Exclusive Interview With Malaysian CMO Award 2025 Winner, Bernard Lee: Challenging the Ordinary

In Malaysia’s highly competitive telco landscape, staying relevant requires more than strong network offerings or competitive pricing. Brands are constantly competing for cultural attention, emotional connection, and consumer loyalty in a market saturated with similar propositions. For Bernard Lee, standing out has always been about preserving the spirit of a challenger brand while continuously evolving with the audience.

As Head of Brand and Marketing at U Mobile and a winner at the CMO Malaysia Awards 2025, Bernard has played a key role in shaping the brand’s identity beyond its early youth-centric positioning. Under his leadership, U Mobile has expanded its appeal across broader consumer and business segments while maintaining the boldness, cultural sharpness, and idea-led marketing that continue to define the brand.

From emotionally resonant campaigns to digital-first experimentation, Bernard believes the brands that succeed today are the ones willing to continuously evolve without losing sight of who they are.

We interviewed Bernard Lee to understand how U Mobile maintains its challenger tone, differentiates in a crowded market, and stays culturally relevant in an increasingly digital-first world.

1. U Mobile campaigns are often bold and youth-centric. How do you maintain that challenger brand tone?

While U Mobile built strong early equity as a bold and youth-centric brand, the company’s ambition over time has been to broaden its appeal across a much wider audience, including PMEBs, families, and businesses, without losing the challenger DNA that made the brand distinctive in the first place.

For Bernard, being a challenger brand is not defined by age, but by mindset. It is about energy, conviction, cultural sharpness, and having the courage to do things differently.

As the brand evolves, U Mobile has been intentional about preserving its freshness and excitement in the way it communicates, while ensuring the brand becomes more expansive and resonant across different segments.

At its core, the brand remains idea-led. In a crowded and fast-moving category, Bernard believes strong ideas are what create memorability, distinctiveness, and relevance. That philosophy continues to guide how U Mobile evolves while maintaining its edge.

2. What’s one campaign that truly shifted brand perception or market share?

One campaign that stands out for Bernard is The Unbeatables, which became an important moment in the brand’s evolution.

The campaign featured inspiring Malaysians including Abdul Latif Romly, Red Hong Yi, Theena Thayalan, Azua Shafii, and Siti Rahmah.

Through these stories, the campaign allowed U Mobile to communicate a broader and more meaningful narrative rooted not only in youthful energy, but also resilience, ambition, and possibility.

What made the campaign particularly impactful was its ability to mature the brand’s tone and widen its appeal while still retaining its boldness and challenger spirit.

For Bernard, the strongest campaigns are those that move a brand forward without disconnecting it from its core identity, and The Unbeatables successfully achieved that balance.

3. Telco is highly competitive. How do you differentiate beyond pricing?

While pricing will always matter in telecommunications, Bernard believes it is rarely enough to create lasting brand preference.

For U Mobile, differentiation begins with deep customer-centricity — understanding what customers genuinely value, identifying their frustrations, and responding in ways that feel meaningful and distinctive.

Although technology and data remain critical, Bernard strongly believes that ideas are still the true multiplier. Great ideas make brands culturally relevant, emotionally resonant, and commercially memorable.

In a crowded market, the brands that succeed are not necessarily those with the best offers, but the ones consumers feel connected to and want to be part of.

This is where meaningful brand experiences become essential. Beyond products and campaigns, U Mobile focuses on creating experiences that reflect Malaysians’ passions, aspirations, and everyday realities, allowing the brand to play a more relevant role in their lives.

For Bernard, differentiation ultimately comes from the combination of customer obsession, cultural relevance, meaningful experiences, and idea-led marketing.

4. How do you leverage digital-first platforms to stay relevant?

U Mobile approaches digital-first platforms with what Bernard describes as an early-adopter mindset — staying curious, testing quickly, learning fast, and constantly evolving.

In today’s rapidly changing environment, he believes marketers cannot afford to remain overly fixed in their thinking. Relevance increasingly comes from operating within a strong test-and-learn culture.

For U Mobile, digital is not just about media efficiency. It plays a critical role in identifying emerging consumer behaviours earlier, reaching audiences more precisely, creating more adaptive content, and continuously improving the customer experience.

Digital transformation also extends internally, influencing how teams work through faster feedback loops, more agile content cycles, and better real-time decision-making.

According to Bernard, the brands that remain relevant today are those willing to operate in perpetual beta mode — constantly learning, listening, and staying close to where culture and consumer behaviour are heading next.

Under Bernard Lee’s leadership, U Mobile continues to demonstrate that challenger brands are not defined by size or audience demographics, but by mindset. Through bold ideas, cultural relevance, and continuous evolution, the brand has successfully maintained its edge while expanding its relevance across modern Malaysian consumers.