E48: How to make your global brand relevant in Vietnam - with Tammy Thi Phan
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Oh, I love that. And it's such a beautiful moment when consumers feel that the brand is local or the brand understands local. Because exactly like you said, there's that local immediate real-time insight that you can turn into relevance.

Welcome to You Don't Know Vietnam, the show that demystifies Vietnam for global audiences by talking to the creatives, trendsetters and business owners who are taking on the market. Forget what you thought you knew about Vietnam, it's no longer that, as you're about to find out. I'm Ian Painton, co-founder of We Create Content, a content agency that helps global brands connect with Vietnamese consumers.

We make global brands relevant in Vietnam with always-on, hyper-local content.

On this episode of You Don't Know Vietnam, I'm talking to Tammy Thi Pham, the Chief Digital Marketing Officer who spent most of her professional life overseas working for some of the biggest global brands. She spent eight years working at Google in Singapore, first as Head of Strategic Partnerships for Southeast Asia and later as the Country Head of Marketing for Vietnam. She's now busy getting stuck in at one of the country's largest FMCG conglomerates and is based out of Ho Chi Minh City.

Today, Tammy tells me what's wowed her most about her return to Vietnam. We have a good old natter about relationship building and Vietnam's quickly changing consumer market. And she also offers top tips for global brands to get their marketing right in Vietnam.

Tammy Oi. Ian Oi. Hello. Thanks for joining me on You Don't Know Vietnam. Thanks for having me. I've got one question for you. How the bloody hell is it being back in Vietnam? Welcome back. Thank you. Thank you so much. It feels really good to officially, officially be back and about a year in. I've always found moving from Singapore to Vietnam quite challenging, like personally, because they're just so different. How have you found it settling in? They are very different.

Yeah, I was in Singapore for about 13 years. And it's orderly, it's predictable, it's manicured, it's lovely in so many different ways. And Vietnam is very lovely as well, but in the opposite direction. What was very orderly before I find very dynamic here in Vietnam. What was predictable before, you know, teased me on my toes here. Vietnam is just exhilarating.

That's one word for it, isn't it? And super high energy. Takes me some time to get used to it. Yeah, I'm about a year in. I think I've gotten used to it now to the point where I just really love it here. I do find it really dynamic and I have felt the longing to come back to Vietnam and certainly the curiosity to come back to Vietnam for a long time. I probably have been feeling it throughout the last 20 years of my career. I've often wondered like, when am I finally going to move back to Vietnam?

And there were moments in my past where I thought, oh, maybe I missed the wave or maybe it's too late to move back. But no, it doesn't feel like that at all. It feels like the right time. Right. So what would you say are the main market readiness signals then that Vietnam's giving off, whether it's

for global brands looking to come here to do business, or maybe even professionals who are looking at Vietnam as a place to come to work now? Professionally, it's a very exciting time to be in Vietnam because Vietnam has not slowed down in its development at all, as one would assume when we're thinking about, you know, ebbs and flows or waves of economic development. Vietnam continues to grow at around 7% year-over-year GDP.

And that's very fast, considering that the Southeast Asia average is about five and other major economies is lower. I think other key signals are how digitally advanced Vietnam is in many ways, how much global talent it is attracting as more and more businesses and brands think about tapping into the consumer base in Vietnam. And at the same time, the country is going through its own digital transformation shift.

For example, I enjoy reading the news where we're talking about AI and semiconductors, and these are the new fields that Vietnam is really investing in or welcoming investments in order to become a powerhouse in that entire supply chain. So the Vietnam story is still being written.

And that's where I think professionally, as long as it's aligned with you personally, is a good time to operate in Vietnam. And I know that I'm not alone in feeling this. There's actually a huge overseas community. There's about five, six million overseas Vietnamese, but particularly a community here called OV.

connects people of Vietnamese heritage to these opportunities in Vietnam. So I think there's a lot of enthusiasm here. I'm grateful I finally took the plunge and returned to Vietnam. And what's been the biggest wow moment so far since returning back? This last year, the wow moment was when Vietnam won the ASEAN Cup. That broke international news because, wow, Vietnam really rallies when we have a great sporting event.

