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25 questions head office should ask about Vietnam
Last updated 21 September 2026
A list to take into the next Vietnam review. Nothing to fill in, no email required.
Short answer
This is a list of 25 questions a head office should ask about its marketing in Vietnam, grouped by Measure – Why – Yield, each with a description of what a good answer looks like. It works on its own without engaging anyone: the point is to find out which questions nobody in your organisation can currently answer.
How to use it: read it once and mark every question you cannot answer with confidence. The number of marks matters more than any individual answer — it tells you how much evidence sits under the budget decisions you are being asked to approve.
Measure
Measure: what the Vietnam numbers actually are
Nine questions about provenance, not performance. From head office the hardest thing to establish is not whether a number is good — it is where the number came from and what it excludes.
Which of our Vietnam figures were measured, and which were estimated by someone who needed the budget approved?
A good answer: Each headline number is labelled with its source. An estimate is fine; an estimate presented in the same typeface as a measurement is not.
Does the revenue in the group report come from the same system as the local team’s report?
A good answer: One named system is the reference, and the difference against the other is known and stated each month.
Are we reporting sell-in or sell-out, and does everyone in the room know which?
A good answer: Stated explicitly on every slide. Where a distributor sits between us and the shelf, the two numbers move independently for months at a time.
Who legally owns the ad accounts, the analytics property and the domain — our entity, the distributor, or the agency?
A good answer: Our entity owns all three; the others hold access. Anything else means our Vietnam history belongs to somebody we can part company with.
What share of what we sell in Vietnam moves through channels we cannot measure digitally at all?
A good answer: A percentage, stated at the top of the marketing report rather than discovered later. In most categories here it is larger than head office expects.
Is our Vietnam cost per customer calculated the same way as in our other markets?
A good answer: Same inclusions, or the differences are listed. Creator fees and marketplace commissions are treated differently market to market more often than anyone realises.
Which platforms that matter here are missing from our global measurement stack?
A good answer: A named list. Zalo and the marketplace seller centres rarely appear in a stack designed elsewhere, and what is missing from the stack tends to go missing from the strategy.
How large is our brand search demand in Vietnamese compared with English?
A good answer: Both numbers, side by side. Campaigns inherited from a regional template are usually built on the English term while the demand sits in the Vietnamese one.
How long does it take for a sale in Vietnam to appear in the group system?
A good answer: A known number of days. A long lag is workable; an unknown lag means every month-end comparison is quietly comparing two different periods.
Why
Why: why this market behaves the way it does
Eight questions that a quarterly review rarely reaches, because answering them means questioning a decision somebody senior already made.
Why this channel mix — because it works here, or because it worked in the market next door?
A good answer: A reason derived from Vietnamese data. Inheriting a mix is a reasonable way to start and a poor way to continue.
What did the agency pitch assume about our category that nobody has since checked?
A good answer: The assumptions are written down somewhere and at least one has been tested against real numbers.
Who else is bidding on our brand name here, and is any of them our own partner?
A good answer: A current list. Distributors and authorised resellers bidding on the brand term is common, and it raises our own cost without adding a buyer.
Are our own team and our distributor advertising to the same people?
A good answer: Territories or audiences are divided on purpose, in writing. Where they are not, both sides are paying to reach the same buyer twice.
What share of measurable Vietnam revenue sits on a single platform?
A good answer: A number, with a threshold the board has actually agreed. One policy change on that platform should not be able to remove a quarter.
What does our agency’s fee structure reward them for doing?
A good answer: We can name the behaviour it encourages. A percentage of media rewards spending more — which may still be the right model, as long as it is a choice.
Which global brand rules are costing us conversion here, and did we decide to pay that?
A good answer: The trade-off has been named and priced. Holding a rule because it protects the brand is a decision; holding it because nobody looked is not.
When Vietnam underperforms, what explanation are we given first, and can it be tested?
A good answer: The explanation comes with a number attached. "The market is difficult" is a description, not a cause.
Yield
Yield: what head office decides next
Eight questions that turn the first two groups into decisions. Most of them are about ownership, because from a distance ownership is the only thing that reliably changes behaviour.
What single number would tell head office this market is working?
A good answer: One number, agreed in advance with the people who will read it, and traceable to a named system.
Which decision are we deferring until we have more data, and what would that data cost?
A good answer: Both the decision and the price of the delay are written down. Waiting is a choice with a monthly cost attached.
Who in Vietnam is empowered to say no to the agency?
A good answer: A named person, and everyone including the agency knows who it is.
If we changed agency in six months, what would we keep?
A good answer: Accounts, historical data, creative files and tracking configuration, because our entity holds them. If the honest answer is "the relationships", we are not the client we think we are.
What are we doing in Vietnam only because we do it in every market?
A good answer: At least one item is named, with a reason of its own to keep it or drop it.
What would we need to see to double this budget, and what would we need to see to stop?
A good answer: Both thresholds exist and are written down before the next quarter, not argued about after it.
Does the person presenting Vietnam to the board understand how the numbers were produced?
A good answer: They can explain the source and the known gap without reading from the deck.
Which question on this list could nobody in the room answer?
A good answer: At least one. A list answered smoothly end to end is usually a list nobody read closely.
More than five marks?
That is the point at which one independent measurement is worth more than another review meeting. The first thirty minutes cost nothing.