Sales, Social and Tech

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.

There was quite an excitement over Lenovo Singapore Foursquare campaign at the recently ended Sitex 2010. One Singapore blogger expected the promotion to cause a trend among Foursquare users in Singapore. Kudos to Singapore Lenovo to use Foursquare for SITEX. Wrote DK , Think this is the first time a company in Singapore uses Foursquare at a consumer IT exhibition like this. With such promotion, the Lenovo booth will most likely be trending every morning. Once the location is trending, other Foursquare users nearby will see the location in the trending list. It’s a good way to inform visitors the booth location. I wonder how is the success rate. The campaign was rather simple. Check in to Lenovo’s Sitex booth on Foursquare and get a mystery gift. The first 30 check in daily would get a mystery prize. As such, I would assume that Lenovo Singapore was looking to get a total of 120 check ins over the four days of Sitex 2010.   However, at the end of Sitex 2010, only 12...

Advocate/Burson-Masteller recently interviewed Burson-Marsteller APAC CEO Bob Pickard and uploaded on Youtube. Given that the video was recorded with a Flip-cam, the digital team should have at least invested in a tripod and a external mic to improve the quality of the video. The video was rather shaky throughout and gave me a headache just a few seconds into the interview. The answers from Bob were rather inaudible at times. The BM Advocate team should look at investing in a Flip Video Tripod to reduce the shaking and an external mic for better audio quality. Though it shows initiative for the team to do a video interview with the Asia CEO, it creates the perception of the amateurish approach the digital team took to do an interview with a CEO. If you are a small brand with limited funds, yes, your mobile phone could be the only tool you would use. However, if you are using a video to represent your corporation, you want to give your video a little shine to well present ...

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 ...

A friend asked about setting KPIs for one of the LinkedIn group that the department created to link to a corporate portal. The department has set up a LinkedIn page and are looking to use it to promote and drive members to their community portal. As such, the question posed was “What would be a good KPI measurement for this LinkedIn page? How about having two levels - # of members on the LinkedIn Page and # of signups at the community portal? Finally, what would be realistic target number? Is there any industry benchmark on the number of members a corporate LinkedIn page typically gets?” Given that this was a corporate B2B LinkedIn group, setting a generic number count as a KPI would be good for the ego but not for the productivity. As such, I advised the following: 1. Set KPI to the number of decision makers in the Group. As LinkedIn is more corporate and b2b than other social networks, I highlighted that it was important for the team to come up with a list of a who’s who of...

(Update: In the press release, we mentioned the RFID transit card which can be used as the preferred tap and go card. In Singapore, the RFID transit card refers to the ez-link card or NETS Flash cards. Other countries like Hong Kong uses the Octupus card which can also be used.)   Taggo today announced the launch of its patent pending technology that empowers brands the capability to identify and reward fans of Facebook Pages in the real physical world. This allows brands to launch promotions on their Facebook Pages which can be executed immediately at a physical venue.  At the same time, brands can launch in-store promotions to turn customers into fans. “Facebook Pages are now an essential part of the brands’ social media campaign to reach out to their customers. With Facebook Pages sprouting out by the hundreds per day, it is essential for brands to differentiate their Pages from competitors. The ability to identify and reward their online fans offline in their sto...

The Economist Digital Economy Rankings 2010 reported that, while Singapore is still in the 10 top of its digital economy rankings, the island state slipped one spot down from last year, allowing Hong Kong to overtake 7th position. The reported highlighted that Singapore lost out to Hong Kong in the areas of connectivity, legal environment, and policy and vision. The island state scored better in areas of business environment, cultural environment and business adoption. The report, however, did not go into details for the scores for the individual countries. The report can be found at http://graphics.eiu.com/upload/EIU_Digital_economy_rankings_2010_FINAL_WEB.pdf

A friend recently complained how he couldn’t catch up with the all the tweets and Facebook updates from his thousands of friends. I couldn’t agree with him more, but i have used some apps to help me solve this problem. If you have an iPad, Flipboard is the answer. Flipboard turn your Facebook updates and Twitter tweets into magazine content. This means you can read what your friends share without having to worry about the timeline. If you don’t have an iPad, the app I found for the web would be http://paper.li . However, paper.li only turns your Twitter feed into a newspaper format at the end of the day. I see many uses for paper.li and one of them is for brands to use it as a online newsletter. This is even useful if you have linked your company’s Facebook Page to the company’s twitter account. At the end of the day, you just need to send the link to your database, even to those without twitter, to find out about the stories shared by your company and your followers. ...