And that was just also a beautiful moment to see the country come together, foreigners, locals alike, to really cheer on the country. And I think other smaller wow moments are just throughout the day, day in, day out, and really just wowed by the entrepreneurial energy that is around me. I'm based in Ho Chi Minh City. And Ian, just to illustrate, right, we're not even done with Q1 yet. And

Aside from things that are happening at work, in my personal life, I've attended like two or three business launches in the last two or three months alone. You know, one is for a friend's AI academy because he's training people to become AI engineers. The other is for a friend who's starting up a showroom for high-end bathroom fixtures and they are working with parlor.

partners in China to do this. I'm sharing two examples of very different businesses, but for the point that they've launched in the last few months, just illustrate the type of businesses that are springing up in Vietnam and the opportunities that they're going after. Yeah. It feels like there's so much to do and you mix that with the very entrepreneurial spirit of the Vietnamese and you just get things popping up the whole time.

I was speaking to a friend about the entrepreneurial spirit of the Vietnamese and maybe the risk-taking nature of the Vietnamese as well.

It feels like the Vietnamese are much more open to taking risks, like launching into something, you know, ceasing a moment. And we're trying to get to the bottom of where that comes from. We couldn't quite nail it down. I don't know if you've got any ideas. That's a good question. I wouldn't say that there's a singular thing that probably drives it. I think the fact that it happens so often probably gives people a lot of confidence to understand

to go for it. And I say entrepreneurship on a spectrum, right? It could really range from starting your mom and pop shop right out of your home, which we see all across Vietnam, that's small business and that's entrepreneurship. And the other is, you know, the much bigger scale or technical, like the startups that we're seeing. So on the one hand, I think it is

how prevalent it is, that really spurs inspiration. And then the other is I think people really just want to be masters of their own destiny. Like everybody kind of wants to be their own boss. They want to have the agency. And so maybe that's also what's spurring that willingness to try. I think there's definitely a hunger to get ahead as well. And I can do this myself. Why do I need to do it for somebody else?

I had someone on here recently that was saying your staff are probably going to have two or three jobs and you just got to get used to that. I don't know how there's a lot of energy to do that. My hypothesis is probably the strong coffee. You know, you're going to need strong coffee to have that kind of energy to do one or two or three jobs. But the hustle is real in Vietnam. I think maybe it's also because of the wealth disparity that's here. The salaries are...

a huge range in Vietnam now. And so I think it's also probably driven by what you said, Ian, that need to also get ahead, but also make ends meet as well. Yeah, and just continuously do better and be better and provide. And, you know, it's admirable.

Yeah. The do better definitely resonates as a spirit that I feel here throughout Vietnam. Having spent so much time away in places like the US and Singapore, is there anything that's been particularly difficult about transitioning back to Vietnam for you? So I professionally have just worked in large American multinational companies. So fair to say I've only operated in English. When you choose to come back and work in Vietnam, you're signing up for a different challenge.

For me, it was a personal challenge commitment to improve my Vietnamese and learn how to operate outside of my comfort zone. So now that I've been back about a year, I'm actually using Vietnamese more than I ever have in my life before. So fair to say my Vietnamese has never been better. And I can imagine people who are also of overseas experience or have only worked in English speaking environments will find it interesting.

maybe slightly challenging in the beginning to adapt. However, it is doable. I've been working in and out of Vietnam for about almost 10 years. And I could tell you that the English proficiency has dramatically improved over the course of the 10 years. But if I look at the data, right, some of our test results would suggest that Vietnam is probably about a six out of nine proficiency.

In terms of the international English language scale, so we're about average in terms of English proficiency. I think this is something for international brands to note and make sure that there is cultural bridges as well as linguistic bridges to communicate across English and Vietnamese.

You spent time at Google working with SMEs on a partnership level across all of Southeast Asia. What would you say is most unique about doing business in Vietnam based on your experience? Yeah, over the course of my time at Google, I've had the privilege of working with a lot of different businesses. On the partnership front, initially they were agencies and later they pivoted toward more technology-enabled platforms, whether they were marketplaces or e-commerce enablers.

And I would say the consistency that I found is that relationship and trust really matters. And it matters in all dimension where you're doing business development and partnership building. But in Vietnam, it felt a lot more...

personal in some ways. And what I mean by that is that the respect that you show your partner, but also the care over time as we're working with different small businesses, it was about caring for their family or getting to know them on a more personal level. And so I found that was very important to invest in these type of relationship building activities with the partners. And that continues to be true now. The other thing that I found as very unique to Vietnam was the speed

of which some of these smaller businesses were able to get things done and to operate. I don't mean to compare countries to countries, but just drawing from examples of how fast it would take for me to stand up a new business or a new partnership or finish a technical integration, Vietnam was amongst one of the faster set of partners to do it. Yeah, right, right. The speed at which things happen here just blows me down every time compared to...

