Sales, Social and Tech

It is quite incredible of what you can find with a simple Google search. I was doing a search on circulation numbers and I found the Yearbook of Statatics 2009 at http://www.singstat.gov.sg/pubn/reference/yos10/yos2010.pdf . If you are interested in some numbers of media consumption, look to section 1.15 on recreation and public safety. Here are some highlights. 1. Daily circulation of newspapers was down about 5% from 2008 (326 per 1,000 population) to 2009 (307 per 1,000 population). 2. Movie attendance remained at the same level in 2008 and 2009 at 3,938 per 1,000 population. 3. Residential Broadband subscribers increase from 239 per 1,000 in 2008 to 332 per 1,000. 4. Introduction to Singtel’s MIO TV in 2007 did not create any major increment in Pay TV subscribers as the number increased from 116 per 1,000 population to 139 per population in 2009. 5. Badminton was the most popular sport in Singapore with 401,770 bookings of badminton courts in 2009. 6. Temperature ...

The awkward similarity of SMRT’s Go Green campaign and that of Twitter’s “ Fail Whale ” has given rise to the conspiracy theory that the agency did that was preyng on SMRT’s lack of awareness of Twitter. In the US, Coca Cola unwittingly approved an automated status that made reference to a classic, but tasteless, online porn site “two girls one cup”. The automated status campaign was part of the Dr Pepper’s fan page campaign to let Dr Pepper control the status updates of fans with humorous updates. Fan who signed up for the campaign stood a chance to win close to SGD2,500. Unfortunately, the offensive status appeared on a 13-year-old profile who tried Googling for the movie.  Luckily, the installed child filter blocked the site and mother was alerted of the status update. Coca Cola’s excuse was that they were unaware of the reference to “two girls one cup” when they approve the status. Wrote http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/news/lean-mean-fighting-machine-under-threat-after-...

A Citibank advertisement offering discounts on shark fins has come under scrutiny from the Hong Kong social media scene. Advertisement from http://thedarkside.hk/2010/07/19/cheap-sharks-fin-soup-with-citibank/ Wrote thedarkside.hk , So promoting restaurants that serve it is perfectly fine, as long as you more or less condemn shark finning two and four months later. And besides, any moral outrage by annoying environmentalist hippies will slowly fade away eventually. Just ask Geraldine Yip , Asia Pacific Head of Marketing at Citibank. As the Chinese totally dig this practically tasteless delicacy, we can only marvel at her cleverness for initiating a campaign involving an awesome 15% discount on a Shark Fin’s and Garoupa set for twelve.. The Shark Rescue fan page has also taken Citibank HK to task. The irony of this ad is that Citibank supported WildAid anti-shark-fining campaign in 2008. Wrote www.saveourseas.com , We have started our campaign to ask co...

Got this from Singaporedaily.net  

After the last post on DBS attempt to connect on social media via Twitter, I received a comment from Chris Ng whom I found to be the Vice President, Group Strategic Marketing & Communications at DBS Bank on Linked-in. I replied to Chris that the DBS should look at the 3Rs of crisis communications which is inspired by a book, Drop The Pink Elephant by Bill McFarlan, I read a few years back. Bill wrote that in any crisis communications, the brand, via the spokesperson should show Remorse, Reason and Remedy. Today DBS Group CEO Piyush Gupta apologise with a message to bank customers. A video message to client, via Youtube, would have given it more weight in show more sincerity. However, it seems a written letter would have suffice for the bank. Did DBS Bank follow the 3Rs as suggested? (All quotes are taken from http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_552965.html .) 'I am writing to personally apologise to you for the inconvenience caused b...

I wonder if this is just a coincidence but “one-third” is a favourite fraction used in announcing everything Singapore. In the recent news about Singapore transportation , But Dr Lim was disappointed the public transport fund to distribute vouchers to low-income families to cope with fares rises, is not being activated since one-third of commuters will see an increase of 31 cents a week. Of foreign service staff passing English proficiency test , Only one in three foreigners pass the Service Literacy Test (SLT) started by the Manpower Ministry in May this year to “improve” the standards of spoken English among foreign workers in the service industry, according to a Sunday Times report. However, it seems like “one-third” isn’t Singaporeans’ favourite number. I did a Google search and found that “half of Singaporeans” is more popular than “one-third of Singaporeans”. One third of Singaporeans came in second but slowly catching up with   “half of Singapo...

(Updated post - DBS apologise with the 3Rs – Will social media bite? ) It was the bluest Monday for DBS/POS Bank in its entire banking history when more than 1000 of their ATM and online banking services were taken offline due to a software upgrade an outage (PR announced that it was down due to software upgrade, but the outsourcer, IBM, later claimed it was an outage). So on that Monday, DBS decided to sign up onto Twitter and post a 140 characters one-liner onto Twitter to post a one liner to inform the Twitterverse of the down time. Everybody knows that if you just create a new account on Twitter, you would start off with 0 friends. How would you be able to inform the Twitterverse if you start with 0 friends? DBS Bank did something smart to insert the #dbs and #posb and that probably drew some attention to this account. However, the effectiveness of the tweet was lacking as it drew only 28 retweets. As of this posting, DBS Bank attracted 274 followers. A letter to T...

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...

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