About Ryo Leong
Ryo Leong is a Singapore-based AI Business Translator and the founder of Content Play. He spent over 20 years in broadcast content and marketing at Mediacorp before moving into narrative marketing and business consultancy, and has taught at Nanyang Polytechnic and Nanyang Business School, NTU. He helps SMEs and social service organisations bridge business and technology, using narrative-led change management to turn AI into business transformation.
A collective journey of heroes
The Marvel Cinematic Universe changed how I think about brand stories. In it, many heroes carry one shared story, and each film adds to it. Its success sparked an idea: a brand story works best as a collective journey of heroes, told by the organisation, its people and its customers together.
Why SMEs and social service agencies
Across SMEs and social service agencies, I kept seeing the same struggle. They had no unified narrative to guide their strategy. So I moved into narrative marketing and business consultancy, and built my work at Content Play around the Story World: one narrative world that many voices can contribute to.
The gap AI opened
Then AI arrived, along with the push to adopt it. I saw two problems in the organisations I work with. Change management had no owner, and adoption stalled because business and technology were speaking different languages.
Why the Story World fits AI translation
AI change brings people together who rarely share a vocabulary. Leaders talk about strategy. Staff talk about workload. Technologists talk about systems. Customers and beneficiaries talk about their experience.
A Story World gives all of them common ground and a common language: one setting, one cast and one direction of travel, with room for each group to tell its part. When every stakeholder can find their place in the same story, translating between business and technology becomes a shared task, and the change has somewhere to land. That is why I now work as an AI Business Translator.
Before Content Play
Before Content Play, I spent over 20 years in broadcast content and marketing at Mediacorp, Singapore’s national broadcaster. My last role there was Assistant Lead, English Content, heading the okto channel. I was Commissioning Editor for a Best Pre-school Programme winner at the Asian Television Awards, and developed creative concepts that won Gold at the Promax/BDA World awards.
Teaching and research
I have taught Creative Storytelling to students and adults at Nanyang Polytechnic, and Management Principles, Skills and Competencies, and Organisational Behaviour and Design, at Nanyang Business School, NTU.
My research looks at how leaders of Singapore social service agencies make sense of generative AI as it enters relationship-based work such as casework and counselling. It asks how that shapes their view of what makes the relationship between staff and the people they serve authentic, and how they decide which responsibilities stay with staff and which can be shared with AI.
How I work
I start with your strategic goals. The aim is business transformation, and process improvement is the first step toward it.
I work by Occam’s razor: the simplest solution that solves the problem wins, and sometimes that isn’t AI.
I build capability in your team, so the change continues after I step back.
I don’t currently sell or earn commission on any AI tool. If that ever changes, I will tell you upfront.
What clients say
Ryo is a Concept Artist: he challenges strategic thinking and its conversion into actual engagement of ideas as well as people. Also a great communicator and an expert in the areas of media, marketing and digital.
Joanna Koh-Hoe, then CEO, Focus on the Family Singapore
Ryo delivers a captivating session… ‘unblocking’ the boundaries for creative thinking and gives different perspectives for possible problem solving approaches.
Wong Jeat Shyan, CEO, SendQuick Pte Ltd
What story is your organisation telling itself about AI?
Start with the five questions in my free guide.
Or email ryoleong@contentplayhq.com.
Find me on LinkedIn (linkedin.com/in/ryoleong), Medium (medium.com/@ryoleong), YouTube (@ryoleong) and TikTok (@ryocontentplay).