Again, not meaning to compare countries, but compared to somewhere like the UK, which feels like it's very slow and dragging its feet. You know, Vietnam can get stuff done in a tenth of the time, it feels like. It's quite amazing. I think it's also a function of the size of the company as well. And this is probably more...

relatable elsewhere. I think the bigger the organization, the more processes and layers and approvals that one needs to go through. So it could have been that my experience was working with early stage companies and their small businesses, for example, or their up and coming startups. And they're a lot more digital in their nature. So overall, I do find that agility and speed in Vietnam, but I would caveat that with the size of the company as well. Right, right. Yeah.

On the relationship building side of things, when you were in Singapore, were you able to do that from Singapore? Really get closer to your partners and get to know them? Or did you feel like you had to be here on the ground? Did you make loads of trips to Vietnam in order to do that? Yeah, I definitely had to be on the ground. Not that you couldn't get partnerships and deals done from Singapore, but to really understand a business, to understand who's

leading the business, the team and how their energy and they're motivated or even just to brainstorm ideas. Those conversations are really critical to have in person. So I was in and out of Vietnam quite often making very frequent trips from Singapore to work with my partners in Ho Chi Minh City and in Hanoi. And what I meant earlier about

extending that time to building the relationship, right? That would carry over into meals together and coffee and certainly like long dinners where the conversation goes beyond business. It goes into just

you know, founders and CEOs and their hopes and dreams, how their families are doing. And that investment of time into the relationship also builds a lot of goodwill and traction. I feel like things that were just done over emails or phone calls or video conference calls, again, while doable, felt really transactional. You really get to know your partners once you're on the ground. Yeah. A lot of people that I speak to say that, you know, come to Vietnam,

Get on the ground, go and see people, have dinner, go for coffee. It's really, really important. And I think you learn things that you just can't pick up from a Zoom call or over email. Totally agree. Are there any cultural or workplace habits that you've had to unlearn or learn since getting back? I think going from a place like Google, I am definitely more used to sending communications over Gmail, working through Google Suite.

And I find that in Vietnam, that's not the case. We communicate a lot over different messaging apps. I'm actually on a number of different messaging apps for work. It's just a matter of keeping track of who you're chatting to on which platform and for which groups. But I don't think that's too dissimilar to how other companies are maybe using Slack more, just so that they can communicate in more detail.

bite-sized content or bite-sized messages and in more real time. Email, I think outside of Google, feels a little bit too official and documented. What tools are you using? Are you finding yourself using Zalo?

I think Zalo specifically is quintessential here to get anything done personally outside of work as well. When you're communicating with businesses or even brands, they're communicating with their customers and following up on Zalo. So it's very helpful. What do you think makes Zalo work so well here, do you think? Well, I imagine that is because it was made in Vietnam and most of the population on it. So I think it's that network effect.

you know, you get real utility when you have nearly 100 million people on Zalo. And it's built into its own ecosystem as well. It facilitates payments and information sharing. So

network effect would be my guess. And the other is I think that it is a born in Vietnam platform as well, which I think had much earlier adoption and faster adoption. What's the most interesting shift that you've seen in Vietnam's consumer market, would you say? Well, first of all, for listeners outside of Vietnam, I think it's noteworthy to mention that Vietnam is super digitally connected.

You know, you have YouTube as one of the leading platforms. You have Facebook as a huge, huge platform here. If anything, I think Facebook and Zalo are your top two social media platforms that Vietnamese consumers are on. And what's been really exciting to see is how quickly TikTok has also risen in consumers' adoption. With regards to the rise of TikTok Shop now becoming one of the largest e-commerce platforms worldwide,

in Vietnam. I know that's not the case elsewhere, let's say the US, right? And how quickly consumers adopt new platforms. We're even seeing now the rise of threads, right? For example, the platform saw a 10% increase in the last quarter. So I think it's indicative of how fast Vietnamese consumers are to number one, be on digital, and then number two, adopt new platforms as well. At the

The appetite for digital adoption is very high here. What do you think it is about threads that's really gaining traction in Vietnam? Well, I'm told that that's where young people go to flex. It is getting very popular with Gen Z.

