Embracing retail-tainment: Luxasia’s head of consumer

In episode 6 of MYC'D UP with CX Leaders, we speak with Avis Easteal, the head of consumer for Luxasia.

Luxasia is a fascinating brand and Avis is a fascinating podcast guest, hailing as she does from the UK and having headed up a number of initiatives for insurance brands in the UK prior to the leap to customer experience, insight and marketing via her head of consumer role for a completely different type of business in Luxasia in a completely different region – being as it is an ecommerce platform for primarily beauty brands across Asia.

In this podcast, Avis discusses her career path, what a Luxasia customer typically looks like, why customer experience is an irrelevance without good marketing, why working in retail in Asia is more interesting than in other regions, the role of social media and innovations such as live shopping in making Asian retail and ecommerce such an innovative sector to be in, and why she sees herself as an ‘accidental’ customer experience leader.

“We’re moving out of the information industry and into retail-tainment”

DISCUSSION TRANSCRIPTION 

MYCUSTOMER:

Welcome to MyCustomer's MYC'D UP podcast. As you've mentioned, you're the regional head of consumer at Lux, Asia. And I'd like to delve into that role shortly. But before we do, perhaps you could give our listeners a bit of an understanding about who Luxasia actually are.

AVIS EASTEAL: 

Sure, so Luxasia is omnichannel partner to beauty brands and luxury lifestyle brands. We operate from India, all the way through Southeast Asia, North Asia and across to Australia and New Zealand. So we are brands that you will know we are a mess we is que tu we are la prairie, we are Paul grey. And we operate with for just over 120 brands across the region, different brands in different countries. We operate in skincare, fragrance, home, Bath and Body makeup, hair, everything you can think of. We're also toys. So we're Lego and Hasbro. And we do some other categories as well. We do Dettol we do direct so as part of our ecommerce strategy. So we are the people who do the work behind the brand.

“If marketing sucks, no one sees the experience”

MYCUSTOMER: 

You mentioned you're the omnichannel partner for these brands. What does that entail? What what does that mean?

AVIS EASTEAL:

So we operate just over 8000 points of sale, they can be in chain stores or department stores or boutiques, we have more 300 Plus marketplaces. So Asia is very different from Europe in the US it's not so Amazon dominated. So there's a big landscape of of marketplaces, and operating in marketplaces is quite complex because you only have one set of stock. We also run ecommerce sites we import we have staff so if you go to a department store here in Singapore, you will be talking to a luxe Asia person about a skincare brand and you will buy it off of the department store. And we have a platform that joins this all together so we have the tech behind this so I'm very digital company and as a brand you can buy all some or none of that depends on what you want to do in the region.

MYCUSTOMER:

This is probably a slightly more complex question that then maybe other other brands but what what does the typical customer look like? Looks Asia if you'd like what what are the expectations and have the demands of that customer changed in recent times.

AVIS EASTEAL:

So if you think we operate from luxury prestige message mess, so you know the expectations of a customer who buys Dettol on a marketplace a very different from a customer who buys luxury skincare from a boutique or a department store. So our experience and our customer base is very different based on brands. They can be very demanding and almost have their own personal beauty concierge or it can be very transactional, and we have to change our CX our service and our marketing accordingly. So they may be very affluent. They may not be very affluent, but in general, they tend to be beauty lovers, or toys lovers, or online shoppers or offline shoppers. They're millennials that Gen X predominantly about 80% Women Women tend into buy a lot of beauty products, and they also buy a male products for their partners and for their family. So you know, there's a there's a general in there. And then there's a very specific by brands, it's a great group of customers to work with.

“I am an accidental customer experience leader”

MYCUSTOMER:

And very interesting, very diverse still, and I know you said, you know, sort of 80% is, is female, but I mean, still given the, the span of regions that you cover, and like you say, the different brands that you cover? What are the mechanisms on your side for being able to stay on top of the sort of knowledge base around who those customers are?

