With more than 20 years of global FMCG experience, Stephan has held senior leadership roles across Europe, APAC, Africa, and the Americas, including multiple CMO and Global VP positions at The Coca-Cola Company. His career spans large-scale business turnarounds, iconic global brand launches, and the design of enterprise-wide marketing performance and growth systems used across hundreds of markets.
Stephan is recognized for building consumer-centric, data-led marketing organizations and for driving digital and AI-enabled transformation—from modern martech ecosystems and global social studios to first-party data, CRM, and advanced measurement frameworks that directly link creativity to commercial impact. His experience includes creating and scaling iconic global campaigns for brands such as Coca-Cola Zero, FANTA Sprite and Schweppes, combining cultural relevance with rigorous performance discipline at global scale.
A frequent keynote speaker and industry juror, Stephan regularly shares perspectives on global brand building, cultural relevance, and the future of marketing leadership in an increasingly connected world.
As more Asian companies pursue international expansion, many face a common challenge: strong success at home does not automatically translate into success abroad. Building brands and businesses across markets requires more than exporting products or scaling distribution. It requires the right operating model, capabilities, talent, cultural understanding, and brand-building system to support sustainable growth. This session explores the organizational and marketing realities behind global expansion and offers a practical perspective on what it takes to build the foundations for long-term international success.
In the Chinese market—arguably the most competitive in the world—the logic of scaling is undergoing a fundamental shift. In the past, a clear brand positioning combined with a standardized operational system was sufficient to support rapid enterprise expansion. Today, however, as local companies fully evolve across product, channel, and operational dimensions, the traditional "macro-framework advantage" is being rapidly eroded.
The factor that truly creates a gap is no longer whether the direction is correct, but rather the density of capabilities—an enterprise's ability to continuously achieve refined upgrades across every critical dimension. From consumer insights and product innovation to supply chain management, pricing, channel rhythm, and user experience, every link is being polished and interconnected to form a higher-density, sustainably scalable capability system. Consequently, growth in scale no longer stems from the amplification of a single capability, but from the systemic synergy of these combined strengths.