Sales, Social and Tech

In every pageant, the appointed judges will choose the winner. The winner takes all, even the media coverage. For Miss Singapore Global 2013, the public who will have a large say in selecting the winner. To get the public vote, the contestants will have to reach out to the public on social media. The brain child of the pageant is Ms Vanessa Tan, Mrs Singapore 2011, a franchise of Miss Global International which originated from Jamaica. Singapore is the third Asian country other than Philippines and Malaysia to send delegates to compete internationally. Said Ms Vanessa Tan, "Miss Singapore Global is a platform to empower young women and build future women leaders. The mission of Miss Singapore Global is to transform an ordinary girl with big dreams to a beauty queen whose main responsibility is to give back to society. "The ideals behind this pageant are Purpose, Inner Beauty and Transformation, in that order. This pageant is different from traditional pageants in ...

A few months back, the Chicago Sun-Times decided to sack its entire team of photographers and replaced them with journalists carrying an iPhone.  Most shocking is that one of the photographer was a Pulitzer Prize winner.  The consequence of doing so is best left to looking at the front page of two news daily covering the same topic.  From  http://suntimesdarktimes.tumblr.com/post/53967466726/front-pages-june-26-2013 No rocket science brain needed to see the difference in quality of the work of a professional photographer and a iPhone carrying journalists, though no offence was intended for the latter.

Sorry to readers for the spoiler in the header but I totally felt that Mr Tony Fernandes was wrong to fire Nazril Idrus. Yes, Nazril may have made mistakes and he wasn't authorised to give the free complimentary Mediterranean pizza after the wrong order was made. But isn't this how you empower your Apprentice to do the right thing even when it is not allowed? Is The Hilton Hospitality all about following the rules, regardless of of the statisfaction of the guest? Is this also telling of frustrated AirAsia customers who have to endure the rules even if it is the fault were not theirs but of the airline?  Read about Daphne Maia's experience here . It was also amazingly shocking that Mr Tony Fernandes didn't notice that the Nazri did the birthday surprise for "Miss Nightmare". Even the episode guide failed to highlight this . Shockingly, Mr Tony Fernandes chose to let one who gave excuses for her mistakes rather than to step up and right the wrong. If...

Evernote celebrates its 5th birthday and those who use it can immediately agree that it has become their external brain. Evernote is like a notepad online and on steroids. Here are a couple of reasons. No pesky need to hit the save button. When you use Microsoft Word, you constantly need to keep reminding if you pressed the Control S button. If you don't press that occasional Control S and you accidentally quite Word, good luck to you. YMicrosoft Word may saved your draft, but sometimes, you really can't be so sure. Evernote syncs the note to their cloud server through quick intervals which are non-intrusive. If you are not online, it will just automatically update into the PC. No need to save documents as files When you save a Word document, you have to think of where to save it and what to name the file. Sometimes, you just save it to desktop and your desktop becomes cluttered with docs. Evernote, on the other, sees each note as part of a notebook and automat...

Did you grow up watching The Lone Ranger with Tonto fighting injustice in The Wild West? I bet you will remember the famous this famous line "Hi Ho Sliver. Away!" "Away to the cinema" is what you will shout on 4 July 2013 as Disney's The Lone Ranger hits Singapore screens. It would be interesting for a old man like me to see how this new Lone Ranger spans out.   The Original Lone Ranger The new Lone Ranger will, of course, have new effects to fit the big screen of 2013.  Don't think there was pistol coming out from the shoe years ago.. The Lone Ranger would be Disney's latest bet on a movie that was plagued with issues. The movie was delayed in production two years ago due to to the increasing budget. However, production continued a year later and now we get to see the Lone Ranger in the big screen.  The new Lone Ranger stars Armie Hammer as the Lone Ranger. However, the star power will be pulled in by Johnny Dep...

Fan Clubs are social by design, unlike traditional loyalty programs. Fan clubs for merchants 06 13 from Aneace Haddad

The Apprentice Asia Episode 5 must be of the most confusing episode yet. Why was the apprentices-to-be tested on their knowledge of the financial market and was expected to make money in 24 hours? Making money in 24 hours seems like a speculator game. Shouldn't be the Apprentice be more of an investor? "I don't like losing," said Mr Tony Fernades. Not surprising, since AirAsia reported loses in 2008 after some bad decisions in hedging against oil prices rising. From klsestockreview.blogspot.sg, AirAsia has said that they have call options to offset the losses made on the previous call option that spooked the market. This will cover their position for approximately 6 months even if oil prices were to go as high as US$130 per barrel. They also clarified that when they took up their earlier hedge (July 2007), they felt that oil will only reach US$90 as a result of excessive speculative market action in that commodity and therefore decided to bet that oil prices...

A relative who moved to US came back to Singapore for holidays and we obviously shared the difference in the education system between Singapore and US. We were taking about the approaches both countries take to produce creativity and the differences are startling. "When my daughter was in a Singapore school, she went to art class and the teacher told her that day she would be drawing butterflies. My daughter was extremely excited and was very eager to draw them," she said. "But the teacher to told them to wait and gave them instructions on how to draw a butterfly. The next art class came and the teacher told them to draw trees. Again, my daughter was told to hold on to her eagerness and was given instructions how to draw  a tree. "When my daughter went to the US, in an art class, the teacher asked her to draw a playground. While the other student started drawing, my daughter was waiting to start. The teacher asked why and my daughter explained that she was w...