AVIS EASTEAL:

So so we have a good tech stack stack. So within that tech stack, we've got a customer data platform. And then we have we use visualisation platform off there, and we build standard reports. So any brand manager in our organisation can see their consumers that, by that I mean, what age are they? How often do they purchase time between purchase? What products do they purchase? First? What do they follow that with? And so you can use that information to plan, you can look at your marketing planning, you can look at your demands planning, you know, if I know that this launch is coming, what's it like? How was that sold with consumers previously. And you can also measure the results of your marketing, because there's nothing better than testing something and seeing if the customers respond well to it. So to give you an example, some brands say product x is my hero. Now that may be a hero, where they come from maybe in Europe or the US. But that doesn't necessarily make it an Asian hero, because you know, the temperature is very different, the climates very different. So we always look at what the customers consider to be the heroes and what they put together. And that then tells us what's working for us. So we're very data driven in how we do things. When we when I first came here, we kind of guessed, and guessing gets you a long way from talking to your people in store. And looking at your stocks, you can you can guess what customers like. But actually, when you start bringing it in a customer level, particularly how often they repeat, or how often new customers Repeat, repeat, then you get a totally different story. And then you can a B test. And then you can work out what really works for customers. And you know, we can see tomorrow what's working today. And we can adjust accordingly. And that really works well, especially in peak periods. You know, quarter four, hugely important for us as it is all retailers, we need to know we're doing the right thing.

MYCUSTOMER:

Your role as head of head of consumer, I mean, you've talked a lot about data and customer insight there I mean is that a significant portion of the of the role is is crunching that data and drawing those those conclusions that you've talked about?

AVIS EASTEAL:

Yeah, we we have a standard way of crunching it across all brands and the standard language. But I run the consumer teams and the consumer team looks at all insights, it looks at marketing strategy, execution. So that's building emails, sending SMS line lines a bit like cross between Facebook and WhatsApp. And it works in Taiwan, and Thailand, we do all the social media, we do the creatives. So as you can see, it's quite a broad set of marketing skills we have. And on top of that, we look at the customer experience, because you have to put your marketing into a customer experience that people will respond well to. So we work very closely with our brand managers, with our country managers and our retail operations team. Because it's only when you put those teams together, you can really see the whole picture. And then we're supported beautifully by our IT teams who help us build new things and test new strategies and new technology to make sure that you know, is that right for us. So it's a really interesting role, because you've got all that interesting things that you do. But also you've got that by all the different brands and all the different countries. And what works in one country can work in others, but also may not. And you have to work out what happens. So you know, we usually have a lead country for each brands, they get the launches first. We'll work with them, and then we'll take that strategy to other countries that will adapt it for that country. So you know, lots of intellectual thinking has to go on about how to approach this just to get the productivity right. Otherwise, I'd have a cast of 1000s doing this and we'd never make any money.

“Working in CX in Asia is far more fascinating than in Europe”

MYCUSTOMER:

In the talk about customer experience, it strikes me that, you know, the role seems to draw on some of the real fundamentals of what we would see as a sort of customer experience leadership role. But you've also talked about the fact that it's very marketing centric as well, I was keen to know, where you sort of stand on the on this, this everlasting debate around marketers having that sort of ownership of CX in an organisation Do you Do you think it's that the way forwards?

AVIS EASTEAL:

Well, it works for us. So I'm not saying it would work for anyone, we're, we're a modestly flat organisation. And we're very entrepreneurial, and we're very passionate about we do, we do, and we work well with teams. So so this works for us. So I'm head of consumer, my job is to represent the customers. And I do that in two ways, through marketing, to get them to come and buy our brands, and to stay with our brands, and through the customer experience in store. Now, the two to me go hand in hand, because the marketing can be amazing. But if the customer experience donut store is terrible, it will not give you a sale. And in the same way, your marketing might suck. And your customer experience may be great. But if nobody turns up and experiences that, then you know what uses that. So I think it's down to structures. When I look at big multinational companies, I understand why they structure it in different ways. But I always feel like they miss a connection, they miss a connection with their colleagues. And we tend to get it into silos and KPIs getting in the way. Whereas whereas where we are our job, is to sell more. And the only way you sell more is if the customers are happy with you know, having a business where you sell to customers who dislike you. That's That's okay, if you've got a monopoly, I guess it's not a happy place to be. But most people haven't got a monopoly, you compete. And if you compete, you have to do it well. So having that connection across all of our different parts of the organisation to the customer, and being able to talk about the trends and understand how that affects what they like, and what that brings to our business, that commerciality that really is exciting. So for me, I don't I'm not a great believer in this is my job, this is your job. It's our job. Our job is to do this, how do we do it best? We do it through tech, we do it through experience, we do it for insights. We do it by being great at what we do. And our customers can tell us what great looks like. And as long as you keep holding that thought. Yeah, that's that works. So I'm not really into these theoretical debates about where should it go? Put it where works for you. And that's why and if it doesn't work for you change it.

