Garena, 2019 to 2023

Three and a half years at Garena, running growth for FIFA Online 4 (FO4). September 2019 through February 2023. Senior Product Growth. Cross-functional pod of 15 across product, marketing, and BD, covering 5 SEA countries.

This was the clean stint. Mature org, scoped role, mentorship that compounded. Most of what I know about how a real growth function holds together I learned here.

The Numbers

• 2M+ social followers across 5 SEA countries, 10–15% MoM engagement growth
• +250K active users in 14 days on the Tet 2023 sprint
• +30% click-through, +18% re-activation across 100+ creative variants per month
• 5 national esports tournaments including SEA Games 31
• 15-person cross-functional pod orchestrated across product, marketing, BD

Signature Campaigns

I ran the seasonal calendar and the ICON pipeline. The pattern across all of them: don’t oversell, let the community do the heavy lifting, give them something worth talking about.

Tet La Phai Vui 2021 (Feb 2021)

The Tet 2021 campaign during the pandemic. Brief was simple: bring people together while they’re stuck at home. I put together a collab with three of Vietnam’s most-loved creators — Gonzo (the rapper “Thay Do”), Do Mixi, and Vodka Quang — under the message “Tet La Phai Vui” (Tet Must Be Fun).

Three activities ran February 5–18 (24 Tet to Mung 7):

• Thay Do Lucky Letters — write wishes, collect letters, redeem for 21TOTY jerseys and ICON cards
• Li Xi Red Envelopes — up to 10,000 FC daily from Mung 1–3
• Firecracker Surprises — countdown events unlocking special rewards

Event portal at tet.fo4.garena.vn supported PC and Mobile so everyone could celebrate from home. The MV with Gonzo, Do Mixi, and Vodka Quang did the social heavy lifting before I had to push a single dollar of paid.

David Beckham ICON (Dec 2020)

Beckham was the biggest signing I worked on at FO4. Not a seasonal event, not a meta update — a global icon entering the game for the first time.

I built the rollout around mystery. Teaser drops, no confirmation, let the community connect the dots. Social did the work before I had to push. By reveal day, hype had already peaked organically. Positioning landed clean: if you take FO4 seriously, Beckham is the card.

Ruud Gullit ICON (Oct 2021)

Different play. Gullit wasn’t the flashy name for casual fans, but anyone who understood football knew he was the ultimate all-rounder — raw, complete dominance across every position.

I built the campaign around scarcity. Limited availability, content highlighting his unique in-game stats. For collectors, Gullit was the card you either had or you didn’t. The scarcity drove everything.

Nostalgia & Unsung Players (Nov 2021)

Torres vs Vidic. Striker vs center-back. Two players who defined an era and made each other better by being rivals.

The angle was the matchup, not the individual legend. Players got to recreate the rivalry in-game. Straightforward pitch: if you remember Torres burning past Vidic — or Vidic shutting Torres down — this one’s for you.

Ronaldo Nazario ICON (Dec 2021)

R9 didn’t need a hard sell. Everyone who grew up watching football knew what Ronaldo de Lima meant. The marketing played reverence over hype — his goalscoring record spoke for itself, so I stayed out of its way.

Exclusive ICON content and in-game items built around his legacy. Simple pitch: one of the greatest goalscorers who ever lived, now in your squad.

What I Learned

A mature org gives you scaffolding you don’t realize you have until it’s gone. Mentorship, peers who pull standards up, structural support for taking real shots. Garena had all of it.

Every campaign on this page worked because the ground underneath was solid: a 15-person pod that knew how to ship, a PR function I could lean on, BD relationships in 5 countries, an esports calendar that gave the marketing rhythm. The campaigns are the visible artifacts. The system around them is what made them work.