NTUC Income's Marcus Chew replaces Mary Zhou as Lazada CMO

The top deck continues to be shuffled at southeast Asian ecommerce platform Lazada, with the latest change seeing Mary Zhou, the firm's group CMO, being replaced by NTUC Income's Marcus Chew. The new CMO will start in his role on October 1, Lazada told Campaign Asia-Pacific, without providing more details. Zhou is expected to be given a new role at the company. 

Chew has spent nearly seven years in his role at NTUC Income. In this time, he has led multiple segments including brand marketing, media, brand activation and events, and CSR, according to his LinkedIn profile. One of his most memorable campaigns, with BBH, was a memorable single-shot drone video that kicked off an integrated campaign in Singapore. Chew had stints with Adidas and Unilever in China, Singapore and Malaysia, prior to NTUC Income.

In recent months Lazada hired Shawnn Lai as SVP and regional creative lead, along with Cheng Shu, Michael Tai, Chan Hwee Chong and Daniel Foo as VP's of regional creative. Another senior appointment was Claire Tan, who moved from SPRG Consulting as senior VP of group communications. 

Lazada continues to grow its ecommerce business and has expanded its digital payments capabilities with the hiring of Ant Group's Dayong Zhang to lead its payments efforts. On the marketing front, the firm hired K-pop star Hyun Bin as the first brand ambassador for its Lazmall business and rebranded its logistics business too. 

Outgoing CMO Zhou has had to handle a tricky period as CMO for Lazada. While homebound audiences have been an obvious target for the platform during the pandemic, she has also had to be an empathetic marketer in this time. For example, to keep the celebrations of Ramadan and Eid-al-Fitr alive in Indonesia last year, Lazada celebrated the festivities with more than 5,000 hours of content through LazLive’s #BerkahAdadiRumah Shoppertainment livestreaming, even as it doubled down on its Shoppertainment strategy through LazLive.