MYCUSTOMER:

Well, you talked very sort of passionately about the the role of the collective but I did want to just focus on you for for a second and obviously you're based in Singapore, but I think it would be to left field statement to say that your your accent highlights that you originate from somewhere further afield. What What has been your pathway to be in the position where you're you're you're heading up the consumer side it looks Asia?

AVIS EASTEAL:

Yes. So you are correct. I did not have a Singaporean accent. I come from London. And I came to Singapore nine years ago, I used to work Vendor site. And I've worked in IT teams, I've run businesses, I've run operations, and I ran digital marketing businesses. And for some reason, I thought that I could move from a digital marketing business back to running it for banks, and building societies and financial institutions and change countries with a multinational company I was working with to come to Singapore. Now, Singapore is amazing. But it really wasn't for me, I you digital with fast paced, you get the results quick. And when you go back into financial services, and this is no disrespect to my colleagues in financial services, it's a compliant environment and things take longer. And in Asia, because maybe some of the markets are less mature than in the UK or the US projects take longer so I switched from weeks implementations to months. I found that really difficult and really didn't thrive there. So after a period of time decided that, you know, that wasn't the job for me, but coming back into digital worlds. And so I eventually found myself at luxation my first time client side and working client side is so different from working working vendor side so I used to work with airlines and retail Listen, I used to think I knew a bit about retail. Well, I knew nothing, I think is the best answer. And also because blocks Asia is a fairly complex organisation, there isn't a playbook how to implement these things for luxated, you kind of have to work it out yourself. So I kind of ended up here entirely by accident, I was in the market looking for things a vendor and introduced me to lux, Asia. I liked the culture and the vision of what they were doing, they had just started a five year transformation programme, they were entirely offline, and they were looking at moving online. And I thought, oh, that sounds good. I love transformation, I love change, this will be a great place to be. And luckily, the, you know, the organisation works the way it looked. And I've really thrived here. So I'm kind of an accidental CX marketing a person. But then my entire career history worked up to here because I need all those tech skills and those business commercial skills and those marketing skills to be able to cope with an organisation like like Asia, you know, I don't think just a pure marketeer or a pure CX person could maybe have got the momentum we need here because it is about building the tech, we have nothing digital at all. Building that and making it work and working out what works. What doesn't, you know, to me, that's false. But if you would, if you didn't have that broad experience, I would imagine it would have been quite a difficult environment to work in. I'm not saying it's been easy, but it has been enjoyable.

“You don’t get to tell the customers where to shop”

MYCUSTOMER:

Given the sort of pathway that you've had, and your reference to being an accidental, sickly, I think my last question, I'm going to be fascinated by your your answer to that. But before I get to that final question, you talked about the sort of fast paced nature of digital and the fact that you've sort of shifted from purely offline to online, and getting your head around, I suppose some of these, these these areas of the online world and how it looks, it looks Asia, sort of features in that you talked about social media earlier, and I was just quite keen to know how important social media is to the success in your role, and how you stay on top of ways such a fast paced, ever, ever changing realm. I mean, yeah, I think about things like, like live shopping that have sort of come to the fore in, in Asian markets in recent times. And the fact that I think Asian markets are probably actually, you know, far ahead of the curve, on other markets, when it comes to how social media is used in retail. So I'd be really interested to hear your thoughts about
that.

AVIS EASTEAL:

