The market for senior marketers across Asia Pacific is keeping us busy. Over the past couple of weeks, we've clocked several rather interesting gigs popping up across the region, and not just the usual suspects.

In Australia, HanesBrands is looking for a Head of Marketing for Sheridan, while The Trade Desk is still on the hunt for an APAC PR & Communications Director, having reposted the role just yesterday. Otis wants an APAC Marketing Director based in Seoul, and Stripe has just put up a bilingual Head of Marketing, Japan role.

Over in Singapore, our old haunt Tanjong Beach Club is looking for an Associate Marketing Director, while AI company Optro is recruiting a Head of APAC Marketing. Sony Music is after a bilingual Director of Digital Retail Partnership and Marketing in Beijing, and Volvo wants a bilingual Head of Brand Marketing & Communications, Asia & China based in Shanghai.

That's eight notable senior marketing roles across the region, all advertised or refreshed within the past couple of weeks. So yes, opportunity knocks if you know where the doors are located.

For this edition, though, we've picked three roles that come with some particularly interesting questions attached. There's a nappy brand running its North American marketing from Sydney, when you'd think Chicago might make a bit more sense; a fintech whose CMO seems to have vanished; and a marketplace whose business model could face an awkward future once customers start asking their LLMs to negotiate with the time-wasters.

Welcome to senior marketing in APAC. Never a dull moment.

We write this regional edition of CMO Ladder because we believe demand for senior marketing talent in Asia-Pacific gets far less attention than it should. Occasionally, though, we find a job based here and think the employer should put it somewhere else. ZURU’s Marketing Director for Millie Moon might be one.

The company wants someone to sell more nappies in North America. It’s the mid-term elections. At least half the adults there are already shitting themselves, but unfortunately this brief is for babies.

Millie Moon is ZURU’s premium nappy and baby-care brand. The role is advertised in Sydney and Auckland, with responsibility for the global brand and a particular focus on growth in the US and Canada. Walmart, Target and around 30 other US retailers feature in the brief.

For readers who know ZURU through toys, its consumer-goods business also develops brands across categories including baby care, beauty and household products. It remains founder-owned and operated. This is a substantial job, with responsibility for positioning, product launches, packaging and commercial performance.

There is plenty to get your teeth into. You would set the North American growth strategy, balance brand and trade investment, and help grow the training-pants business. The brief also includes a licensing partnership and programmes to reach expecting parents.

“Premium” has to justify itself in a household budget already accommodating an expensive gurgling new resident with no ability to make money. You need to understand what parents will pay more for.

Established brands will be hard to dislodge from baby bums. Euromonitor puts Kimberly-Clark and Unicharm’s combined Australian share at roughly 73% of retail value. Knowing how to win against incumbents matters. For this particular job, I’d want someone who has done it through American retailers…

Walmart, Target, Kroger, and of course Amazon are the chapels where I would want this person to have worshipped. A candidate for this role will need to understand how American commerce buyers operate, how promotions get funded and what happens when the product doesn’t move fast enough.

There will be people in Australia and New Zealand with that experience. Some may have returned from substantial US assignments. But requiring that expertise and a willingness to work from an Australasian office makes the search much narrower.

ZURU is quite explicit about its preferences. The advert describes an office-first business and tells candidates: “This isn’t a 9-to-5.”

I had started to suspect that when I saw North America being run from Sydney or Auckland.

My objection goes beyond the early calls. If American retail is the commercial priority, I would want the strongest possible access to people who have built brands there. I’d look at baby and personal-care marketers, including people from businesses such as Burt’s Bees, who can demonstrate the relevant retailer experience.

Other Australasian brands have invested in regional capability and made it work. Bondi Sands recruited dedicated North American marketing and commercial leaders as it expanded US distribution. ZURU’s own MONDAY Haircare has described finding experts on the ground who understand each market’s customers and culture.

To be fair, the Millie Moon advert says this person will lead a North American team. There is already local capability. A global brand leader also needs close relationships with product, creative and the people making investment decisions.

That gives ZURU an argument for keeping the role near its own team…. but at what cost?

If Taligence had this search, I’d run a North American shortlist alongside the Australasian one. Compare people who have delivered through these retailers, examine what they would add to the existing team, and then decide where the job really belongs.

