Commentary

Sure we’re in squeaky clean Singapore, but I won’t tell.

Singapore is a great modern city in the Asia Pacific region. I live here and proud to be a Singaporean. Singapore is one of the fastest growing economies in the world today. However, in my opinion, many Singapore companies here are still lacking in what I defined as “online social engagement” with their prospects and customers.

Performance measures and key performance indicators (KPIs) are a powerful part of a Singapore manager’s tool kit but when applied inappropriately their cost can actually outweigh the benefit they provide. Are you using your performance measures appropriately or are they costing you money?

The ubiquity of the mobile phone is something we all take for granted – our mobile phones are in our pockets or purses or in our hands virtually all the time. This is truly the time for mobile to shine, but it has also caused a fair share of controversy. As people become used to this new and powerful media channel, they are coming up against issues of privacy and confidentiality that have never appeared before.

For many adults in Singapore, life is a long and difficult speedway that stretches from the instant they begin working to the moment they goes into retirement. On average, a Singaporean spends around thirty years working, with financial security and comfort as the main goals in doing so. Some use up less time to accomplish these aspirations, while others take even longer than the typical three decades of employment; however, with the demands of our fast-paced lifestyles, the latter is more common. Moreover, the retirement age in Singapore has moved to sixty-two, so most of them have to work beyond thirty years. During this lengthy period of time, many employees, regardless of their profession, will be struck by moments of exhaustion and lack of interest. We are all familiar with that dreadful phase: frustration, then disillusionment, then the inevitable weariness of body, mind and heart. And then you find yourself dragging your feet to work every day. More often than not, these feelings are caused by wrong motivation and a lack of direction in your career—how do we recover from such a slump or better yet, avoid it? Steve Jobs left a legendary quote on what he felt about great work. "Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do, if you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on." This is where passion and purpose comes in. In choosing a (potentially long-term) career, it is important that we identify what we are most passionate about. Some discover it during polytechnics or universities, while others may start honing their interests only during later years. Baking pastries, getting involved in the advertising industry, teaching technology to impressionable minds—whatever your interests might be, constantly expose yourself to them and learn what you can about them. This will help motivate and inspire you. And by trying many things, you might have the Aha moment in know which one gives you the most important impression.

What is the first thing you do to find out more about a company these days? Well, most (if not all) of the time, we use the Internet search engine. In Singapore, I have met business owners who often tell me that if you do not have a website, there are less business opportunities come knocking at their doors.. However, setting up a website is not as simple as signing up, putting up introduction and contact information and then leaving it to breathe by itself. There is more to be done! Raja, who owns a small printing business, looked me up the other day to ask if I could do him a “favor”. “Buddy,” he started with a smile, and it was the first time he addressed me like that. “Can you do me a favor and design and build for me a website? Recently, my clients have been asking if I have a website and if they can reach me through there.” I looked at Raja puzzled because I knew he already has a website, although it was quite forgettable. “What’s wrong with your current site? I thought you paid your nephew set it up for you?” I asked. “You know, buddy,” he sighed, “Relatives la. In the beginning, they very excited to help. He got no experience but he knows the basics to design a website. It seemed to me that getting an amateur was not important in the first place, but now, we have lost a few customers and potentials because of this. They went to other printers who have better websites than mine.” “Further, we never maintained the site and even our WWW is hosted on some free host. My nephew never told me anything about what to do with a site after it is build. I thought it runs by itself. Just the other day, I visited it and realize there were chat line ads running on my site!” So I told Raja: “I understand. But firstly, let me tell you what went wrong so that you will get a clearer picture about your situation.” Don’t use free hosting websites I went on to tell Raja that a free hosting gets revenue from their advertisers and they usually run advertisements which the person or organization using the host has got no control over. It is not ideal for a business since A) Pop-ups ads are aplenty which B) kill your visitor’s interest and C) Chat hotline ads with sleazy images don’t go well with most organizations’ image. It becomes worse if you get the free domain that uses their primary domain and places your company name as a subdomain, just like what Raja did. This makes it difficult for customers to look for him on the web, even if he already has a website but no domain to boot. Better get a freelancer or a pro to do the site The truth is, you get what you pay for and if the outcome isn’t ideal, you might end up paying more to get it right. If Raja had seek professional help in designing his website, he would appreciate the proper planning and execution from the beginning, launch and beyond. There is more than designing a website, there is also usability and navigation fundamentals to help ease visitor’s usage so that we maximize your organization’s web presence. “Buddy, when our hair is long, it is best to go to a hairstylist to get it cut or trimmed,” I told him. “Cutting it ourselves or getting someone who might know how to cut but has got no professional experience in doing so might just make you look funny.” “So what do I do?” Raga asked. “Since we are now ‘buddies’, I will give you a discount rate but it will still cost you. Don’t expect to be paying peanuts again!” I said. Organizations, especially small businesses, can quickly make an impact with their online web presence if done properly from the beginning. Plan what type of info is needed to help your customers get the best out of your website. Going cheap is not ideal when potentially, there could be hundreds of people will be looking at it. I remember reading a quote from Red Adair, a famous oil-well firefighter who once said: “If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.”

