The Next 5000 Days of The Web

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Eerily reminds me of The Matrix.

Push In Counter Chairs

First impressions count, last impressions last. With that said, here’s a simple tip for readers out there who own their own offices, seminar rooms or customer counters (main desks):

Push In The Chairs Towards The Counter/Table When Unused.

It would be good to appoint someone who’s located near the area to ensure that the chairs are neatly tucked in and not in a halfway-swivelling kind of position. Neatly tucked in chairs communicate the following:

1. Your organization takes good care of its assets (including you).
2. Your organization stands for efficiency.
3. Your organization is ready to serve each customer with full personalization.

Just like how you’d form a positive impression of someone who tucks in his chair after eating at a fast food restaurant, so to do your customers when they are greeted with neat chairs.

The little things sometimes matter.

Malay Guerilla Marketing

Opinion leaders: these are the people who you listen to. Put a flyer in the mailbox and it’ll probably end up in the dustbin unread. Give it to an opinion leader for distribution and that piece of paper can turn to gold.

The malay community has a couple of opinion leaders, but one particular one I feel has been untapped and underestimated. I often go to the nearby shopping mall near my place. A particular stall was rented out, and weeks later was replaced with one which could be easily noticeable from a distance. There would be a group of male malays, not consuming anything at all, just outside the shop talking away. Ages range from 30s to 50s. They, by defacto, hold the spending power of their family, and they listen to these particular chaps of the stall. So if you are thinking of targeting this segment, give this rather guerilla marketing like strategy a try:

• Place adverts at the windows. The windows of these particular shops normally are void of dressing anyway. It’s like Kinokuniya at Takashimaya, how they wrap the glass panels with famous persons to welcome customers traveling up on the escalators.
• Give these opinion leaders your flyers, upon which after service ask them to distribute. You could spend alittle and buy a couple of combs to bundle your flyer with, instructing these opinion leaders to give the flyer and complimentary comb to the customer. Don’t worry about the pitch, they are natural pitching pros.

So who are these opinion leaders I’m talking about?

The Malay Barber and his Malay Barbershop.

Batman and Marketing

One key concept in marketing is called Positioning. Simply put it, positioning is about forming calculated impressions. Calculated because these formations are based on a strategy/s. Let’s cut the theory bit and use the recent Batman movie series starring Christian Bale as examples…

I am a Batman fan (I can almost imagine my positioning and image damaged by such a statement…) and have followed the whole thing since primary school days. When the very first Batman movie came out starring Michael Keaton, I loved it. It was dark and brave. Movies 2, 3 and 4 I thought just killed everything… Batman’s suit got weirder and weirder and the villains became more like clowns.

Enter the new batman series, and oh man, they are delicious. You have Batman jumping off skyscrapers in Hong Kong (and not some phony looking set) and riding cool drives like the new Batmobile. Here’s a repositioning example, on the Batmobile:

This is re-positiong: forming new associations and perceptions. Batman had to change its image to fit not just with new audiences, but with old ones who have been waiting to see the dark knight being portrayed accurately as he is in the comics. Repositioning begins with feedback from others which in itself is an eye-opener. Once you’ve decided on the key repositioning strategy, follow through then with some fantastic marketing to form the new desired impressions. These are not just by wrapping the product in new packaging (like the above Batmobile), but also via other marketing tools like promoting it the right way:

Check with people around you and ask what they think of you / your product. Reposition if necessary.

Beijing Olympics Countdown - The Bird’s Nest

It’s 11 days to the Olympics, and about time for another article to keep you up to speed. To recap, in our last article on the mascot Fuwa, the results from the survey indicate that you can relate (75%) to these “good luck dolls”. Fooowa! (that’s meant to be a remark).

Today we’ll take a look at the much anticipated Beijing Olympic stadium, also known as The Bird’s Nest.

Built at a cost of 423 million USD, construction compromised of 35 km of unwrapped steel to form this nest-like structure. One of the most creative stadiums I must say: from my limited experience of reviewing stadium structures (from soccer, where else), this stadium moves away from being all angular and futuramic and keeps it culturally spectacular. What do you think of the Bird’s Nest?

The Process

What happens when we don’t get the point and deliver clutter? Sit back and enjoy this way too familiar story.

Your Life in a Flash

Super cool and presentable. Spice up your About Page with this gem:

107 Terms for New Marketers (Free eBook)

What in the world is “WYSIWYG”? How about “RSS”? Having trouble getting the hang of the marketing vocabulary on the web?

Introducing 107 Terms for New Marketers. This eBook explains 107 terms to get you started into the world of e-marketing. I recommend this for instructors as course material to your students and anyone who wants to get alittle e-savvy.

And yes, I’m giving it away FREE. In return, I hope you can spare few seconds to link back to Hafihz.com or post a comment under this article. Also tell technorati how much you love this site by clicking this link:

For more updates on other freebies, I recommend subscribing to Hafihz.com. Thank you for your support, and here’s the download link to 107 Terms for New Marketers. Enjoy.

Blogging Experts

With new industries come new opportunities. Take blogging for example. Years ago no one even knew what a “blog” or web log was, and website creation was something only the experts could do. Today the power is in the hands of folks like you and I, with a new blog being created every 40 seconds featuring functions such as widgets and plugins that make site developers cringe in nervousness (their expertise is threatened).

So what comes next with a new platform? New experts. Enter blogging experts and the many blogging books written such as problogger. It’s amazing when you look at these guys speak, and think how if history did not allow for the creation of blogs, these experts wouldn’t be in this business at all. Just food for thought.

Exclusive Hafihz.com Banners for Your Site

Fresh from the drawing board. These are some banners to show your support for this site. Feel free to use these banners (right click and select “save image as”) so that you can place on your site. These are the most common ad sizes, but let me know if you need one specially for your site and I’ll see what I can do.

Full Banner 468×60 pixels:

Half Banner 234×60 pixels:

Micro Button 88×31 pixels:

Sidebar Button 120×90 pixels:

Square Button 125×125 pixels:

Feed Headline Animator 180×100 pixels:

↑ Grab this Headline Animator

Spring Widget 175×300 pixels

If you want banners for your own site, please contact me or brother Shaikr who does some pretty neat banners as well.

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