Singapore · APAC

Marcus Tan

Marketing, Data & AI

I help businesses go from "we think we need this" to "this is working."

Marketing strategy and consumer intelligence across APAC. I turn scattered data, untested ideas, and unclear problems into research products, consumer platforms, and strategies that deliver measurable results.

View Selected Work LinkedIn

Three different companies. Three different problems. The same approach: find the signal in the noise, then build something a business can use.

Selected Work

Making Data Sell

Mastercard Advisors · Data & Services

Consumer Intelligence APAC B2B Research

Mastercard Advisors needed recurring research products that banks would pay for — year after year. I led three concurrent programs across APAC, turning proprietary transaction and consumer data into commercial intelligence products with growing distribution lists and renewed client commitments.

3
Concurrent research programs
~30
Regional team members led
$2M+
In consulting revenue
5 Markets
India, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia

What I Did

Research design, multi-source data coordination, stakeholder management across commercial/compliance/data teams, edition management maintaining year-on-year consistency, and final deck production to Advisors standards.

"Recurring research is its own discipline. Consistency of structure builds trust; novelty of findings justifies renewal."

Building a Health Chatbot from Zero

MSD (Gardasil 9) · Ogilvy Singapore

Conversational AI Healthcare APAC Scale-up

In 2017 — before LLMs existed — I scoped, designed, and launched an HPV education chatbot on Facebook Messenger for MSD. Six business case iterations to get funded. Pharmaceutical compliance on every response. Then scaled it across 5 APAC markets. Nobody in the agency had done this before.

5 Markets
Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, South Korea
6 Iterations
Business case revisions to secure funding
2.5–2.7x
Increase in messaging activity
60–68%
Users within target demographic

What I Did

Social listening research, business case development (6 iterations), conversation architecture design, cross-functional coordination with MSD Legal/Medical/IT, MVP launch, multi-market deployment, platform migration (Azure/LUIS to Dialogflow), and Chatbot 2.0 scoping.

"Compliance is a design constraint, not a blocker. The constraint made the bot more trustworthy than it would have been with more intelligence."

The Research Behind an Effie Gold

Electrolux · Ogilvy Singapore

Consumer Research Brand Strategy Cross-Market

Electrolux's Australian market share had halved in three quarters. Using consumer data across 6 APAC markets, I identified the pattern that changed the brief: women talked about fashion 2–5x more than home appliances, yet the brand was selling washing machines with heritage messaging. That research became the foundation for the "Fashion Care" repositioning — which, together with the strategy, creative, and media execution that followed, won the 2018 APAC Effie Gold.

6 Markets
Analyzed across APAC
19 Metrics
Behavioral/attitudinal per market
239.6
Fashion consciousness index (2.4x general pop.)
6.5% → 9.7%
Market share recovery in two quarters

What I Did

Consumer persona development across all six markets using GlobalWebIndex data, structured into identity/behavioral/conversation tiers. Cross-market synthesis identifying the fashion-consciousness pattern as the strongest repositioning signal. Paid social audience planning informed by persona data.

"Foundational research is invisible when it works. Good foundational work disappears into the foundation."

Let's talk.

Currently exploring opportunities in marketing strategy, consumer intelligence, and AI-driven growth across APAC.

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