Sales, Social and Tech

Philips Electronics Singapore yesterday apologised for featuring a Youtube video of a “bear” let loose along Ulu Pandan Road. This Youtube video was part of a guerilla advertising campaign but send both the public and reverent authorities into a wild a goose chase for a missing bear. Dutch electronics giant Philips is under investigation in Singapore after a marketing campaign for a new shaver triggered a search for a wild bear. Philips issued a public apology after a fuzzy video of a bear-like creature was sent to a social-media website by a marketing firm on Wednesday, triggering a search by zoo officials -- armed with a tranquiliser gun -- and animal-welfare activists. The "bear" was actually just a mascot pretending to rummage through a rubbish bin in Ulu Pandan, a residential and school district with pockets of thick foliage. The same article also wrote that the Singapore Zoo and members of Animal Concerns Research and Education Society (ACRES)  went ...

When blogger Arysan decided to access his phone bill online, he discovered a major glitch in the telco’s online platform that led him to random accounts of other subscribers whenever he logged into his account. Wrote Arysan , So today, i was logging in my maxis account and i found that it has logged me on a different account. And each time i logout, and re-login, it will bring me to another new account. And i’ve been seeing other people’s emails and telephone number and also be able to browse their phonebook that they backed up with maxis. THIS IS A HUGEEEEE breach of privacy. I tweeted about it and got re-tweeted by some of influential people. And later got a phone call by Caroline (their social media rep i think) demanding me to remove my screenshot due to privacy. Ok, i admit that i screenshot the phone number and email without masking it, so fine, my bad. I will now re-post the screenshot whilst masking some part of the number and names k? Instead of calling a spade a spa...

What motivates a Facebook user to LIKE a brand on their Facebook page? A survey by ExactTarget and Co-Tweet showed that up to 40% of Facebook users surveyed would like to receive discounts and promotions. The top six reasons mostly included motivations like “freebies” and updates on “future sales”. (Image from http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2010/3882/facebook-users-like-brands-for-discounts-social-badging ) The survey, however, found that the sales conversion to be rather low. Wrote MarketingProf , However, "liking" doesn't always lead to buying. Among Facebook users who like at least one brand, only 17% say they're more likely to buy after liking that brand on Facebook. Most promotions by brands on Facebook pages are most similar or repeats of what is being offered to a normal customers. For example, some brands just post a newspaper ad targeted at the masses and say this is a special for Fans. Another problem is that most promotions on...

Found this interesting Youtube video on how Air NZ responded to a negative comment about its alliance with Virgin Blue. Quite an interesting way to respond to somebody who chose not to listen to your side of the story. Sometimes the silence can  be evening more deafening.

You know the cliché, “A photo is worth a million words”, yet it took a blogger to identify a rather unglamorous photo from the billion dollars Marina Sands. MrBrown, a popular Singapore blogger, was searching for the press release of the opening of the Marina Bay Sands Sky Park when he noticed a photo meant for the press to be not fit for print. Wrote MrBrown , I don't think you want the media to download a full-res photo of your fancy garden in the sky, with your construction workers still in it, do you? You can even see the luminous safety vests they are wearing and the hose or measuring tape still on the ground… The photo could have been edited to crop out the construction workers before launching it on their media list. Or the photographer could have asked the construction workers to move out of sight for a second or two. With newsrooms cutting cost and staff, the lack of the sharp eye from a photo editor might lead to this photo being published. When t...

Infographic by PPC Blog

Intel has always been seen as being open to social media. However, a recent flood of comments in its Facebook Fan Page to urge the company to support the US Conflict Minerals Trade Act put them in panic mode which saw the comments deleted and Fan Page temporary suspended. Image hotlinked from http://www.torbenrick.eu/blog/social-media/fail-to-understand-the-power-of-social-media/ . Interesting perspective on the Intel issue too. Intel’s knee jerk reaction only flamed the fire with the protestors bringing their virtual protest to Intel’s other Fan Pages and Twitter accounts. Intel has since apologised for creating this “Virtual No Protest” zone. Wrote Intel , We’d like to apologize for deleting some comments and briefly shutting down the page for comments. We can tell you that our intent wasn’t to silence your valuable opinions. In trying to remain sensitive to all our fans, we often delete repeated messages that could be perceived as spam. We should have been more ...

A flash design to show that Singapore Mass Rapid Transit (or SMRT ) is green has become a big joke in Twitter-verse. Bloggers and Tweeters in Singapore have highlighted the similarity between the new SMRT design and the classic “Fail Whale” that appears on Twitter whenever the social networking site is overcapacity. One has to wonder how up-to-date are the folks at SMRT with the trends in social media. Otherwise, could it be SMRT’s attempt to poke fun at the social networks? The “failure” references do not bode well for SMRT in social media or the brand as the public transport provider was recently under fire for their lapse of security that resulted in the vandalism of their trains and increase complains about the over-capacity of SMRT public transports, especially the trains. Personally, I have been abroad and 3-5 minutes wait for the next train is a luxury. I recently took KL Transit and one often have to wait 15mins or more for the next train. But leaving the brand to jok...