Behind the Awards: What Is Really Happening Inside Unifi Marketing

Over the past year, Unifi’s Marketing team has been collecting awards at a rather impressive rate. Putra Brand of  the year, Putra Platinum for two years running, MARKIES, Dragon of Asia, Marketing Excellence Awards, HASHTAG Asia and PC.Com.

Platinum. Gold. Silver. Bronze.

The sort of collection that garners enthusiastic LinkedIn feeds. But here’s the thing. Awards are not the strategy but proof that something underneath is actually working.

And in Unifi’s case, that “something” wasn’t just a few clever campaigns. It was a complete rebuild of how marketing works, how it’s measured, and how it contributes to growth. Because here’s the uncomfortable truth. In telecommunications, infrastructure is increasingly a commodity.

Fibre is fibre. Towers are towers. Everyone promises speed. And Unifi’s competitors have even deeper pockets.

A marketing function that is constantly in motion—producing campaigns, content and clever taglines—yet unable to demonstrate its impact on growth is, in effect, revving in neutral. Active, but going nowhere.

What follows isn’t a story about advertising aesthetics or shiny campaigns. It’s about what actually had to change.

The Uncomfortable Truth

When the team started reshaping Unifi’s Brand, Marketing and Digital functions, the problem wasn’t effort. Campaigns were running. Content pipelines were active. Media spend was monitored. Social channels were constantly producing material.

On the surface, everything looked productive, but productivity and impact are very different things. Unifi had long been synonymous with broadband connectivity. Fibre built the brand, scale and trust. But the business had evolved.

The brand has expanded into mobile, entertainment through Unifi TV and smart home solutions as well as for MSME we have digital solution such as Digital Marketing Solution (DMS). The brand has evolved but their marketing hadn’t grown along with it.

Activity that existed across broadband, mobile, TV, devices and business segments did not have a singular commercial objective and the link to portfolio growth wasn’t always obvious. In a market where competitors outspend you, this becomes dangerous. Because marketing without measurable impact isn’t a growth engine. It’s overhead.

The First Big Change: Measure Everything

The first shift was philosophical, but also practical.

Before Unifi changed campaigns, they changed what was measured. If something moved the budget, it needed a metric. If something consumed resources, it required accountability.

Instead of starting conversations with creative ideas, they started to focus on four less glamorous, but more effective questions: What problem are we solving? Which segment actually drives value? Why will we win? And how will we measure success?

This was the moment marketing moved from theatre to engineering. In an era where catchy jingles are no longer mistaken for effectiveness, Unifi understood that messages that don’t connect to a real consumer pain point or commercial objective, is simply noise.

Along the way, Unifi discovered that much of the activity they had grown used to wasn’t delivering impact. So they reduced the number of campaigns and took bigger leaps.

They embraced a sharper focus that created tangible results. Marketing stopped being campaign-led, it became outcome-led.

Data: Decoration vs Control

Every organisation today claims to be data-driven, but often dashboards sit quietly in PowerPoint slides while decisions remain exactly the same. Real data-driven organisations, however, work differently.

While data governs decisions, scattered data creates chaos. By consolidating everything from media performance, CRM data, retail metrics, app analytics to social listening in a singular ecosystem, Unifi discovered that transparency exposes inefficiencies.

Bringing those together required technology, governance and alignment across teams on what success actually meant.

Conversations shifted from impressions to incremental growth. Budgets became dynamic and optimisation became continuous. Ultimately, marketing began speaking the language every business ultimately cares about: results.

The Real Investment: People

While technology accelerates performance, it is the people who determine it.

At Unifi, being a marketer was no longer about simply managing agencies or delivering assets. It required commercial literacy, analytical thinking and ownership of outcomes.

And here’s the part that rarely appears in award case studies. Change is uncomfortable.

Unifi weathered the initial resistance as expectations shifted, standards rose and long-established ways of working were being challenged.

Some people struggled with that, others chose to move on. But once the results began to appear — stronger performance, clearer impact — the shift made sense. And the discipline that initially felt demanding became empowering once people could see how their work contributed directly to business outcomes.

To accelerate this transition, Unifi brought in senior subject-matter experts who operated as player-coaches. Unlike consultants who deliver presentations and disappear, these were practitioners who execute and mentor at the same time.

By working alongside the team — transferring knowledge, raising standards, and embedding stronger operating disciplines — Unifi ensured that capability stayed within the organisation.

The Standard Moving Forward

Culture is a word organisations talk about frequently. In reality, culture is more than a motivational slogan; it’s behaviour people repeat every day. And a winning marketing culture is built on three things: ownership, trust and standards.

And while results matter, it doesn’t mean perfection.Strong teams don’t hide from underperforming campaigns, they learn, adjust and improve.

The ambition was to build a marketing organisation capable of supporting a human-centred technology company, and one where insight, creativity, data and accountability operate as a single growth engine.

Because building a brand today isn’t just about visibility, it’s about resonance. Infrastructure builds access. Influence builds preference. Cultural relevance builds connection. Talent builds capability. Culture builds resilience. Accountability builds growth.

Today, credibility is earned through measurable impact. And awards? They’re simply the by-product. When the engine is well built, the driver understands the track and the team moves with pit-crew precision, winning stops being the objective. It becomes the default.

“Most marketing doesn’t have a performance problem; it has an honesty problem, mistaking activity for impact instead of delivering real growth” – Andrew Pinto ,Vice President, Brand and Marketing, Unifi.

“We shifted marketing from activity to accountability  and built a system designed to deliver consistent, measurable growth” – Jo-Anne Jayasiri, General Manager, Unifi Marketing & Randi Chiah, General Manager, Digital Unifi

“We replaced silos with one shared engine. Aligning media, social, creative and performance to drive measurable growth through data and outcomes” – Alyaa Ramlan, Head of Social ; Siew Fai, Head of Digital Marketing ; Faizal Azlan, Head of Creative ; Afifa Dean, Head of Agency and Media, Unifi.