If the strongest candidate is in the US, I would spend the money there and arrange proper time with colleagues in Australasia. Being able to see your marketing director at their desk is an expensive benefit if someone elsewhere could do more for the business.

There is an attractive assignment here for a marketer who wants to build a consumer brand at scale. We’re happy to bring it to APAC readers. We would also be willing to tell an employer when the best person for its APAC-based job might be sitting in America.

Binance had $6.3 billion stolen this week. It says it will cover the losses. I hope my financial provider never needed to reassure me about $6bn missing dollars.

Wise had nothing to do with that hack. But I can imagine someone reading the headline and deciding their expensive and clunky old bank will do for now. The differences between a crypto exchange and a money-transfer service may be fascinating to people who work in financial services. A prospective customer has dinner to make and ‘digital banking’ is the same bowl of rice.

That is the sort of problem I would be thinking about if I were applying for Wise’s APAC Marketing Director job.

For anyone unfamiliar with it, Wise helps people and businesses move money across borders, hold different currencies and spend abroad. Its appeal includes lower costs and less upset, shock and (finally) acceptance when you discover what your bank has charged for moving your own money.

Getting someone to try Wise’s service means overcoming whatever has kept them with their bank so far. Habit can be expensive but usually hard to break.

The role is based in Singapore and covers a region stretching from Australia to India, with Japan, China and Southeast Asian markets in between. You will build and lead regional marketing teams, manage budgets and work with product leaders and central marketing. Your first assignment is hands-on: develop and deliver the Australian strategy, including campaigns and creative.

You report directly to the CMO in London.

A wrinkle though. The last CMO appears to have left.

Usually, when candidates worry about a ghost job, they mean the vacancy. At Wise, the ghost may be the boss. Cian Weeresinghe’s departure was recorded by an executive-tracking service in October. Another now lists him as former CMO, and he no longer appears on Wise’s leadership page. I haven’t found a successor announcement. That leaves a blank in a job whose appeal includes (and requires) direct access to that person.

Perhaps a successor is appointed and hasn’t been announced. Perhaps the reporting line is being worked out. Either way, I would want to know before spending a weekend preparing an interview presentation.

Cian joined in 2021 after leading customer functions at Secret Escapes. His earlier roles included growth at the Guardian, performance marketing at ASOS and insight and analytics at Essence. He brought experience in getting people to discover a service and pay for it.

He also described Wise’s problem well. In 2024, he said that many people in its markets still didn’t know the company existed. Wise was launching its first global brand campaign after years of growth driven heavily by recommendations and referrals. Happy customers had done a lot of the selling.

The regional hire will need to reach beyond those circles. An Australian business paying overseas suppliers has different problems vs. someone sending part of their salary home to the Philippines. Both might save money. The reasons they hesitate, and the evidence that persuades them, are not the same.

There is plenty of growth to go after. APAC net revenue grew roughly 35% in Wise’s last financial year, reaching US$516 million. The region supplied about a third of the company’s annual net revenue increase. Those are my calculations from its published results.

Having just questioned why ZURU wants its North American growth leader in Australasia, I’m tempted to ask whether Wise’s next global CMO need to be in London.

The growth gives Singapore a case worth hearing. It already has a substantial Wise operation, with product, engineering and compliance colleagues nearby. I would at least include candidates based there in the search.

For the person considering this regional job, though, the immediate concern is who will approve the plan and provide air-cover.

You could join, hire people and get campaigns underway, then spend the next six months defending those decisions to a new CMO who wanted to bring ‘their person’ from the last role. Anyone who has lived through a change of marketing leadership knows how quickly an approved strategy becomes a sigh and a pointy finger or a shouty meeting or both.

If Taligence had this brief, I’d raid Revolut, Airwallex, Paypal and Remitly for marketers who got customers to move money and keep doing it. Grab’s payments marketing team too, if growth survived the discounts. “APAC experience” needs scrutiny. Sitting in Singapore approving translated ads proves you can sit in Singapore.

If you want this job you must be confident you can make Wise memorable and enough commercial discipline to distinguish a cheap signup from a customer who keeps on transacting. I’d want to hear about a market where their first attempt failed and what they changed after speaking to customers and a strong lifecycle marketing thesis.

It’s clearly a cool job. A growing region, a clear customer benefit and considerable scope to shape the work.

But…before accepting, I would want to meet my boss. Given the advertised reporting line, that seems a modest request.

