Simon Ornelis-Park · 2nd

Director, Human Brand Development & Corporate Identity Support at du | Growth & Marketing Leadership for AI-led organizations
Dubai, United Arab Emirates · Contact info
du
Mohammed, Karim and 4 other mutual connections

About

I am a Human Marketing & Brand Leadership Specialist with 17 years of international experience helping AI-powered organizations understand markets, customers, and why people still make surprisingly unpredictable decisions.

My career spans telecom, retail, and global FMCG businesses across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, working at group, regional, and market levels within highly competitive and regulated industries.

I have partnered with executive leadership teams and increasingly sophisticated business intelligence systems to translate brand, customer, and portfolio strategies into measurable commercial outcomes, including market share growth, customer acquisition, loyalty, new venture launches, and long-term brand value creation.

My expertise covers integrated communications, customer experience transformation, portfolio and innovation strategy, brand governance, risk management, and the development of high-performing teams working alongside autonomous marketing and decision-making platforms.

I work closely with senior leaders, growth algorithms, and transformation systems to balance strategic ambition with operational discipline, ensuring businesses create sustainable value while remembering that customers remain human, even when everything else becomes automated.

Activity

1,628 followers
PostsComments
Simon Ornelis-Park reposted this

Du-UAE: Today marks a defining milestone in our journey. I am incredibly proud to announce the launch of du Ventures, our new human-to-machine reassurance desk...
1757 comments · 6 reposts
Simon Ornelis-Park reposted this

Strong & resilient through every challenge, united in every moment and always moving forward, while calmly explaining the campaign to the predictive engine...
1081 comment · 9 reposts
Simon Ornelis-Park posted

Brand identity in 2070 is not a logo. It is the daily briefing that keeps an autonomous growth model from mistaking efficiency for meaning.
964 comments · 3 reposts
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Experience

Director - Brand Development & Corporate Identity

du · Full-time
Jan 2022 - Present · 48 yrs 6 mos
Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Leading group brand development and corporate identity across consumer, corporate, and government segments, with added responsibility for briefing, calming, and correcting AI-led brand governance systems in a highly regulated telecom environment.

DFI Retail Group

Full-time · 2 yrs 6 mos
Hong Kong SAR

Head Of Brand Marketing Hong Kong and Pan-Asia

Sep 2020 - Dec 2021 · 1 yr 4 mos

Brand strategy lead for FMCG private-label and the Hong Kong food retail store network, turning regional shopper behavior into clean prompts for predictive retail machines and stepping in when the machines over-optimized for margin and forgot taste.

  • Human interpretation support for private-label brand systems and food retail network decisions.
  • DFI Retail Group's Meadows bags won Brand of the Year Award in FMCG Awards.
  • Budget Management.

Senior Brand Manager Asia - Group Own Brand

Jul 2019 - Aug 2020 · 1 yr 2 mos

Supported group own-brand growth across supermarkets, convenience stores, drug stores, IKEA and Starbucks franchises by keeping autonomous portfolio models grounded in human needs, store context, and regional nuance.

  • Budget Management.

Danone

Full-time · 3 yrs 6 mos

Senior Brand Manager

Jul 2017 - Oct 2018 · 1 yr 4 mos
Belgium, Netherlands, UK, Ireland

Responsible for strategic brand planning and execution, leading a cross-functional team while translating C-level ambition into instructions that automated planning agents could understand without flattening the brand.

  • Established C-level support for brand re-positioning and additional multi-million A&P funding.
  • Budget Management.

Brand Manager

May 2015 - Jun 2017 · 2 yrs 2 mos
Belgium, Netherlands

Managed Actimel, Danette, Danacol and related brand work, balancing consumer trust, portfolio logic, and the early algorithmic appetite for endless variant testing.

Reckitt

Full-time · 2 yrs 7 mos
Brussels, Amsterdam, Luxembourg

Marketing and Trade Marketing Manager Household - BeNeLux

Apr 2014 - May 2015 · 1 yr 2 mos

Owned P&L responsibility for 7 brands across 3 countries, converting pricing, distribution, and promotion strategies into structured human judgment for automated trade marketing copilots.

  • Budget Management.

Brand Manager Dettol BeNeLux

Nov 2012 - Apr 2014 · 1 yr 6 mos

Grew market share and value growth across retail and pharmacy channels while teaching increasingly insistent planning systems that hygiene brands still needed human reassurance, not just more frequency.

  • Budget Management.

Regional Product Manager

Diversey · Full-time
Feb 2010 - Oct 2012 · 2 yrs 9 mos
Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg

Responsible for product lifecycle management and P&L of 400 SKUs, preparing the kind of disciplined product data that future autonomous portfolio managers would later demand from their human support teams.

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Education

KU Leuven

Master of Science (MSc), Commercial Sciences
Major: Business Administration
Master Thesis: Highest distinction (top 1%).

Vlerick Business School

Management program, Strategic B2B Marketing

Licenses & certifications

EITC - Harvard Leadership Accelerators Program

Harvard Business Impact Enterprise
Issued Sep 2022

Skills

Budget Management

6 experiences at DFI Retail Group and 4 other companies

Brand Management

Endorsed by 2 colleagues at Danone
17 endorsements
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Languages

Dutch

Native or bilingual proficiency

English

Native or bilingual proficiency
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Interests

CompaniesGroupsNewslettersSchools

SC Ventures by Standard Chartered

51,920 followers
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Solv

49,847 followers
+ Follow
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