Sales, Social and Tech

It is going to be a busy weekend as I be attending the memorial service for Andrew Peters and tomorrow will at the whole day at The Originals IP Race . Spend the Saturday afternoon with the family at Old Town Coffee place and what better way to have the photos in sepia. Nanyang Coffee Tea mix which, ironically, isn’t sold in Malaysia branches anymore.   Traditional Mee Siam    Ipoh Chicken Hor Fun

Singapore, 22 April 2010 - Andrew Peters, Singapore-based social media marketing guru, passed away at 4.45am (NZ time) on Tuesday 13 April in Christchurch in his native New Zealand at the age of 47, after losing a secret battle with cancer. With 25 years’ experience in publishing, public relations, sales and marketing for leading industry brands, he worked in Sydney in the second half of the 1980’s with ICL and Wang Computers, then with Anixter, Australian Consolidated Press and Project Media in the 1990’s, before setting up a branch in Singapore in 1999 for public relations agency McCorkell & Associates, as Vice President, Asia Pacific. He joined Pacific West Communications – started in 2001 by his Singapore best friend and business associate Imran Omar, in 2005. As Regional Director Asia Pacific for Pacific West, he was responsible for strategic development, overseeing client portfolios, business development and providing counsel to deliver value-added solutions that delivere...

When you attending a Chinese wedding dinner in Singapore, you are more likely to be bombarded with a montage of photos of the couples from the day they were born to the date of the marriage. This overzealous daddy here would be showing videos from YouTube of his son as he grows up. Guess the wedding dinner will be a playlist of Youtube videos instead of just photos.

Facebook made an announcement today that the “Become A Fan” will now be changed to a universal “Like”. I still trying to understand the implication but the Q&A seem very vague. From Facebook Q&A "Liking" a Page Why did "Become a Fan" change to "Like"? To improve your experience and promote consistency across the site, we've changed the language for Pages from "Fan" to "Like." We believe this change offers you a more light-weight and standard way to connect with people, things and topics in which you are interested. http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=17167 What does it mean to "Like" a Page? When you click "Like" on a Page, you are making a connection to that Page. The Page will be displayed in your profile, and in turn, you will be displayed on the Page as a person who likes that Page. The Page will also be able to post content into your News Feed. http://www.face...

I heard it wasn’t a pretty sight at the Audi Fashion Show 2010 Open Casting event where local models were rejected at the entrance. However, what was even uglier, from a social media perspective, was the decision to delete comments and ban fans who made comments asking why local models were rejected for the show. Again, deleting and banning only results in the banned fans creating a new fan page to address this issue. Wrote DivaAsia.com , At least one owner of local modelling agency, Mr Kirk Hsu, 30, who attended the casting call at Clarke Quay with eight of his Singaporean models, were rejected at the entrance. He owns Perspectives Models. He told The Straits Times: "“The models who went for the casting call fit the stated height requirement of 1.75m for women and 1.8m for men but they were not allowed to go for the casting. “Anyone could see that most of the models who were allowed were Caucasians and foreigners.” ….After the party, Mr Hsu and...

I read a Gist sponsored article on “ How Journalists are Using Social Media for Real Results ” and was wondering if it could be used in Singapore context. Using the recent Eunos accident involving the SBS bus, I wonder if Twitter can help local journalists source for sources. From my search, the news breaker badge still  belongs to the mainstream media. However, I did manage to find a sole Twitter witness of the accident. Maybe deermuffin can help the authorities with the accident. Twitter / JJ: today i witness a terrible ... via kwout A trend arising from Twitter conversations about the accident is the discussion of the nationality of the bus driver, whether if he/she was local or from overseas. If the driver was found to be from overseas, I wouldn’t be surprised to find a few blogs in Singapore discussing rather negatively about SBS Transit’s HR strategy of hiring foreign drivers instead of local drivers. I am not sure if the below tweets are mentio...

Dentsu Singapore recently launched Ministry Manpower’s campaign to promote the value of older workers. Unfortunately, the Singapore social media scene is still still coming to grips on a statement made by Member of Parliament Ong Ah Heng’s comment in parliament on his decision to replace older workers with younger foreigners at his town council. Wrote Marketing-Interactive , The new through-the-line campaign launched by the Ministry of Manpower aims to put across the message that older workers have a lifetime of experience to offer employers. Developed by Dentsu Singapore, the campaign features four real-life talents from various vocations to underline the value of experience and maturity at the workplace… …"The potential of the silver industry is often under-rated. But when you look at someone like Mr. Kunalan (former sprint champion featured in the campaign), you are immediately drawn to his air of confidence, wisdom and purpose which is very inspirational. ...

(Other bloggers who made blog tributes to Andrew - http://www.noelboyd.com/2010/04/in-memory-of-andrew-peters.html http://www.winnilicious.com/2010/04/13/rip-andrew-peters/ http://sharithbeau.com/16173971 http://tonysintense.tumblr.com/post/518644998/andrew-peters ) They say the best way to remember a man after he has moved on is to remember the things you have done with him together. I met Andrew about five years ago during my days at MediaConnect Asia. He was VP with McCorkell and Associates then. If I was not wrong, he represented Trend Micro. He left McCorkell a year later and started on his PR agency, The Pacific West Communications. I remembered when I wrote about Andrew starting his own PR agency, I gave the headline with the initials PWC to give the some story some interest with the media and PR audience. He continued PR and moved on to social media as the medium became more vibrant and garnered interest from his clients. Though there was a period ...

Here’s a typical day of pitching to media and to honour an embargo..

(Disclaimer: I freelance for both Marriage Central and National Family Council for their social media outreach. Both are supported/under Ministry of Community, Youth and Sports. The conclusion of the post here is based on what can be found on Facebook using their search engine.) The recent walkabout by the opposition parties, Singapore People's Party and Reform Party, in the Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC has raised eyebrows that the two main form an alliance to take on the ruling party from the People Action’s Party. I thought it would be interesting to check and share of their activities on Facebook. There are other forms of social networking sites out there, but I am narrowing it down to Facebook as it seems to be popular with many of my clients. I will doing a comparison with Singapore People's Party’s Mr Chiam See Tong, Reform Party’s Kenneth Jeyaretnam, People’s Action Party Mdm Josephine Teo and Mr Zainudin Nordin as all four have been mentioned recently in the press. So...