we further expand this campaign to not just reach our customers? Can we reach out to society at large? Then we may need to bring in HR, or even certain colleagues who may not be in any specific function, maybe even the Administrative Manager, to come in and share their thoughts in terms of, ‘Okay, how is the company being viewed out there on a much broader level? What does the average person on the street think of the company? What do they understand about it?’ Maybe ask any of our colleagues, ‘Does your boyfriend know about our company? Does your boyfriend know what we are doing?’ All these little nuggets of information will then be passed back to us, and then we’ll be able to do a campaign much, much better. All in all, that’s the reason why I’m saying we should be considered a Chief Collaboration Officer, because all of this input, while it may sound like too much feedback and noise that could ultimately distract you, I believe that certain needed information can be taken in and then shaped into a campaign that would meet your objectives. Going out there and being able to speak the right language with the sales team, the finance team, the HR team, and even the Administrative Manager, that is a skill that the CMO or the Head of Marketing needs to have. And hence I say three words: Chief Collaboration Officer.