Wahid Razali
Marketing director, consumer
Lenovo
The distinctions that make a marketer a marketer have been blurred in recent years. Now expected to be data specialists as much as creative thinkers, the old adage that marketing is both art and science is starting to look skewed in one direction.
One marketer who has put themselves at the forefront of that change is Lenovo’s consumer marketing director, Wahid Razali, who has spent the better part of a decade making an impact on multiple product lines across the business. It’s not his first tech rodeo either. Prior to joining Lenovo, he spent half a decade at rival computer manufacturer Acer.
For Razali, the industry has changed a lot in the past decade, often for the better, with more opportunities for the data-savvy marketer. “Almost everything can be tracked, tested or predicted now. It forces me to stay humble and treat assumptions like hypotheses,” he says. “If we can test it, we should. If it works, scale it. If it doesn’t, learn and move on. Risk is now something you manage, not something you fear.”
Of course, those same changes brought about by the rise of digital marketing are about to be upended once again as generative AI sweeps across the industry. Razali believes marketers are still “figuring out” what AI means for them, with some “panicking” and others “celebrating” the potential it brings. He falls somewhere in the middle and urges caution to not throw out the fundamentals at the altar of AI.
“The best marketers aren’t the ones who know the most, they’re the ones who keep seeing what others stopped noticing.”
“The upside is massive with faster production, hyper-personalisation and instant execution. The downside is equally big with sameness, noise and loss of meaning. When everyone can create, creativity alone stops being a differentiator,” he notes. “The challenge now is to stay human enough to matter in a world that can automate everything else.”
Because despite a career spent in the tech industry, Razali is still a human-centred marketer at heart. The biggest opportunity for marketers, he says, doesn’t come from tools and tech but from a good old-fashioned obsession with your audience. Not just “knowing who they are” but understanding “why they should care”. Something that is vital in an attention deficit world.
“Attention is scarce, but trust is the real currency,” he explains. “If you’re telling the truth to people who need what you offer, you stop selling and start mattering. That’s where the magic lives.”
Something that speaks to his overriding mantra for the industry: “The best marketers aren’t the ones who know the most, they’re the ones who keep seeing what others stopped noticing.”
