AirAsia’s Kathleen Tan Deserves WITovation’s ‘Marketer of the Year’ Award

22 October 2012, Singapore – Last week Singapore welcomed travel and hospitality trade visitors to TravelRave – a week of activities, conferences and exhibitions and award ceremonies.  Low Cost Carrier AirAsia’s Group Head of Commercial Kathleen Tan was named Web In Travel’s (WIT) ‘Marketer of the Year’ award at the WITovation awards during the WIT ‘Unplugged’ conference at Sands Expo and Exhibition Centre.

WIT recognised Kathleen for her remarkable achievements in building the AirAsia brand and for possessing great vision and leadership.  In a separate press conference to announce AirAsia Live It Up in the Air Challenge, Kathleen mentioned that this is her first time in over two decades as a marketer that she has received an award and she sighed in relief “Finally!”

Kathleen was in Warner music where she first worked with her current Group CEO Tony Fernandes.   She was the Regional Marketing Director for three years in Hong Kong, then moved back to Singapore at the Managing Director for seven years.  She then joined FJ Benjamin’s marketing team for South East Asia as Divisional Head of Marketing handling luxury labels including Gucci, Coach, Fendi, Lanvin and Guess.

When Tony moved to AirAsia, he pulled Kathleen along and Kathleen convinced Tony to hire another Singaporean to join her in the brand team to build the brand of AirAsia where she painted the airplanes red.   Kathleen started her career at AirAsia as Senior Vice President of Greater China.  Less than a year later, she assumed the role of Regional Head of Commercial for AirAsia Group.

Kathleen’s portfolio at AirAsia today includes Revenue Management, Marketing, Branding, Social Media, Corporate Communications, Mobile and development of ancillary products and services which include hotels, credit card, insurance and in-flight food.  Kathleen will continue to position AirAsia as the leader in the digital travel space since conventional direct push marketing utilises a limited one way communication.

AirAsia is offering the chance to win a grand prize of S$10,000 worth of travel vouchers amongst other prizes in the AirAsia Live It Up in The Air challenge from now till 29 November.   Visit http://www.facebook.com/AirAsiaSingapore for more details.

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