Asia-Pacific Power List 2023: Ronald Wong, DFI Retail

Ronald Wong 

Vice president, brand, social and digital marketing
Yuu, DFI Retail Group
Hong Kong
Member since 2022

Everyone in Hong Kong knows Yuu, thanks to Ronald Wong, and now, pretty much everyone in Singapore knows Yuu too. The vice president of brand, social and digital marketing for the DFI Retail Group  (formerly Dairy Farm) loyalty programme has brought the Yuu brand to new heights. Consumers now use the loyalty brands at Wellcome, Giant, Cold Storage, Mannings and Guardian among other retail outlets in its portfolio. 

In almost three years, Yuu has grown from Hong Kong’s city-wide loyalty programme into an O2O, ecommerce and CSR platform with over 4.3 million members in Hong Kong alone. The loyalty programme has been so well recognised that it was ranked as Hong Kong’s No.3 brand on YouGov’s Global Best Brand Rankings in 2022, trailing only Google and Youtube. 

Last October, the brand successfully expanded to Singapore through a joint venture with Temasek, hoping to emulate the same success. Just as Yuu launched in Hong Kong with a catchy award-winning music video campaign back in the summer of 2020, Yuu tapped popular Singapore comedian Phua Chu Kang to feature the theme song adapted from Wonder Girls’ ‘Nobody’. The Singapore launch gathered tremendous momentum in the new market and quickly attracted over 1 million members in just three months. 

While high brand awareness helped, Wong also credits success to strong engagement with customers. For Yuu, the marketing effort was just the tip of the iceberg, as Wong had to collaborate with many teams involved in making the app and UI design, as well as operations, commercial, customer service, and key retail partners to make it all happen.  

Wong’s team also takes time to fulfil the brand’s corporate social responsibility. Its ‘Yuu Give Back’ programme was expanded from reducing food waste and helping people in need to conserving local heritage and the natural environment. Working with NGOs, like The Conservancy Association in Hong Kong, eco-tours and cultural workshops were organised as ‘rewards’, which Yuu members could redeem with points and participate in. The points were donated to charities or NGOs while members learned more about local culture and community work.  

Active in the industry, Wong has been invited to a number of summits to share brand insights on how to plan for and execute city-wide campaigns that are effective and memorable. He joined Yuu in 2019 as marketing director with many years of experience from AIA, Shell, and ICLP and was promoted to vice president in 2022.