Once upon a pair of flip-flops, I was a fresh Marketing Manager for a local retail brand who reported directly to the brand-champion, in layman’s terms, the business-owner. I was told that the marketing department is always the ‘cost-centre’, or at least, that was how he saw it. I like to believe that was something Philip Kotler would never have agreed.

When it comes to client servicing in Singapore, we all know how ‘dedicated’ we can be. An often unspoken rite of passage that goes beyond gifts and lunches, relationship management has become a full-blown issue. Late night emails, gifting as if it were Christmas six times a year, where does it start and end? The fine line between commitment and over commitment is often invisible and dangerous when it comes to expectations, not to mention mental health.

In the Era of Social Media, organizations will inevitability find their names mentioned in some blog or internet forum. While positive mentions are good publicity and should be encouraged, the question facing PR Professionals is how to deal with negative mentions. One framework which PR Professionals can use to assess, analyse and then decide how to respond to the mention is the SCAER Framework. An abbreviation for Source, Content, Audience, Effect and Response, I developed the SCAER framework as a deliberate process to guide the PR Professional's assessment of an online mention. Performed sequentially, the Framework will guide the PR Professional to the most logical response to the mention. Source. The aim of this factor is to determine the credibility of the source. Under this factor, the PR Professional will assess where the mention is found, the type of website, its viewership, the profile of the viewers and the reputation of the blogger. Determining credibility is important as it will determine how likely the target audience will believe the content. Content. Next, once the credibility has been determined, the PR Professional will then assess the content of the mention. The aim of this factor is to determine the mention's objective and intent behind the mention. For example, the PR Professional must determine if the mention is aimed at discrediting the organization, urging customers to switch brands, or is it a personal vendetta against the CEO of the organization. Ultimately, understanding the intent and objective of the mention will allow the organization's response to address the root of the issue. Audience. When a mention is put online, there are generally four target audiences which the PR Professional must consider - apparent, ultimate, intermediate and unintended. The apparent target audience is the direct recipient of the message; the ultimate target audience is the actual target of the mention; the intermediate target audience is the conduit to get the mention to the ultimate target audience; and the unintended target audience is anybody that may come across the mention. Identifying the ultimate target audience of the mention is crucial as it will then allow the PR Professional to more accurately assess the mention's impact and select the appropriate response to the correct target audience. Effect. This final factor is the cumulation of the previous 3 factors. Based on the findings of (a) the source's credibility; (b) the intent of the mention; and (c) the ultimate target audience, the PR Professional then draws a conclusion on the effect of the mention. As a guide, the PR Professional will make an assessment based on the impact to the organization and the probability that stakeholders will believe the mention. The PR Professional uses a standard 2x2 matrix (shown below) to determine whether the organization should respond to the mention, and if so, the approach to take.

Business cycles are part of life’s seasons. There are growth days and there are slow days. One reads about Singapore’s slowing growth in 2012 which may stretch even till 2013. As such, many companies are in their year-end corporate planning cycle, reviewing their medium-term competitive strategy development and action plans for 2012.

While it may not be earthquakes or tsunami’s that Singapore businesses face, flash flooding, typhoons and strong winds are all natural disasters that have hit Singapore’s shores, having the potential to create damage to property, stock, client documentation and information all common within a facet of industries and the potential for loss of thousands of dollars is very real.

The end of the year and the beginning of the next is the usual time for predictions and trend-spotting. For the mobile space, the situation is a little bit easier, because there are already so many different and fascinating ways that mobile is being used in Singapore that they point use clearly to what is going to happen in the coming year.

