Inbox zero, Coke Zero, skateboards: A day in the life of Circles.Life’s marketing head

Day in the Life is a series where personalities in the Asian tech community recount what they do on a typical day. Read more from the series here.

I’m Delbert Ty, head of marketing at Circles.Life. I work with the marketing team across our Singapore and Indonesia offices. On top of that, I work very closely with the founders and the product team to determine strategy and expansion plans.

Before Circles.Life, I’d never actually worked in a tech startup. My only prior experience was the opposite of a startup: selling soap at Procter & Gamble.

My time at P&G taught me that marketing is more than just communications and advertising; it’s about building the business holistically—from strategy and product, all the way to execution. I’ve carried this philosophy all the way to Circles.Life, and I think this describes a lot of what a day in my life looks like.

8 am

I wake up, and the first thing I do is check my phone notifications and see what’s happenning around the world. I get up to date on not just telco happenings, but any other exciting development in the technology space.

In addition to this, I check off most of the emails I missed from the night and start my day with my inbox at zero.

8:30 to 9:30 am

Around this time, I’ll be getting ready for work and fixing up my hair. As is obvious from my picture, I spend quite some time on this. Given how routine this has been for me, I get into an almost meditative state and use this time to think of big open-ended problems.

9:30 to 10:30 am

The first thing I do when I arrive at work is to check on how we’ve done in terms of subscriber acquisition the previous day. This gives me a quick sense on what’s working and what’s not with our campaigns and any tests we might be working on.

I also have a quick chat with product and marketing folks around the table to get their perspective on what’s happening.

11 am to 12:30 pm

The marketing team has their weekly connect to discuss how we’ve done the prior week. In line with our value of taking ownership, I make it a point that regardless of what the team does specifically—campaigns, community, PR, or design—everyone needs to be in tune with our main company KPI (subscriber acquisitions).

This meeting clues in everyone and allows us to discuss and brainstorm how to grow even further. Often, our craziest ideas come from these discussions—from the US$3 dollar vending machine to the MRT vandalism campaign. When we say “Be bold. Dare to Innovate,” we mean it—even with the marketing we do!

12:30 to 1:30 pm

At this time, I get my first Coke Zero to keep my energy up while I gather the team for lunch at our usual place (the coffee shop next door). This is a great time for me to connect with the team and get a sense of the organization. We’ll also talk about non-work stuff like the latest controversy on STOMP or Mothership or what Netflix series we absolutely have to binge through. After all, we never run out of data.

1:30 to 2:30 pm

3 to 4 pm

4 to 5 pm

5 to 6:30 pm

6:30 pm onward