And the content, most often than not, is of Gen Z lifestyle. And I think it just really reflects the rise of wealth that's happening in Vietnam. And so Threads is, for me, a place where you get to see a lot of that on display. A lot of people flexing. Oh, okay. I wonder if there's also something about perhaps...

being a little bit of a exclusive playground, you know, like not everyone's on it yet. Older generations might not be on it either. Parents aren't on it. I don't think that's unique to Vietnam. I think young people everywhere are the first to try out new platform. It's only a matter of time before the parents discover threads and they're on it as well. But yeah, the adoption of new platforms is incredibly fast in Vietnam. Yeah.

I mean, it's very mobile first, isn't it? It's very social first. Yeah, exactly. Have you been following this new trend that's going nuts right now? It's the blind box trend. Oh, no. What's that?

Oh, it's awesome. And it's the most adorable thing that's happening right now and is happening all over social media. But basically what it is, is a brand will send a box, you know, or a consumer will order a box from a brand. And often it's like a toy brand or a collectibles brand, but you can imagine it could work for cosmetic and so many other brands, right? And the consumer then gets this blind box, not knowing what is inside.

Can you imagine paying money for something, not knowing what you're going to get? That's the craziest trend that's happening right now. But that's what people are doing. They're buying that element of surprise. And that element of surprise sparks curiosity. It sparks joy. It certainly sparks dopamine when you open it up. And so the trend on social media right now is people are recording themselves

opening up these blind boxes just to see what's inside. I can imagine someone paying for a box that they don't know the contents of if it means they can record themselves opening it for a bit of social media content and joining a trend. I think that's where the value is as well, you know?

I think, yeah, the value is being seen and being relevant. But also the content inside, typically they're really cute. They're like these cute toy collectibles or anything that's nostalgic. And I think that's also tapping into this joyfulness that I think people are also seeking out on social media. And some of the creative brands also combine it with like ASMR, where it's like very quiet unboxing and you get to hear the rustling of the paper and whatnot.

So, yeah, I think if you're going to be a brand in Vietnam, you will have to...

lean into these platforms, but also be relevant to trends at the time. And I also think like be very visual and experiential as well as a brand with consumers. I think that's a really good mix is being timely, experiential and visual. I think that's really important to join conversations, start conversations, be part of something. And

It's moving so quickly and there's so much going on that there's loads of opportunities to enter the raffle of potential organic reach by hopping onto one of these daily trends rather than just doing static monthly announcements to the world.

I completely agree. And I think the brands that adopt social listening or adopt having partners on the ground that can actually help you keep a pulse on what's happening in the culture will hugely benefit. I mean, having relevance in the culture is true for any marketer anywhere in the world. But if you're a brand that's operating more outside of Vietnam, looking to enter Vietnam, then that

that is really key. So for example, while I was working in Singapore, while I was exploring different agencies, it was always essential for me to understand how was the team staffed locally on the ground. Not only do they represent our users, but they really follow what was happening to proactively suggest things that could resonate. And sometimes I think be open to things that

resonate in very delightful ways. I can share as an example for one of the campaigns that we did during COVID. That was a really tough time for small businesses. And so we wanted to do a campaign that would encourage small businesses to

to as best as they can stay resilient and being resilient at that time meant that if your store your stores couldn't be open you can invest that time in upskilling yourself learning more digital to get ready for when the business could reopen and so we launched this campaign wanting to spread out that message and our local partner gave us an insight that you know

music videos done the right way could really resonate and lift people. And how they helped us, they helped us navigate finding the right artists. We ended up working with an indie rap group that was up and coming and getting more prominent in Vietnam at the time. And they produced this lovely song. The title was called Never Give Up.

And when we released that song, people responded super positively to it in two ways. I think one is for the obvious content of the song and the message. But the second one took me by surprise, which is they thought the title of the song, Never Give Up, sounded really similar to Never Gonna Give You Up by

by Rick Amsons, the Rick Roll song. And so our song started getting rolled out and it started getting rolled out almost like a Rick Roll. Rick Roll is like this trend where you send someone something, let's say a work or whatever, and they open the link and suddenly you get like Rick Rolled, which is the song just comes up out of nowhere in place. That was like the analogy. It felt like never going to give you up. The

the song felt like we were just rig rolling people, which again, for the time was like very cheeky, kind of uplifting and unexpected. It got so much traction. It got millions of views and it landed

well during a time that I think a lot of our small businesses that we were trying to help needed to hear a more uplifting message. I think it's fair to say that some of our best work, I think, that's got most traction has been entertaining audiences in one way or another, tapping into something, having a really strong point of view as a brand and a personality and a tone of voice, maybe being a little bit witty as well, managing the community and really poking a bit of a fire in a really entertaining way. I found that goes down really well here.

