The Growth Conversation: HSBC’s Brian Hui
- Brian Hui, managing director and head of customer propositions and marketing for wealth and personal banking (WPB) Hong Kong, HSBC, talks about driving innovation by championing a more strategic, customer-centric approach to marketing, Hui has helped the legacy brand into a nimble innovator.
- Hui names four types of behaviour that he believes will never change: customers will continue to want more choices; lower prices with the same or better quality; speed and convenience; and the authenticity of a product experience. He names these behaviours as a foundation for decision-making and corporate strategy.
With a diverse career spanning finance, tech and start-up businesses internationally, Brian Hui has developed a unique perspective on navigating the challenges that companies and marketers face today. Drawing on his multifaceted career, he has leveraged his experiences to drive innovation and customer-centricity at one of Hong Kong’s most iconic homegrown brands. And he sees himself as a lot more than a marketer.
Marketer / Growth Officer
“My role is more like a growth officer… I’m someone with many interests and occupations,” he says. “While marketing is a part of it, I don’t just limit myself to marketing, digital banking or tech, I add all my first-gen digital advantages, my international rotations, my outlook and horizons, and put it all together.”
Indeed, his diverse experience has been a key advantage in his current role, allowing him to bridge the gap between traditional and digital, local and global. After obtaining his master’s in economics, he joined the banking industry to realise his true passion lay in digital transformation. Over the next two decades, his career would take him all over the world, helping to build brands from start-ups to tech giants such as Amazon and eventually bringing him back home, where a chance encounter at HSBC turned into a job opportunity and a place to utilise his accumulated experience and expertise.
“I was curious and I wanted to follow my passion; this was a chance to join the biggest brand that would allow me to have fun and contribute,” he recalls.
What It Takes
Firstly, he says people should stay passionate and curious. Hui’s successful career has very much been driven by his own sense of curiosity and always choosing challenging paths. “While people might put me under the marketing category, I always say I actually belong to the curiosity category,” he says. In fact, this was one of the reasons he moved from finance to tech at a time when the internet was non-existent.
Where people saw problems, he saw opportunities. “I see challenges and opportunities as the same thing; they’re just two sides of the same coin, and they need each other,” he says. This has been his guiding principle throughout his career.
Finding Opportunity
Back then, Hui saw an opportunity that went beyond the limitations of that period. He advocated partnering with M+ museum and sponsoring an exhibition without knowing when the borders would reopen. While many would hesitate to mark a decision during that period, Hui’s long-term vision led him to support the sponsorship deal because it ticked many boxes for HSBC.
Fortunately, the exhibition launched just as the borders reopened. Recalling this story, he advises fellow marketers to think long-term. Don’t peer into a crystal ball, he argues, but instead focus on what is tried and true. “A pitfall that companies and people have is being complacent. Hold a long term view and don’t be too competitor-obsessed,” he says. “Think about what doesn’t change, what is long term, and your entire business will be sustainable.” In other words, look for what’s going to stay the same.
He names four types of behaviour that he believes will never change: customers will continue to want more choices; lower prices with the same or better quality; speed and convenience; and the authenticity of a product experience. He names these behaviours as a foundation for decision-making and corporate strategy.
Doubling Down
“No matter how the world is going to change, these human behaviours are not going to change, so when you think about your business model, what areas should you double down on?” He points to AI as an example of leveraging innovation to enhance the customer experience and drive business transformation.
Hui has seen how the marketing industry has evolved and believes it is not “the end of the manufacturing funnel.” Instead, he believes that marketing today plays an end-to-end role. From ideation to creation to customer experience and feedback, marketing plays a crucial role in putting the customer at the front and centre.
“While some might see marketing as a cost centre today, I would say marketing — in a broader and contemporary sense — is a revenue generator responsible for customer experience and growth, so that’s my role,” he says.
Illustration: David Despau