The strongest brands in Asia are no longer built by visibility alone. They are built by people who know how to turn trust, culture, strategy, and story into long-term business advantage.
Across the region, branding and storytelling now sit at the center of growth. Founders need sharper positioning. Companies need clearer narratives. Leaders need credibility that travels across markets, platforms, and communities. At the same time, customers are asking harder questions: What does this brand stand for? Why should I trust it? Why should I choose it?
This feature highlights ten voices shaping those answers across Asia. Some bring decades of brand strategy and boardroom advisory experience. Others are building modern communities, AI-enabled marketing systems, cultural intelligence, retail insight, or next-generation content strategies.
Together, they show that great branding is not decoration. It is leadership, differentiation, reputation, and relevance made visible.
Highlights
Martin Roll
Global Family Business & Family Office Expert, Senior Advisor, Speaker & Author, Martin Roll Company
Martin Roll brings a strategic and board-level view of branding, especially for family businesses, family offices, and long-term enterprise leadership. His work sits at the intersection of strategy, transformation, stewardship, succession, governance, and legacy – areas where stories are not simply a communications tool, but a way to define continuity and trust across generations.
With more than 25 years of board and C-suite counselling experience, Martin advises Fortune 500 companies, Asian conglomerates, family-owned businesses, and family offices. He is also a Senior Advisor to McKinsey & Company, counselling global family business and family office clients.
He travelled 200+ days in 2025 across 40+ countries advising clients, delivering keynote speeches, and facilitating board meetings.
Martin Roll is a Distinguished Fellow at INSEAD Business School and guest faculty at institutions including Harvard Business School, CEIBS, IE Business School, ESSEC, Nanyang Business School, and the Wealth Management Institute.
His credibility in brand thinking is especially visible through his writing. Martin is the author of the global bestseller Asian Brand Strategy, co-author of The Future of Branding, and a business columnist with INSEAD Knowledge. He also hosts the INSEAD Family Business Podcast, which explores stewardship, governance, succession, legacy, and long-term impact.
He is the author of the forthcoming management books “Family Business Strategy” and “Family Office Strategy”(2027).
For readers, Martin’s voice is valuable because he connects brand strategy with leadership discipline. He reminds founders, family businesses, and senior executives that enduring brands are built through clarity, governance, and a strong sense of purpose over time.
Richard Ker
Chief Storyteller & Founder, Richard Ker Digital
Richard Ker represents the power of storytelling in the social media age. As Chief Storyteller and Founder of Richard Ker Digital, he helps businesses, startups, and entrepreneurs grow followers and loyal audiences through organic content and narrative-led marketing.
His own platform gives him strong credibility. Richard describes his reach as 0.5 million followers across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Threads, YouTube, and TikTok. Through Richard Ker Digital, he focuses on viral organic content creation, social media management, training, masterclasses, and fractional CMO services.
His storytelling work also extends beyond business. As Founder of the North Borneo Historical Society, a digital NGO with more than 70,000 Facebook followers, he has used social media to preserve and promote Sabah’s history. One campaign helped save a 100-year-old British-era train station in North Borneo.
Richard’s previous leadership experience at Aerodyne Group adds another layer. As Chief Marketing Officer, he shared and marketed Aerodyne’s story as the World’s No. 1 Drone Solutions Provider. In an earlier partnership and ecosystem role, he created value and a sales pipeline exceeding US$10 million with partners including Microsoft, Islamic Development Bank, Celcom, and DHL.
His voice matters because he shows that storytelling can move across business, heritage, technology, and community. For founders and marketers, Richard offers a practical lesson: stories grow when they are purposeful, consistent, and built for real audiences.
Ambi Parameswaran
Founder, www.brand-building.com
Ambi Parameswaran is one of the most experienced brand thinkers in this list. With a career spanning more than 45 years across marketing, sales, advertising, brand coaching, teaching, writing, and governance, he brings rare depth to the conversation on brand building in India and beyond.
He is the Founder of Brand-Building.com, a brand advisory focused on coaching and mentoring in branding, marketing, and advertising. Before that, he spent more than 25 years with FCB Ulka Advertising, serving as CEO and Executive Director from 2003 to 2013. His source profile notes that he was part of the team that turned Ulka from a loss-making ad agency into a top-three marketing communications group.
Ambi has helped build brands including Thermax, Digene, Brufen, Santoor Soap, Sundrop Cooking Oil, TCS, ICICI Bank, Wipro, Indica Cars, and Zee TV. His brand coaching engagements have included PepsiCo, Tata Motors, Wipro Consumer, Abbott, TI Cycles, Sun Pharma, D Decor, Nippon Paint, and others.