When I first got to Vietnam, there was this time where everything was quite "neel-din-gam". And I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that correctly, but very sentimental. Like really, like everything was a love story, you know? Over the years, I feel like that's changed and things have got a bit more entertaining.

It's almost synonymous with going from like super long form to also short form as well. That's the other trend that I've noticed. Yes, you'll still have long form video content consumption. But, you know, with the rise of TikTok and threads, like many other places, content is getting shorter and shorter. So you have to be even increasingly more entertaining to cut through. Yeah. We were doing this work for the German Football League, the Bundesliga.

And we knew from a focus group we'd done that the Vietnamese think this striker, one particular striker, is extremely handsome or depth-shy.

And when Den Vaux was trending number one on YouTube one day, within minutes of realizing that, we had turned out this social post with this striker with his head in the sea, because the rapper had his head in the sea throughout the whole music video. And he was saying, why am I rap so good? It's a secret. So we photoshopped this striker in the sea and he's saying, why am I so handsome? It's a secret.

And it's just gone absolutely gangbusters on social. And everyone's commenting, oh, the admin must be Vietnamese. You know, like the Bundesliga is really here in Vietnam. This isn't done from Germany, you know. And the conversation, it started. Oh, I love that. And it's such a beautiful moment when consumers feel that...

that the brand is local or the brand understands local. Because exactly like you said, there's that local immediate real-time insight that you can turn into relevance. Yeah, not just kind of beaming in like a regional or global message, you know. Hyperlocal is really important. That's what we call it, hyperlocal. If you were to give some tips for global brands coming to Vietnam to get amongst...

the energy and the excitement and the growth in Vietnam and the opportunities. What do you think those tips would be? I think to round out our conversation, we've spoken about localizing beyond the translation.

Like to be relevant in Vietnam, we have to be very culturally plugged in to what's happening, to what our consumer tastes and preferences, to what are the values, and then how does that get translated to brand marketing and communication? And so with this, having hyperlocal partners or agencies or a network that can help a brand establish that is super, super key.

I think the second thing we spoke about was how digitally plugged in Vietnamese consumers are, right? We're a digital first country. We're a mobile first country. We're a social first country. And so brands that are able to really be present on these platforms, e-commerce platforms, social media platforms, if they connected with consumers, are going to be in a better place to win customers.

consumers and in young consumers at that given that Vietnam is such a young country.

And I think the third is connecting more with the content. And that also means with key influencers to really, really cascade your message and earn that consumer trust, right? Because I mentioned before, Vietnam is a very social first country. So it's really about who is talking about your brand, who's being seen with your brand, which consumers are interacting with your brands. For example, with the blind box challenge that helps keep that brand really, really relevant.

And so I would say those are the top three observations that I would take away from today's conversation or brands looking to connect with Vietnamese consumers. Particularly like obviously the hyperlocal thing, but also the hyper relevant thing, you know, like how do you be relevant on a daily basis with Vietnamese consumers and be part of the conversation? Yeah, absolutely. I like to end the episodes by asking you what are you most excited about for Vietnam's future?

I'm excited about so many things. I think where we started was with the wow factor of how entrepreneurial Vietnam is. I continue to be very excited about the next generation and the current generation of Vietnamese talent that's building businesses in Vietnam. What I'm seeing is that English proficiency is increasingly getting better, perhaps average today, but on the rise.

Vietnamese students are going to study overseas even more, right? We rank, I think, six in terms of population of overseas students in the U.S. So in a nutshell, it's to say that there's a lot of Vietnamese talent that are homegrown, Vietnamese talent that are going to seek their studies abroad, and the Vietnamese talent that has been abroad and are coming back to Vietnam. So I think the dynamic of these three types of talent is

will really add to the entrepreneurial environment that we're seeing in the country. And

In the short time that I've been in Vietnam, it's been inspiring to see the number of new businesses that my friends have launched and started up. So that for me are really positive signals that there's investments being made into the country, that there's people willing to take the risk, and that Vietnam will continue to develop at the astonishing pace that we've seen it grow at.

You've been listening to You Don't Know Vietnam. I'm Ian Paynton from We Create Content. I'd like to thank DJ Jace from The Beat Saigon for their epic soundtrack and a massive thank you to you for making it all the way to the end.