Don't you just hate it when you switch on your Windows PC, all ready to use, when a pop-up comes up to tell you to restart your PC so Windows can install the updates? Come on.. It is like you are all ready to use the PC, that's why you switch it on right, and it says, please reboot. After you reboot, you have to go through the rebooting sequence all over again.

If you have grown up with the original Superman movie series, the new remake of Superman - Man of Steel - combined both Superman 1 and Superman 2. However, this remake gave a better tribute to General Zod (the bad guy) than Superman himself. (Spoiler alert ahead) If you remembered Superman 2, General Zod and his accomplice appeared on Earth after they were freed from their one dimensional glass prisons. Then they appeared on Earth, discovered that Superman was also from Krypton and decided to get Superman to "kneel before General Zod". That was as far as I remembered of General Zod. Man of Steel gifted General Zod with more meat and making him a better General Zod. In this new remake, we learned that General Zod was genetically designed as a warrior with the sole purpose of protecting the survival of Krypton, by all means necessary. As such, this lead to General Zod to mutiny against the people who created him as they were the source of the destruction of Krypton....

The challenge of this week #TheApprenticeAsia was for the team to promote the latest  NESCAFÉ® Dolce Gusto® at a major shopping center. I was only able to catch the last thirty minutes of the episode and it highlighted several lessons  in dealing with clients.  Lesson #1 - Learn about your client's other products and their competitors Team Maverick almost lost the campaign when the client, Nestle, noticed that they were about to give out a competitor's chocolate. This is a big no no as the client has spend thousands on you and you are giving a competitor free air-time.  Thus, it is important to know your client's other products and who the competitors are.  Lesson #2 - Sell offline at physical stores Team Apex was looking to promote the NESCAFÉ® Dolce Gusto® website instead of the product at the store. This is kind of ironic as the shoppers are already at the store and the products are there for the picking. Team Apex, however, had...

Pressrun.net found it amusing that a BBC interview with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong was "censored". Wrote Pressrun.net , It’s amusing to see the Singapore newspapers have not run the complete BBC interview with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. The broadsheet Straits Times and the freesheet Today have not published the last question asked in  the interview, which can be heard in a five-and-a-half-minute audio clip on the BBC World Service website. The interviewer said: “Finally, Prime Minister, I read that you are apparently the highest paid head of government in the world. Your salary is about four or five times what President Obama gets. Are you worth all that money?” PM Lee laughed and said: “I am not comparing myself and I don’t look at these rankings.We go on a system which is open, honest, transparent – what is the job worth, what is the quality of the person whom you want. We need the best people for the job and these are jobs where you make decisions which ar...

The Straits Times erroneously printed the name of a victim who died of dengue to a Facebook user who was still alive and well. From Mr Ang Yong Guan Facebook Profile, The victim's last name was Han and not Guan.  Mr Ang was referring to the statement made by the Minister of Environment and Water Resource about the ongoing tussle between a hawker association and the opposition held ward of Aljunied GRC over the cleaning of a hawker center. 

The headlines today in The New Paper asked if we should worry about the two dengue deaths that occurred in less than two weeks. Yes, we should. Reason? Both victims were initially diagnose as not having dengue. Wrote Channel NewsAsia for victim number 1, Mr Ang was seen at Tan Tock Seng Hospital's (TTSH) Emergency Department (ED) on 23 May and diagnosed as having viral fever, said the statement. His condition was reported to be stable and he was discharged with advice to return to the ED if his symptoms worsened. He was also asked to visit an outpatient clinic for follow up and a repeat blood test. About victim number 2 , He was a 60-year-old Singaporean, who was admitted to Tan Tock Seng Hospital on 5 June. The patient suffered from fever, shortness of breath, vomiting and rashes on his left leg. He was diagnosed with skin inflammation of the left leg and prescribed with antibiotics. On 7 June, the man returned to the hospital due to weakness in his left leg an...

Customer service is a vital component in any F&B outlet. With social networks, a customer's experience at a cafe is multiplied when a post of a unhappy or pleasant experience can be easily seen and shared among friends. A friend, who would visit Cedele every week for a meal, shared her disappointment about the customer service at Cedele @ T2 on Facebook. So disappointed that she decided that she would be better off having her morning coffee at the opposite cafe. She wrote , I think the service staff at this outlet should reflect in their service attitude. 1. We informed them that there is a fly in the pastry cupboard and their collective response was "It's out of our control. " 2. The food was all served cold and they were upset when they served us the wrong order. 3. A general lack of enthusiasm and servitude in their attitude; they obviously dislike their job. By the way, I visit Cedele every week for a meal and I have never had lousy food or service (my f...

Many of you have already read about MDA's decision to license online " news sites " and within a week, made it a low. Of course, Singapore Netizens were enraged and engaged to do something about it. They launched the #FreeMyInternet movement, called for a blogosphere black out (See Youtube below) and a protest at Hong Lim Park on 8th June 2013. I attended the protest and was quite inspired by the speakers. The speakers, consisted mainly of bloggers , who were concerned, not only about MDA's online "news sites" licensing scheme, and at the speed at which it became law, without consultation with Parliament or with the Public. Tourists surprised by the "authoritarian" MDA The other problem of this new licensing scheme is so vague that it encompass any news about Singapore, except news created by the Government. As one speaker at #FreeMyInternet said, "Even if you post about photos of cockroaches on the MRT, it is considered as ...