His thought leadership is equally substantial. Ambi has spoken at five TEDx events, the Kellogg India Summit at Northwestern University, and Cornell University. He has twelve books to his credit, including Building Brand Value, Nawabs Nudes Noodles, SPONGE, SPRING, All The World’s A Stage, and Marketing Mixology. He has also served as President of AAAI and President of Ad Club Bombay, and received Distinguished Alumnus Awards from IIT Madras and IIM Calcutta.
Ambi’s perspective is valuable because it combines brand theory, client experience, leadership, and writing. For anyone building a brand in complex markets, he offers a reminder that strong brands are built through consistency, insight, craft, and commercial discipline.
Lulu Raghavan
President APAC, Landor
Lulu Raghavan brings a design-led and transformation-focused view of branding. As President APAC at Landor, she works in a field where naming, identity, architecture, packaging, employee alignment, customer experience, and storytelling all come together to shape how a brand is understood.
Her profile describes her as a brand and design evangelist with 25 years at Landor across San Francisco, New York, London, and Mumbai. She established Landor’s Mumbai studio and led the firm’s growth in India, shaping brand transformations for companies such as Tata, Mahindra, Godrej, and Aditya Birla. Today, she leads teams across India, Southeast Asia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, and Australia, helping clients create value through branding and design.
Lulu’s recognition reflects her influence in the branding and design industry. She has been recognized as one of Campaign Asia’s Fifty Over Fifty Women in Asia 2026, Involve Heroes Global Top Executives 2025, Campaign Asia Women to Watch 2024, Campaign India Mentor of the Year 2023, and Impact’s Top 50 Women in Media, Marketing and Advertising across multiple years. She has also served on the Cannes Lions Design Jury in 2018 and 2026, alongside several other branding and design juries.
Beyond client work, she teaches branding at leading business schools and serves on the advisory boards of ISDI Parsons School of Design, The Specialist Brand School, and Brush of Hope. She is also a trustee of Dignity Foundation.
Lulu’s voice matters because she frames branding as transformation rather than surface-level design. For business leaders, her work demonstrates how branding can align employees, support market expansion, strengthen storytelling, and create value across every customer touchpoint.
Airen Petalbert
Executive & Employer Brand Expert | Founder, Moveforth
Airen Petalbert is a brand strategist specializing in B2B branding, executive positioning, employer branding, and strategic storytelling. As Founder of Moveforth and Head of Marketing at Maintain Technology, she helps organizations and industry leaders build brands that earn trust, shape reputation, and drive sustainable business growth.
Over the past decade, Airen has worked across technology, SaaS, staffing, enterprise consulting, and professional services, developing brand strategies that transform technical expertise into clear, differentiated market positioning. Through Moveforth, she partners with startups, scale-ups, and established organizations to build founder brands, employer brands, messaging frameworks, and content ecosystems that strengthen visibility, attract the right audiences, and create long-term commercial impact.
Employer branding has become a defining pillar of her work. She helps businesses attract exceptional talent, cultivate high-performance cultures, and build communities where employees, customers, and industry peers become advocates for the brand. Her approach is grounded in the belief that the strongest brands are built from the inside out — where leadership, culture, and communication work together to create lasting trust.
Beyond her consultancy, Airen leads marketing for Maintain Technology, an Australian enterprise technology consulting firm supporting government and private-sector organizations through SAP, digital transformation, and large-scale project delivery. She also leads Humans of ERP, a global storytelling platform that documents the leadership journeys and career experiences of ERP professionals, helping humanize one of the world’s largest enterprise technology communities.
Her passion for storytelling extends beyond the corporate world. She is the founder of Humans of Rizal Park, a community storytelling project that documents the lives and perspectives of everyday Filipinos, reflecting her long-standing belief that authentic stories create meaningful human connections. Her work and insights have been featured in publications including Tech Times, Candy Magazine, and Thought Catalog.
Airen’s voice matters because she bridges brand strategy with human connection. Her work demonstrates that sustainable business growth comes from aligning executive visibility, employer branding, community building, and strategic storytelling. For B2B organizations, she shows that trust is built not only through products, services, and credentials, but through leadership, culture, and the stories people choose to tell about a brand.
Lishan Peiris
Creative Branding Specialist | AI Educator, Consultant & Creative Technologist
Lishan Peiris represents a new generation of marketing professionals bringing together brand strategy, creative direction, marketing operations, and emerging technology. With over 12 years of experience spanning the real estate and technology industries, his work examines how brands can remain relevant, human, and creatively distinctive as AI reshapes the way marketing teams operate.
