DHL marketer at your service

Logistics and excitement don’t often feature in the same sentence, but in 14 years with DHL, Yung Chiun Ooi says he has rarely had a dull moment. As head of marketing and communications for Asia-Pacific and Hong Kong, Ooi finds his role is less about branding and more about research, business planning, management, pricing and product development.

“The complexity of the role and variety of the challenges I face keep me interested,” says Ooi, who comes across as capable and efficient. “There are always different skill sets to learn. I spend about half my time on data-driven numerics, analysing customer revenues and determining why they are uptrading or downtrading trade lanes. This data drives our communication initiatives in each market.” 

Perhaps that is why he enjoys managing the subtle complexities of B2B marketing. While DHL has its consumer-facing delivery arm, 90 per cent of its clients are in B2B logistics. About three-quarters of the brands’ marketing focus is on the sector. 

“B2B marketing goes deeper, is less direct and there’s less room to be crazy. As a serious business, we’re serious about what we do and that has to come through in all our communications.”

This approach takes a deep commitment from the brand. For example, one of DHL’s core promises to its clients is its international expertise. To bring it to life and fulfil client expectations, the company launched its certified international specialist (CIS) training programme three years ago. The programme is aimed at equipping each of DHL’s 100,000 Asia-Pacific employees with the fundamentals of international shipping and company strategy across the 220 markets DHL operates in. In February, the programme won an award for distinction in leadership at the HR Business Directors Summit in the UK.

“When any of our employees encounter customer enquiries, they have the knowledge to deal with it which, for a brand that connects more markets than the UN, is valuable,” said Ooi. 

This is especially true in Asia-Pacific, where DHL leads in terms of market share. The region’s diversity and sheer number of languages makes it a considerable challenge for the logistics firm, both in terms of service execution and brand building. 

The CIS programme ties into the brand’s current campaign slogan of the ‘Speed of Yellow’, he explains. “The creative is about all our employees worldwide, working together to get through mountains and valleys, at speed.”

DHL’s global creative is handled by 180 Amsterdam, with local adaptation agencies appointed on a market-by-market basis. Media is managed by Group M’s MEC. 

Another element that Ooi regards as crucial to the DHL brand is its 24-hour customer service. No matter how much you train your people, there will always be one or two incidents that happen along the way, he acknowledges. “We do operate in a fairly challenging environment and things can go wrong. So it’s fundamental that a customer always has someone answering his call and letting him know the status of his shipment.”

Great customer service is necessary for the brand to stay ahead of its competitors, he adds. Making it happen fundamentally comes down to having motivated employees and Ooi’s department is constantly on the lookout for interesting stories within the organisation to share. 

These stories include online videos covering DHL’s work with Fashion Week, with which it has been a global logistics partner since 2007. “It’s very fast-moving and has a complex global supply chain, all of which must arrive pristine and on time. It lets us showcase what we can do,” explains Ooi. “We’re also the logistics partner for the F1 which fits our brand image well in terms of speed and precision.”

DHL also works with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, one of the world’s oldest and largest orchestras with a 250-year history and 100 musicians. DHL shares its experience in transporting the orchestra’s instruments, which are worth millions of dollars and must be kept at a constant temperature of 18 to 20 degrees Celsius, around the world via its website and YouTube channel. 

Strong employee engagement and ownership also comes into play when an issue or problem goes viral and is larger than the customer service team can manage. “Our policy is to be sincere in acknowledging the problem and to see what we can do in terms of managing the issue,” Ooi explains. 

A graduate of the University of Wollongong in New South Wales, Australia, Ooi’s first job was in retail, but he soon joined DHL Singapore in 1998, rising to regional retail sales manager, Asia-Pacific in 2005. It wasn’t until 2007 that Ooi returned to the country of his birth as DHL Express Malaysia’s national marketing manager. He moved to Hong Kong last July to take on his current role. 

“Marketing has changed so much,” he notes. “It used to be a lot simpler. There was a time when you would put out a print ad, have it run for six to nine months, and that would be your media plan. It’s more complicated now.”

For a predominantly B2B firm, marketing is much more than just advertising and branding, he says. It has to take into account data analysis, pricing and product offering and ensure the brand is one that clients are happy to be associated with. The brand has started exploring new ways of engaging and connecting with customers online, particularly those who run small medium enterprises, via content marketing and community management.

As a brand, DHL is also focused on being a partner that brands want to be associated with, and part of that is transforming itself into a sustainable company. Its ‘living responsibility’ ambition covers three aspects: Go Green, a commitment to reducing carbon emissions by 30 per cent by 2020 based on 2007 levels; Go Help, to use its capabilities in disaster relief; and Go Teach to educate the parts of the world that are most in need of such services. 

DHL’s environmental commitment is especially crucial to its business as its emissions, in turn, affect that of its clients. As a case in point, Fujitsu Logistics committed to reducing its carbon dioxide emissions by 40 per cent between 2000 and 2010 and credits DHL’s “environmentally conscious distribution service” in a corporate video with enabling the tech firm to cut emissions by 38 per cent by 2008. More recently in Hong Kong, the brand managed to tick off both its commitments to the environment and to education in a partnership with Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), resulting in the DHL Power Bike. Developed in collaboration with HKUST’s school of engineering, the stationary bike generates power when used for exercise and stores it in external batteries. Six of the bikes will be used at DHL’s Hong Kong offices and will be used to recharge the electronic hand-held mobile scanners used by DHL couriers. The project will be monitored for a year and if successful, will be rolled out to other DHL offices around the world. 

Such initiatives are driven by the DHL’s local offices. “I’m a firm believer that all business is local and we leave it to the local team to contribute to these goals as they deem best. DHL has a very clear, globally aligned brand message, but for corporate social responsibility, we encourage local flexibility.”

In cost-conscious Asia, DHL’s brand image rests on its ability to continually prove its value as a premium service. “We need to communicate to our customers, and prove to them, that we are more reliable and that we deliver faster and cleaner, with a full network of support for them when things go wrong,” says Ooi.