Come this October 2010, all fans of The Camera Corner Facebook Page will enjoy 20% off TENBA bags and 10% off all camera accessories. How will The Camera Corner identify you as a fan? Step 1 - Visit http://www.facebook.com/thecameracorner and click on Like! Step 2 - Click on Taggo Me tab. Step 3 - Select your ez-link card. Step 4 - Enter your ez-link card number. The number can be found at the back of the card. Click TURN ON . Step 5 - Viola. You are ACTIVATED . Easy right? Step 6 - Count the days to 01 October 2010. Go visit 3 Coleman Street B1-14 Peninsula Shopping Center with your ez-link card and tap at the counter when you purchase TENBA bags and camera accessories. Once you tap your ez-link card, the cashier at The Camera Corner will identify if you are a fan! If you are not a fan, ask the cashier how you can be a fan and enjoy fan promotions! Thank you for being a fan of The Camera Corner.

The founder of local sports blog, Redsports.sg, has written an open letter on his Facebook notes to the Singapore Democratic Party to stop taking stories from the blog without permission. Wrote Leslie Tan , founder of Redsports.sg, By putting my name and the name of redsports.sg up on your site at the head of the article, you make it seem like I contributed the article to you willingly and am part of your news gathering crew. I never was, am not, and never will be (especially after this incident). I wish to tell you in no uncertain terms to stop taking any redsports.sg stories from now on without permission. This is the second infringement. The first time, we put down to an honest mistake. The second time is just dishonest. Leslie was referring to the two articles, first on the YOG and the second on the brawl at a recent S-League match. The article on the S-League match has since been replaced with another story from Mirror.co.uk, but still infringes on the copyrights...

Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism, gave a speech to his incoming class of journalism students at Science Po in Paris with advice on how to prepare themselves as the new media generation. Perhaps the new generation of PR can learn from these tips too. Said Jay , Typically when people like me—a professor of journalism who is deeply involved in the digital world—advise people like you—students just starting their careers in journalism—we say to you things like: You need to be blogging. You need to understand search engines. You need to know Flash and perhaps HTML5. You need to grasp web metrics like Google analytics. You need to know how to record audio or edit video You need to “get” mobile. ("Mobile is going to be big!") And all those things are true. They are all important. But I want to go in a completely different direction today. Ready? You need to understand that the way you imagine the users will determine how useful a journalist ...

The Nokia account for both Singapore and Malaysia is up for grabs. Wrote Marketing-Interactive, Nokia has confirmed that it is officially holding a re-pitch for its public relations account for Malaysia and Singapore. The final phase of the competitive review is scheduled to kick-off between late September and early October. According to Hazel Abu Samah, marketing manager for Nokia, the exercise is going to involve multiple agencies. To date, the brand has invited three PR firms to participate in the pitch for its PR business including incumbent Text 100, who has been on the account for five years now. Though social media is more than just Facebook, but with close to 8 million users in Malaysia and 2.4 million users in Singapore, it is rather surprising to find that Facebook Pages of Nokia for the two countries relatively low. The Nokia Singapore only has 421 Facebook users liking the page and the Malaysian counter having a decent 2,335 likes on the Page. If one of th...

One of my clients will be running a movie marathon in October and I was thinking how I could have some fun with the movie posters. It has been awhile since I used Animoto and they added templates to help with the animation of the photos almost instantly. It is so much better than having a pdf of movie listing. The photo video montage will work well for those in the property business looking to present their property to overseas buyers. Why send photos or documents when you can send a photo video montage! The videos can also include a 10 sec video which the agent can talk about the property.

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.