His experience spans integrated marketing, digital strategy, employer branding, content development, corporate communications, events, and brand-led storytelling. Across these areas, Lishan has worked at the intersection of strategy and execution, helping translate business objectives into identities, campaigns, experiences, and communication systems that connect with both customers and employees.
A central focus of his current work is the practical application of generative AI and agentic systems within marketing and creative teams. He experiments with new approaches to content production, creative workflows, brand storytelling, and marketing automation, while continuing to examine the role of human judgment, originality, and emotional relevance in AI-enabled work.
Beyond his professional role, Lishan actively contributes to the development of the next generation of creatives, marketers, and brand storytellers. At the AMDT School of Creativity, he mentors learners across AI for branding, marketing, creativity, and UX. He also supports learners and teams as a consultant and corporate trainer through freelance engagements and partnerships with organizations including Cocoon and STEM Link.
Across more than 40+ classes and 20+ hands-on workshops, Lishan has mentored over 200 learners and worked with more than 20 brands. He also shares practical experiments, production projects, and perspectives on AI, creativity, and the future of work through social media, talks, podcasts, and community initiatives.
Lishan’s voice matters because it is grounded in active practice. He does not approach AI only as a technology trend, but as a changing creative environment that marketers must learn to navigate responsibly. His work shows how emerging tools can help teams move faster and explore new possibilities without losing the strategic thinking, cultural understanding, and human perspective that strong brands require.
Yusra Alam
Brand Manager @ Golootlo
Yusra Alam brings a performance-driven, Gen Z perspective to brand and content strategy. As Brand Manager at Golootlo, her source profile shows a clear connection between brand identity, community growth, campaign execution, product collaboration, and measurable business outcomes.
Her work at Golootlo includes leading the ScanKaro G PSL campaign end-to-end, achieving 91 million impressions, a 28.2% engagement rate, and a 316% increase in in-app actions versus the target. She also led the organically driven Rs. 199 campaign, which generated more than 100,000 redemptions in just 78 days and delivered over PKR 50 million in consumer savings.
Yusra’s source material also highlights her role in upcoming launches, Golootlo Commerce Exchange (GCX), Golootlo’s POS machines with Multiple payment acceptance, Delivery Portal & DMS. She collaborated with Product, Data, and UX teams on an app revamp that reduced churn by 22%, led a full brand identity overhaul,
Yusra stands out because her branding work is tied to both creativity and numbers. For young marketers and business leaders, her profile shows how modern brand building can connect content, product, community, and measurable growth.
Nguyễn Quang Hiệp
Brand & Retail Expert, Brands Vietnam
Nguyễn Quang Hiệp’s profile is more concise than others in the source material, so his recognition should be understood through the information available: he is positioned as a Brand & Retail Expert with 15 years of experience in brand, trade, and retail.
His past working experience in big corporates, training & consultancy projects as a Brand & Retail Expert since January 2015 gives him a long-running connection to Vietnam’s branding and retail conversation. While the source does not provide awards, named campaigns, clients, or measurable impact, it does establish a focused professional identity built around brand, trade, and retail expertise.
That focus matters. In Asia’s fast-changing consumer markets, retail is where brand promises are tested in real time. Positioning, visibility, product experience, shopper trust, and trade execution all shape whether a brand becomes memorable or invisible.
Nguyễn Quang Hiệp’s inclusion points to the importance of practitioners who understand the ground-level link between brand strategy and retail reality. For readers, his profile is a reminder that storytelling is not limited to content channels. It also lives in shelves, stores, customer journeys, and everyday purchase decisions.
Chris Baker
Founder, Totem
Chris Baker brings a cultural intelligence and China-focused strategy perspective to branding. As Founder of Totem, he works at the intersection of brand strategy, marketing intelligence, cultural positioning, and market dynamics.
His source profile frames a clear argument: the brands that win are not only outspending competitors, but “out-owning” them by claiming cultures, categories, and consumer identities. That point reflects more than 20 years of experience working in and around China, a market he describes as one of the most innovative and competitive marketing ecosystems.
Totem has published an annual report on China marketing for 11 consecutive years, built on primary research and direct interviews with China’s leading brands, agencies, and thinkers. The consultancy also publishes the Totem Top 100, an annual ranking of China’s most consequential global brands. Across more than 70 reports covering China marketing, global social commerce, DTC brand strategy, and influencer marketing across Asia, Totem’s research has reached more than 2 million marketers worldwide.
