Cover Story in Teens’ Crossroads Magazine

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My 4th article for Darul Arqam’s Teens’ Crossroads magazine, and InsyaAllah not the last. The brief given was to write an article which would uplift and motivate the youths when faced with setbacks in their school days. I had chosen the title “The Art of Failing Forward“.

You can download the article via a link under eLearning.

Breaking News: Singapore Yahoo Auctions Closing Down

I’ve been trying to access Yahoo Auctions Singapore for the past month. Today, this is what I saw:

Nice. Comments, anyone?

The Cab Driver Who Should be an MBA Lecturer

I was in the cab when the uncle asked me if I wanted to turn on the radio. I was surprised, and told him that rarely do cab drivers ask such questions. He then told me that it was important to ask, cause some drivers play songs that they understand (in their ethnic language) but their passengers don’t. In his words:

“Wait (Later) the customers not (won’t be) happy, we also not (too won’t be) happy, wait (eventually) both rugi(won’t benefit).”

I’ve decided to make a customer creed, and share this with all you out there who do businesses or produce products and services:

Dear businessman, I don’t know who you are. I forgot where I put away your namecard, or what you said you did. But I see what you do now, and I wish you could just listen to me. The thing is, your ads with spelling errors and blurry graphics get on my nerves. You’re at places and times when I don’t need you. And I have no idea what that service is supposed to do to me, or why I should even care. You say i do, but your arguments sound like any other. I am busy, and you are boring. If you provided some feedback channel, I could give it to you. But you don’t respond to criticisms well. You say I don’t provide solutions, so I’ll stop there, and hence I won’t. So most of the time, I don’t bother to talk to you at all. I am the customer. You don’t matter. I’ll go to the other guy, and bring my friends with me.

Now dear businesspeople, here’s yours:

Dear customer, I know your name. I wish to listen to you. You’ve spotted an error, and I need customers like you to tell us how to serve you better. If we were in your shoes, we’d be pissed too. We are different, which is why we are busy. Yet we will make time for you. I will talk to you personally if you want to. You will be rewarded if your feedback gets implemented. If it’s not, we will let you know why. I am at your service. We hope to matter to you, because you matter to us.

And business people, don’t tell me it’s unrealistic. It’s a mindset, that will not cost you much to change, but will cost you lots in the long run if you don’t wake up your idea.

–

PS: In honour of that cab driver, who did not have the above creed printed on some fancy gold plated sign hanging at his customer desk and yet could communicate these in a few lines of a cab ride.

What Does Your Wallet Say About You?

Interesting read. Behaviour expert and MSN agony aunt Dr Pam Spurr gives you the low-down on what your wallet says about you at a personal level. Find out more here: http://money.uk.msn.com/consumer/gallery.aspx?cp-documentid=9164156

I giggled and recognized my wallet immediately: I’m number 9. The description too was interesting. Which one are you?

Beijing Olympics 2008 Begins

Go, and amaze us.

No Marketing for Psychotherapy

A recent article in CNN highlights the need to educate the masses regarding psychotherapy (treatment on the couch) rather than promoting pills for cure. Here’s the article link: http://edition.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/08/04/psychiatrists.couch.ap/index.html .

TV ads do contribute to the “aura of invincibility” on pills - pop a pill and you’re fine. To promote psychotherapy, promotions should do a comparisons ad versus pills, and state clearly that it is better at treatment. Provide some sort of brain scan graphics, get a few doctors to provide testimonials.

I wonder if there is the same concern on the rise of plastic surgery.

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.

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?

2 Marketing Lessons from Mas Selamat

Ah yes, Mas Selamat, the terrorist fugitive who’s gone missing due to a toilet break.

The other day I was on this 11km trail walk at Macritchie. After a long and hard trail, with some steep turns and sharp corners… when I finally reached the uppermost part of the walk, all tired and alittle exhausted, guess who greeted me…

The “Wanted: Mas Selamat” poster.

I pity the guy who had to go all the way up there to paste that poster. But yes, his face is everywhere, everywhere I tell ya. From tree walks to bus doors to lift landings. Almost as good as coke’s distribution… which now makes room for the first marketing lesson:

1. Getting noticed through active and wide advertising doesn’t mean that you’d get fans. You might just get people who are disgusted at you intruding into their every personal space. Especially if your product value is not up to par.

So recently the Singapore government announced that a $1million dollar reward is now being offered for his capture, by two anonymous contributors. I’d say the contributors must have taken some marketing course, and question why it’s taken so long for money to be offered as an incentive. Here’s marketing lesson number 2:

2. When money is involved, loyalties change. I give you an example. Say you’re a loyal customer of X store. You say you’d never divert to store Y just opposite it. All loyalties are gone if suddenly store Y gives a 70% percent discount OR store Y gives free iPhones (for some superb strategy they have). Money, when given either directly in the form of prize or when taken away less in the form of the discount is incentive for action.

1 million. Time for the Macritchie dude who pasted that poster to paste a new one with the incentive information on it. Hey, ad copywriting ya.

PS: On a more serious note, I do hope he gets caught soon, not just for the public’s sake, but for his sake too. He is a Muslim. I take this from the following hadith:

From Anas r.a. who reported that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, “Help your brother, wronging or wronged.” A man said, “Messenger of Allah, I can help him if he is wronged but tell me how I can help him if he is wronging?” He said, “You can restrain him - or prevent him - from injustice. That is helping him.” [al-Bukhari]

Homer Simpson’s Nightmare - The Walkstation

This product combines a treadmill and a computer workstation, and its makers hope to land them in the future workplace. Are you kidding me?

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