Loob Holding marketing chief on automation and brand identity in QSR

Yau Chuan Ng joins the Leader’s Panel at the QSR Media Asia Tabsquare Conference & Awards.

Loob Holding Chief Marketing and Digital Officer Yau Chuan Ng will be joining other top QSR executives in the Leader’s Panel at the upcoming QSR Media Asia Tabsquare Conference & Awards 2024.

Yau Chuan, who previously was part of Google, was also a speaker at last year’s conference, where he talked about how data and digital initiatives drove R&D at Tealive, a 800 unit strong Malaysian lifestyle bubble tea brand.

Ahead of the conference, QSR Media caught up with Yau Chuan and his thoughts on the various changes the industry has undergone.

QSR Media: What are some of the interesting trends you've noticed in the past year that QSR leaders should keep an eye out for? 

Yau Chuan: The QSR industry has always been a fairly labor-intensive business. The age of automation, machine learning, and AI creates amazing opportunities for us to not only serve customers better but to completely revamp our entire business model and run our own businesses more efficiently and accurately.

What has been your top challenge for the year and how did you and your brand overcome it? 

Every brand, not just ours, needs to re-invent and transform itself in the eyes of consumers regularly. A brand is like a living personality – people have a perception of it. They have a relationship with it. And it has to evolve with time to meet the challenges and the climate of consumers where they are.

In today’s world of overwhelming stimuli on social media, it has become easy for people to feel negative about where they are. Artificial filters, health / fitness / self-improvement gurus, and the effort to show only the best sides of ourselves play a role. To this end, we are refreshing our brand from our old proposition of providing ‘Always More than Tea’ to ‘Brewing Positivity.’ We want Tealive to be the brand you indulge in to see the lighter side and the counter-culture side of the world. We want people to have conversations with one another before cancelling each other. And we want customers to give themselves permission to feel good about themselves. This is the role we have chosen to play.

How do you think QSRs could maintain their competitive advantage in a quickly changing landscape?

AI is the buzzword of the year, but I think better data and automation will do wonders for faster execution, decision-making, and more robust P&Ls. Data and automation has the power to improve processes across every single function in an organisation, saving you costs, time, and identifying unexplored opportunities for growth.

Listen to Yau Chuan and other panellists this 23 April, at Furama Riverfront, Singapore. For more information about the QSR Media Asia Tabsquare Conference & Awards 2024, click this link.