Effectively Navigating Southeast Asia’s Complexity

Examine the diversity of consumer research in South Asia.

by Colin Wong

Principal Consultant at Insights Heroes

Jacob loves generating game-changing insights and has spent the last seven years challenging himself in South-East Asia’s multicultural societies. He has led consumer research from the slums of Soweto and remote Shan Highlands to the penthouse suites of Shenzhen millionaires. He helped brands across the full category spectrum to develop insight-led strategies, innovations, communications, and user experiences.

It is a rare opportunity to learn some of his experiences in the most vibrant part of Asia.

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This interview has been edited for clarity.

Colin Wong: Hello, Jacob. It’s been a while.

Jacob Harbord: Yeah. How are you doing?

Colin Wong: Good. Thank you. Good to meet you again. I hope everything is well in Singapore and you guys are staying safe.

Jacob Harbord: Yeah. As best we can.

Colin Wong: Despite a few cases popping up lately. So do take care and stay safe.

Jacob Harbord: My pleasure.

Colin Wong: Doing this interview. I thought maybe we should give the audience a bit of introduction about this session and then maybe give you a few minutes to introduce yourself. So GreenBook decided to come to Asia-Pacific to do a specific portal, which is the Expert Channel, which we are on at the moment, called Disruptive Insights in Asia-Pacific.

Basically, it is actually to house information such as innovations, technologies, insights, technologies, market research providers, case studies, and methodologies. So people can basically go to one place and be able to search for information and interact with other insights industries within the Asia-Pacific region.

And that’s really what we wanted to do at this site, what we are providing in the US and in Europe, where we view a whole huge content library. Anybody can access that library and find the information they need to help themselves or help others. This is what really it’s all about. It’s sharing that knowledge, sharing the information within the region itself.

So before we actually get into our discussion today, which is really on effectively navigating South East Asia’s complexity, I thought to give our audience a little bit of a background of who you are, what you do. You’ll be great, probably spend the next few minutes to give us a brief rundown on yourself.

Jacob Harbord: Cool. Thanks, Collin. Yeah. It’s great to be here. Thanks for inviting me to join the call. My name is Jacob Harbord. I’m currently working at the new Grab Singtel Digibank in Singapore. And as a kind of a caveat before we get started, obviously, Grab is now listing in the US. And it goes into what’s called the quiet period, which is when you’re not allowed to talk about the business publicly and stuff like that.

So I can’t comment on my role at Grab or the business to comply with the SEC rules. But I have worked in Singapore for six years doing regional work in all the countries here. So I can talk generally about that and give some tips and tricks for both researchers and marketers to operate effectively and efficiently within the region. Yeah.

Colin Wong: Great. So how do you manage diversity when it comes to research, specifically in South East Asia where you have been spending time in the last six or seven years? South-East Asia is so diverse. It’s like, you practically have, most of the race actually congregated in one area. Yeah.

Jacob Harbord: Yeah. So how do we make sure we represent those groups and manage that diversity? So I think we have a background of both Kuala Lumpur research, that, with a Kuala Lumpur perspective. I think quantitatively, in terms of managing that diversity, it’s very important to bring in, make sure you represent those key groups.

And to do that you need to really understand who is in which market, and how those markets are structured demographically, geographically, whatever it might be to make sure you’re capturing the key differences in those markets.