24 hours With… Kaye Quema of Blis

In this 24 hours with, Blis head of sales for Asia Kaye Quema refreshingly doesn’t get up early for yoga but does engage in a jam-packed day at the office and in meetings

8am: Shock-horror, Mumbrella readers, I’m not up at 5am for two hours of yoga and a mug of home-brewed Kombucha. I’ve recently moved back to Singapore from Jakarta and my flat is very close to the Blis office, so I’m enjoying adjusting my morning routine – since I don’t have to factor in the one-hour Uber ride to work. In Jakarta, I’d have to be up much earlier and waiting 20 minutes for my ride, hoping he doesn’t cancel on me or get lost.

I hit the shower, spend some time on makeup and breakfast is usually avocado on toast. Then I’m on a call with Richard Andrew, the Asia MD, regarding urgent matters of the day before heading out.

9am: Get into work and set my priorities and agenda for the day. People have more of an active brain from 10am, so I’ll usually try and spare my team any early morning meetings – which I think they appreciate. My job is to oversee the sales performance and strategy for Asia so I use this time before meetings to look at our pipeline, CRM and also take a quick look at how our major campaigns are performing.

10am: I spend this time catching up with my direct reports across South East Asia. We’ve recently expanded significantly in the region so I need to be across our operations in Singapore, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand. South East Asia is so diverse that it’s impossible to have a single homogenous strategy.

There’s a ton to cover so in-depth intelligence gathering is crucial for me to build our strategic framework for the next 12 months. My focus areas are to ensure trading deals, strategic partnerships and pipelines are in place as we build new products and packages across agencies.

12pm: I usually have lunch with my team and get to know them on a more personal level. They’re massive foodies. They show me around the hawker centres and guide me on the best Singapore treats.

You spend more time with your team than your family and friends so you should invest the same level of compassion and cohesion. It’s also just more fun that way. I’ve been fortunate enough to have some great leaders in my career and believe a critical part of successful leadership is understanding your team and having a positive impact on their lives.

1.30pm: Back to finalising our Asia strategy, looking at the pipeline, barriers, opportunities and resources. My education background is in humanities and my masters was in history, so despite the current pace of change I believe you can’t ignore trends and evidence from the past in order to learn what needs to happen in the future.

4pm: It’s a brisk stroll to a meeting with one of our agency partners (no, the novelty of walking to meetings still hasn’t worn off). We’ve been running a series of roadshow events across our agency clients to educate the market on how movement data seamlessly marries digital behaviour with real world behaviour, to build a cohesive audience strategy.

This month we launched our latest product ‘smart trends’ and so we’re using the roadshows to showcase its new capabilities. In essence, it is an audience and movement data research tool used for insights and product planning, and I’m thrilled about the launch.

I’ve worked in several adtech companies from Manila and Jakarta to Singapore, but it’s so exciting to be in a company where you can really see the future revealing itself. We’re so far passed the old way of sticking geo-fences on Starbucks stores to now being able to map out audiences based on where people go. Location targeting has evolved so much and it’s rewarding to be able to go and tell that story.

5.30pm: Back at the office for drinks with the sales team and various key clients. Our Blis Bar in the office is infamous for being impressively-stocked, which we like to make regular use of with clients.

7pm: I walk home via the nearby food markets, picking up vegetables for dinner. Cooking is a huge passion for me so I love to have a look at what looks fresh and then decide what to make. Enjoying getting to finally get to spend time with my boyfriend, I decide to make baked salmon and roasted broccoli.

I’m a notorious feeder and my new place is great for hosting. I’ll take any opportunity to host dinners whether it’s for my team, clients or friends.

9pm: We finish dinner and wind down for the day. Since my day involves a lot of collaboration and engagement, I look forward to the quiet, uninterrupted time to catch up on emails and continue working on business plans. I’m definitely a night person and I allocate this time for tasks that need my full concentration.

And then it’s time to rest. I’ll head to bed just after midnight, once I’ve wrapped up all my tasks for the day and caught up with another episode of Designated Survivor, my current favourite show on Netflix.

Click here to view the original article.

Share this article
Scroll to Top

Thanks for subscribing.

Blis Insights and solutions

You will soon receive our
latest news & insights

In the meantime, please check out the latest insights from Blis here

or read about our offerings  here