Chris’s current flagship research, China Goes Global, maps consumer willingness-to-pay, brand trust, and pricing headroom across 3,500 respondents in seven markets and eight categories. His profile also notes work with Nike, New Balance, Skechers, Birkenstock, TRX, Apple, Disney, Starbucks, Omega/Swatch Group, Van Cleef & Arpels, Tencent, and Alibaba.
Recognized as a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert 2026, Chris is also co-host of Commerce Beyond Borders and has spoken at WARC, AmCham China, What’s Next in Marketing Singapore, Coresight Research, AdAge, Campaign, Forbes, and CB Insights.
His voice matters because he helps brands look beyond short-term attention. For leaders expanding across Asia and beyond, Chris offers a sharper question: what does your brand truly own in culture, category, and consumer memory?
Amalia E. Maulana
Brand Consultant & Ethnographer; Professor of Marketing, Indonesia
Amalia E. Maulana is a leading branding scholar-practitioner whose work bridges corporate experience, strategic consulting, and academia. As a Brand Consultant, Ethnographer, Professor of Marketing at BINUS University, Indonesia, and Founder & Managing Director of ETNOMARK Consulting, she has dedicated her career to helping organisations build brands that are not only commercially successful but also grounded in customer understanding, cultural relevance, and long-term value creation.
Amalia believes that every successful brand begins with a deep understanding of customers. This philosophy has shaped her long-standing advocacy of ethnography-driven branding, where customer insight forms the foundation of strategic decisions rather than serving only as an input for marketing communications. Her perspective is shaped by a unique combination of experience across business, consulting, and higher education.
Before entering academia, Amalia spent 15 years in the consumer goods industry, holding senior marketing and brand management positions with multinational companies including Unilever, Frisian Flag, and Reckitt & Colman. Working in highly competitive markets gave her first-hand experience in translating consumer understanding into business growth, brand differentiation, and sustainable competitive advantage.
Building on this foundation, she established ETNOMARK Consulting, where she has spent the past 20 years advising corporations, government institutions, universities, and non-profit organisations on branding, rebranding, corporate communication, market positioning, and customer insight. Through ethnographic and qualitative research, she has helped organisations uncover the cultural, social, and behavioural drivers behind customer decisions, enabling them to develop strategies that are both commercially effective and culturally relevant. Her consulting portfolio includes major institutional branding and repositioning initiatives, including the rebranding of IPB University, as well as numerous universities, public institutions, and private organisations across Indonesia.
Alongside her consulting work, Amalia has built an academic career spanning more than 27 years, teaching branding, marketing strategy, consumer behaviour, qualitative research, and digital marketing at undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral levels. As an active researcher, international conference speaker, author, and mentor, she continues to connect academic knowledge with managerial practice while helping shape future business leaders and advancing branding scholarship across Asia.
Amalia’s voice matters because she demonstrates that branding is far more than communication or visual identity. Her work shows that enduring brands are built through a deep understanding of customers, thoughtful interpretation of culture, and the ability to transform insight into strategic action. By bringing together industry experience, consulting practice, and academic scholarship, she has become a distinctive voice advocating evidence-based, customer-centred branding for organisations navigating increasingly complex and competitive markets.
Why These Voices Matter for Asia’s Next Brand Era
Asia’s business ecosystem is entering a new brand era. Growth is no longer driven only by product, price, or distribution. It is also shaped by trust, clarity, cultural relevance, leadership visibility, and the ability to tell stories that people believe.
The ten voices in this feature reflect that shift. They come from different markets, disciplines, and stages of influence, yet each shows a distinct way branding is evolving across the region. While certain leaders build legacy and boardroom trust, others translate culture into strategy. Furthermore, many use content, AI, retail insight, or executive branding to make companies more visible and meaningful.
For founders, entrepreneurs, marketers, and business leaders, the lesson is clear: branding is not a campaign that starts after the business is built. It is part of how the business earns attention, builds credibility, creates community, and sustains growth.
As Asia continues to shape the future of business, these voices remind us that the brands that last will not simply speak louder. They will speak with greater clarity, stronger purpose, and deeper understanding of the people they serve.
Editorial Note:
This feature is independently curated by the NewInAsia editorial team and is not a paid or sponsored listing. We research professionals using publicly available information, primarily LinkedIn, and conduct an editorial review based on factors such as expertise, consistency of public contributions, engagement quality, professional credibility, and relevance to the featured topic. This is a curated editorial feature, not a definitive ranking.
Highlights
Read the Chinese article here.
