Graduate Studies Blog
MSC MARKETING SCIENCE
Meet the MMS Alumna with a Dream to Use Tech for Good
Veronica Tan is a Nanyang Business School (NBS) MSc Marketing Science (MMS) alumna. Today, she leads the digital marketing team at the Philippines office of multinational tech company vivo. Her goal goes beyond delivering impact at work. Eventually, she also wants to lead change in using tech for the greater good.
Embracing Innovation
Veronica’s passion as a marketer is in showing how technology improves lives, leading her to begin her career journey in tech giant Tencent. Since then, she has worked for a Chinese smart home technologies company and a Singapore medical start-up before joining vivo.
“That’s the most exciting part of working in a tech company: witnessing stories of how technological innovations change lives for the better,” she says.
“For example, I had worked on a project that developed smart cameras. It’s reassuring to know that these devices help busy mothers in kitchens to keep an eye on their sleeping babies who are in another room.”
Veronica’s belief in technology for good also motivated her to embark on the NBS MMS programme.
“The MMS programme introduced me to new digital fields that I was never exposed to,” she says. “I was becoming a bona fide digital marketer as I deep dived into digital advertising metrics like ‘cost per mille’ and ‘cost per click’. More innovations in digital marketing tools are empowering marketers like never before. We now track people’s various actions across the user journey, which gives us a more accurate understanding of their conversion from awareness to consideration, purchase, and loyalty.”
Leading with Impact
As the digital marketing head at vivo Philippines, Veronica leads a 5-member team whose scope includes paid media, social media, live streaming, and KOL (key opinion leader) content.
“There are always challenges to being a new leader,” she says. “The key challenge for me being a foreigner, was initially having to adapt to a English-speaking work environment where English is not my first language.”
Veronica notes three qualities when asked about the leadership style she developed after a year in vivo.
“It’s important to remain humble,” she says. “When I started the digital marketing head role, I was a newcomer to the team, who knew a lot more than me. I wanted to learn more from them while supporting them with broader strategies.”
Next, she says that it is critical to show results to lead with impact: “This can be done through solid project management and being firm about deadlines.”
Finally, she highlights how good leaders are constantly open to new ideas and different working styles. “A good leader evolves with everyone and with the times,” she says.
She is grateful for the many group projects in the MMS programme, which she says, “truly honed my leadership skills”. She explains that the projects pushed her to manage timelines, have a strong work ethic, and lead by sharing information.
“Recently, while I was brainstorming a TikTok hashtag challenge for a new vivo product, I recalled some of the lessons I learnt from a project in the MMS programme,” she says. “This led to some very productive ideas, which the other local and regional teams liked.”
Transforming into a Global Citizen
Veronica always seeks to improve herself, so she decided on a career overseas that would challenge her in all aspects of her life.
“Diving into a different culture is exciting yet confusing at times,” she says, “Still, it will broaden my horizons and enable me to appreciate the many possibilities in life. Southeast Asia is also an up-and-coming market that I’m excited about.”
She adds that the culturally diverse classroom of the MMS programme equipped her with the soft skills to thrive in a foreign land.
“With such a diverse classroom, we naturally became interested in each other. The curiosity of wanting to know more about another country, another culture, another person, is what makes a global citizen,” she says. “Through this curiosity, we sharpen our cross-cultural communication skills. I’d say diversity is one of the priceless things about the MMS programme.”