At some point soon, I expect to photograph the exercise bike, tell an AI I want $200 and ask it to get the fucking thing out of my house. It can answer the questions, negotiate and arrange collection. I have already wasted enough of my life not riding it.

I don’t particularly care which marketplace it uses. I want the money and need the space.

That should give Carousell’s next regional marketing leader something to think about.

For readers outside the region, Carousell is a Singapore-founded secondhand marketplace. People sell clothes, phones, furniture and the evidence of short-lived ambitions. Its wider group operates across seven markets under brands including Carousell, Cho Tot, Mudah.my and REFASH. At one time they had a talent brand strong enough to pull people from Grab. I don’t know if that’s true anymore.

The company is hiring a Singapore-based Head of Regional Marketing for its CRS business unit. The job covers six markets and reports to the Chief Business Officer. You will lead country marketing teams and own growth outcomes across acquisition, conversion and retention, including demand, supply and marketplace liquidity.

Liquidity is a polite business word for whether things sell.

Today, selling something still requires more effort than I want. You photograph it, decide what it’s worth and write a description. Then come the questions you already answered in the description, the inevitable insulting offers and the person who agrees to collect it on Saturday before apparently dying.

An agent that handles that whole torrid business would have my attention.

Meta is already removing parts of the work. In March, it announced Facebook Marketplace features that draft listings from photographs, suggest prices and respond to buyer enquiries. 

Take it further. I give an LLM a minimum price and a deadline. It chooses where to list, handles the negotiation within limits I set and brings me a buyer. Perhaps the buyer has an agent. Two machines can spend the afternoon arguing about whether my barely used bike is worth $200. Neither has anything better to do.

Carousell could still complete the transaction. But the seller’s relationship may soon sit with the assistant that made the problem vanish.

That changes what marketing has to achieve here. A memorable campaign might persuade me to specify Carousell. If I leave the choice to my assistant, the platform needs to offer something that earns its place: buyers who pay, a better chance of completing the sale or protection when something goes wrong. Let the AI compare fees.

Beyond the sale, ok, humans in the loop are needed. Payments, collection and disputes leave plenty to resolve. Anyone who has navigated the permission landscape for furniture moves around Cross Street knows.

Carousell has been building services that could matter in that world. Alongside its own AI listing tool, it offers integrated payments and shipping, professional inspections for selected goods and a programme through which users can sell directly to Carousell and its partners. There is more here than a place to post a photograph of your junk.

The company says recommerce revenue grew 40% in FY2025, reaching 45% of group revenue. Total revenue rose 18% to US$141 million, and the group reached positive EBITDA. Those are group figures, not results for this particular business unit, but they show progress in handling more of the sale.

Which makes the AI language in this job advert interesting.

The new leader must embed AI in campaign creation, audience selection and individual customer journeys. They are expected to redesign the function around it, building a team of “hacky-growth-oriented marketers.”

Fair enough. But I would want the interview to get beyond how many campaigns a smaller team can produce. If customers start delegating the buying and selling, the company needs to understand how it will still matter. A department that generates twice as much copy at half the cost might not be the solution.

The brief does give this person close relationships with Product and Category Management. Today, marketing can discover why sellers leave or why buyers hesitate, but resolving those problems is engineering work.

Then we get this requirement on the JD: “Makes friction their own problem rather than escalating.”

There’s a sentence to discuss before signing. Possible translation “You won’t get any fucking help with our broken processes so don’t ask”

You own outcomes across six markets, depend on teams you don’t necessarily manage and are expected to absorb the friction yourself. I would ask the Chief Business Officer what happened the last time marketing needed a product change that another team refused to prioritize. Presumably the executive team does occasionally earn its keep.

If Taligence had this search, I’d look at Shopee, Lazada and eBay for marketers who have improved repeat buying in specific categories. I’d favor someone who had helped change the buying experience and could show growth that survived the withdrawal of discounts.

I’d also give them the exercise-bike problem. Walk me through how an agent could sell it, where Carousell would earn money and why either party would need to know its name. That would tell me more than another presentation about AI-powered personalization.

There is a substantial job here, with a business that is growing and has invested in making secondhand transactions easier to complete.

The next marketing leader may spend part of their tenure persuading people to choose Carousell and another part working out how to stay in the sale when people stop choosing the marketplace themselves.

My exercise bike, rowing machine, treadmill are still available. Please don’t ask.