Coca Cola recently implemented a real physical “Like” box at the Coca Cola Village in Israel that allowed fans to “Like” real places and automatically update the status on Facebook. This shows that Taggo, a client of Social PR, is moving in the right direction in allowing brands to identify and reward online Fans offline at a physical venue. Wrote Adland , The implemented these facebook-bracelets at the Coca Cola Village, a watersport, sunbathing, gameplaying amusement park activity-thing for teenagers. When the guests arrive, they are given a ‏ bracelet ID which transmits an RFID signal, which they program with their facebook login. They can then "like" activities and places in the real village, and their actions show up on facebook. Teenagers are driven by vanity like everyone else, so there was a photographer present as well, if you wanted to tag yourself in any given image all you had to do was wave your ID bracelet to the photographer. I recently blog about onl...

The Old Spice viral videos might have been the talk of social media but what does this mean for sales? SymphonyIRI, Advertising Age research , found that sales for Old Spice during the launched of their viral video increased by 30% compared to the year before but dipped 30% from the previous period. Advertising Age also wrote that sales increased by 107% vs the prior year in June 2010 when P&G offered coupons for a “buy one get one free” promotion. What if P&G combined its success on social media and that of traditional offline promotions? The Old Spice Facebook Page has about more than 800K Likes, but how can P&G, using the same ideas of coupons, reward their fans? One of the ideas that Taggo came up with after discussions with clients is that such brands that have booths at the retail stores but don’t own or control the POS can make use of the netbook mobility of identifying and rewarding online Facebook Fans offline at these booth. And instead of these tradi...

Thanks for the compliment.. or he/she could be looking for Aaron Nicholas Khoo..

Has success of a local food blogger gone to his head that he demanded for free food from a local restaurant? Yahoo’s FIT TO PRINT blog wrote about Brad Lau, blogger of Ladyironchef, demanded for free food when he visited Private Affairs with his group of friends. Wrote FTP , The blogger in question, Brad Lau, who runs a food blog called Ladyironchef , had informed the management on Friday that he would be coming down to review the Sunday Brunch promotion. On the day itself, he and his partner came down at about 130pm, followed by his two other companions, each of whom came down half an hour apart.    According to Private Affairs’ operations director Ross Valentine,  the four of them had brunch until 430pm, even when the restaurant’s official brunch hours was from 1130 am to 330pm. Brad and his partner also enjoyed two glasses of champagne each. When presented with the final bill of $435, the blogger initially refused to pay and repeatedly told th...

(Update: We have made several changes to Taggo since this post. Please visit the following sites for more details. Besides ez-link, we now use mobile phone numbers as an ID, it can be anything now, email address, credit card number, etc.. Case Study:  Charlie Brown Café Fan Club Benefits beats UOB credit card discount 115 - 18 Video of how Fans can register for Fan Benefits:  http://youtu.be/jRoN-DfOM6Y ) There are many posts about the benefits of using Facebook Pages for your businesses, but none about the benefits of identifying and rewarding online Facebook Fans offline at the point of sale. Here are some of the benefits that Taggo.me and I have learnt from businesses and fans when pitching to them about about the Taggo.me solution. 1. Turn customers into fans at the point of sale There are many fan pages out there and the success of the fan page is often determined by the number of fans that “like” the page. However, most Facebook pages have very little fans ...

There is a Tumblr site that looks to gatekeep the existence of Digital Life. Called digitaldeath.tumblr.com , the site nitpicks on the use of the English language and the lack of technology suaveness of the writers and editors. The site scans clips of Digital Life to share with its readers and plays the external unofficial role of sub-editor. Wrote Digital Death , I am hoping to see this year the Dell Streak which is a 5-inch Android tablet and Hewlett-Packard which is rumoured to be building a tablet based on a Web operating system. ” Source: Grace Chng’s ST blog on “Popping the Tech Tablet” (whatever that means) Apart from the overall terrible sentence structure (no punctuation, equating a Dell product with an entire company leading on into a sentence fragment), our favourite Digital Life editor calls Palm’s WebOS “a Web operating system”, which is a bit of a misnomer at best. Insiders are already trying to identify who this blogger is. Rumours have it is that ...