Rewind back to 2009.

I was fresh out of university and walking into my first day at work in CIMB Bank. Green, raw and brimming with confidence believing that success would come just because I had graduated from one of the top universities in Malaysia.

Now fast forward a couple of months from that point; sleeves rolled up, sitting in the office alone at 11pm on a Friday night and wondering what happened to my social life.

Reality had set in and I was loving it.

During one of my rotations in CIMB Bank I was placed in Marketing Strategy. While still being a ‘trainee’ at the time I was asked to join the working group for the 2 Good 2 True campaign. The campaign was a marketing initiative to grow bank deposits from our customer base. It was a primary focus from our CEO to capitalize on this product as it represented a customers starting point of their relationship with the bank and gave many potential cross-sell opportunities.

The 2 Good 2 Be True Campaign was a huge departure from traditional banking strategies. With marketing budgets that were on par with the fast moving consumer goods industry and marketing themes that captured attention where traditional banking advertisements did not. With the intense focus of our CEO and huge resource deployments the pressure was on, we had to deliver.

(2Good2BeTrue Advertisement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhpkphxUmPg)

In the end, the campaign was a huge success growing deposits 85% from the previous year and growth 2.4 times higher than the industry average.

Being on the working team I was responsible for many of the supporting functions. I handled tracking and reporting of deposit numbers, facilitating weekly update meetings, internal communication of deposit growth and auditing of processes. I did so with little supervision and worked independently from superiors.

This experience gave me exposure to the workings of a company. Being a massive cross-departmental initiative and a keen focus of the CEO I was rubbing shoulders with senior management of a major South East Asian financial institution. It gave me the confidence in my ability to develop presentations and proposals to senior executives.

There are striking similarities to this experience to what I will be going through in the next year when I graduate from the Sauder School of Business. This time with the added weight of expectation but knowing that success comes from personal sacrifice. With the vigorous training of a MBA program and my past experiences I am confident to delivering value to any future company.