So you know, social media is a window to the world, the world is digital, and our customers are smart. So they do their research first. So social media, and it doesn't matter if you're in Facebook or Instagram or Tiktok, online, you know, channel agnostic, the customer will go where the customer goes, and they're looking for information, and they're looking for, you know, the product that fits their desires. So, you know, social started out quite static, and then you started adding video. And now we've started live streaming and live streaming really works well. We have combinations of our trainers and influences. And even our customers get involved as well. And we talk about our products, because remember, beauty is all about emotion and connection, and outcome. So you want to know how to use that product, you want to know how it feels. You want to know what it's going to do to your skin? Is it going to be drying, is it going to feel oily, and all the social channels help you build that story. So we're moving out of information and into retail tainment. And retail tainment is interesting because people watch content while they're making decisions about what they might want to buy. And so by the time the customer comes into your funnel, and they're, you know, they they're about to engage with your brands, they know quite a lot about your brand already. It's not like they just stumbled across you they do their work. So social is a great acquisition tool. And it's also a fabulous way of targeting customers who already like you so you can do look alike audiences you know, you can do people in like your, your pages, you can do people who look like the people who like your pages or buy. So it's a very clever, data driven marketing exercise. Now, how do you keep on top of it? You just have to wait Work hard, particularly when you've got all these different channels, all these different brands, you need to have specialists. So the way my team sets out is that I have a specialist Social Union, I don't expect them to understand how to build emails, or to write copy, or to run a brands, I expect them to be social specialists, because it changes so fast, and you have to AB test. And you find things sometimes, you know, a little bit by accident. So for example, in Malaysia, the other day, we noticed some creative for one of our brands was really working. And then we realised it was a brighter colour. And we've got a big Malay population in Malaysia, and they adore fragrance. So if you want to be on social to that segment, you become more bold in your creative and what you choose. So it's a fabulous channel. I know that lots of people think about the impact of social media. And yes, there is negative sides of social media, from a global perspective. But from a marketing perspective, it's a great way of putting content out to customers who are hungry for that content.

MYCUSTOMER:

Do you think retail brands in Europe and perhaps even in North America, a bit fearful and circumspect in this, this this area? Because it does always, you know, it doesn't always strike me that Asian brands are a little bit more willing to, to sort of jump on the latest social banners, again, I just think of live shopping and what an impact that's had in that in the Asian region, versus it's not taken off at all here.

AVIS EASTEAL:

No, but I think it's, it came out of China, and China's vast and European and US friends that want to sell into China, very quickly have adopted it. So it's not an elbow, it's an Asian consumer thing. It doesn't preclude European and US brands from joining in. So, you know, some brands are more comfortable with it than others. But when you see the results, when you see how consumers engage with it, and you see how Asia works, you have to be when the customers are, you don't get to tell the customers, what they're going to watch what they're going to think where they're going to shop, they're going to work that out themselves. And if you're not there, well, your competitor will be and they will take your share of the cake. So you know, this is how we work in Asia, this is where consumers are, therefore, I think we should be there. And once once brands gets to work with us, because we explain what happens in Asia and why you must be on marketplaces. And why we offer these services. And why we're investing in content studios. They're like, ah, we understand that that's that is what Asia expects, you know, you wouldn't you wouldn't walk into any other part of the world and just assume they're going to be exactly like, you know, like me or London. Culturally, every country is different as long as you can adapt to how consumers think. And culturally they respond to things, then you're likely to be successful. There's, you know, this isn't colonisation, this is brands coming in, and responding to consumer needs and demands. And that's how I should be really isn't that.

MYCUSTOMER:

Yeah, I think perhaps it's unfair to say that it's the brands that are being circumspect. And perhaps it's more than on the on the consumer side here. Just to wrap up, we're going to ask all of our podcast guests to provide one piece of advice for fellow CX leaders, what would be yours based on the experience you've had the time with? Luxasia and the fact that you sort of mentioned, you've almost come into this, this realm by accident.

AVIS EASTEAL:

So I would advise them to look at the data. So one of my favourite questions is, do you know that? Or do you think that? And I ask this question, often, because people make great assumptions. So when I first came here, they said, one of our brands, our customers are 25 to 35 year old yoga lovers. Well, some of them were 25 to 35. And I'm sure love some of them like yoga, but that didn't define them. It was totally too too, too narrow. So sometimes, because things are always said, organisations believe them, but that doesn't mean it's true. So you have to look at the data and say, can I prove that is is that actually how consumers respond? So another great one I was told was the older consumers don't do digital. Oh, please. Yeah, of course they do. They have mobile phones, they searched the internet, they FaceTime you know, they, their digital nomads, not all of them, younger people. So Some are better than others as well. So I think you have to really understand what you're dealing with, rather than to start with a great big assumption and then try to solve a problem or to add on to an experience because you can very easily convince yourself you need to change something that either is working and is fine or not to change something because you think it's working and it's really not. So get your facts right find a way of measuring if you can measure it, you can KPI it, you can change it, if you think something Well, I guess tomorrow you could think something else but it doesn't mean you've changed anything, does it?

MYCUSTOMER:

Well, that's a lovely point to to wrap up on there. Thanks, Avis.