Tie me with rope – Now ask me to be innovative! Unfortunately, in Singapore as in other countries, many organisations that have embraced the innovation initiative have done so in an entirely predictable manner, mostly with entirely predictable results. Almost without exception the innovation department will be bound with red tape and underpinned by a stage gate analysis tool steeped in accounting nonsense and surrounded by naysayers most of whom find it easier to kill rather than embrace new ideas. Remember, people resist change. It’s far easier and safer for people to keep their heads below the parapet and do nothing. Bound with such encumbrances, why would anybody be interested in being “out there”? It’s just too hard. Business Plans never do work Believe it or not, most business plans fail to deliver what was expected. What they do achieve however is to start you on a journey of innovation and discovery where the end point is seldom the initial target. Interestingly, the failures are usually championed by people with great tenacity but tunnel vision, people who have difficulty in refocusing their endeavours when their ideas are not working. The mindset that persistence will ultimately win is simply flawed as no amount of persistence will turn a bad idea into a good one. Hence the suggestion that “Fast Failure” is a good mindset with which to explore new horizons. The good entrepreneur is one who can see when things are not working and with the backing of some money and a good team can re-direct efforts to where the target really is. This is the sort of open mindedness that is essential in any good entrepreneur or innovator. But do we give our people this freedom? Probably not! What is your Return on Investment (ROI) in Innovation? The above is a great question but one that is seldom asked for fear of learning the truth. Too often the ROI is near zero but “hope” still prevails. One Australia Company has spent over $500k on an innovation department that has yet to produce a single outcome. No doubt there are many more such companies. The initiative is to be applauded, but the failure is not. If a full time innovation department is not producing tangible outcomes and real ROI within 18 months at the most, then it is likely the model is flawed. The simple solution is not found in persistence, but in changing the model. “If you wish to think differently, then start by doing it differently”. Avoiding Risk One risk with a radical innovation model may be that the resulting ideas and outcomes are not seen as “core business” and thus need to be discarded. Indeed so common is the practise of discarding non-core activities that there are complete businesses that do nothing more than collect and commercialise so called “Orphan Technologies” that have been discarded by larger companies as non-core. It beggars belief that this mind set still prevails especially in the light of some classic successes. NOKIA, the company that essentially “owned” the cell phone business before Apple, was in the lumber industry before it decided to re-invent itself and become the number one cell phone maker. IBM, or Big Blue, the supplier of major computer systems in days when computer centres occupied entire floors, one day came to the realisation that the personal computer may be a new horizon. This was something quite new to them and their major systems engineering thinkers. In order to implement the PC development and avoid the risk to the “mother ship” if this PC was just a “flash in the pan” fad and thus a potential threat to their brand, and to avoid the nightmare that an in-house development would have meant. IBM took a novel approach. Rather than doing the development in-house”, a development that would have taken a decade or more with all the internal bureaucracy and inertia of IBM, instead they simply put a small team together, put them in a separate building, gave them an objective and let them at it. The outcome was the IBM PC, developed and delivered in just 12 months. We might call this the “outrigger” model. The “Outrigger” model has a “lot of legs” Given the right person to lead the charge, some freedom to operate and some budget, almost without doubt the seed of an idea or opportunity will soon grow into a profitable outcome. The key to success is to identify a new initiative, put a small team together, fund them and set them adrift to survive or succumb. Let them be an “outrigger” to your core business so they can do no harm to the “mother ship” or the brand if they fail. The cost is probably far less than funding an innovation bureaucracy, the risk is minimal, but the likelihood of success is high. There is a clear message here! If you are looking to get a different outcome you need to provide a different approach. Perhaps the outrigger model presents one possibility!

So you’ve hit viral nirvana with a video or story or promotion or contest that is so intriguing, so electrifying, that people are flocking to your website. Now what? Here are a few pointers for what to do in Singapore to keep those people coming back. Feed them Never underestimate the power of conversational currency. People have always loved to have things to talk about, and that has only intensified in the digital age. Give them plenty of content to work with. At VolvoCars.com, visitors can watch video extracts from LIV magazine about some of the world’s most fascinating people and places, and experience music from Sweden’s up and coming bands. In advance of the launch of the all new Volvo S60 last year, we weren’t permitted to show photos of the actual car, which was to remains secret until the debut; instead we created a two-part video documentary about a Turkish painter, Esref Armagnan, who, blind since birth, was invited to experience the car via touch and reproduce his image of it in a painting. Thanks to viral spread, tens of thousands of people viewed both videos, and the painting was subsequently sold, with proceeds benefiting the World Blind Union. Put them at the center of the action Mountain Dew’s DEWmocracy was a seven-stage, yearlong program that invited thousands of the soft drink’s most loyal fans to create a new flavor. Using a variety of social networks, including Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, the promotion invited participants in every stage of development, from flavor and color to naming and package design. When the three new products voted in were ready to hit store shelves, the online fan base was even invited to collaborate in creating the television ads. Soften the hard sell Even when the intent of the site is commercial, it typically is better to let the brand or product be a supporting player rather than taking on the star role. Schick sponsored “Clean Break”, an online action series centered on sports that, like the new Schick Hydro razor, deliver “unexpected hydration” (think surfing, wakeboarding and river rafting). The focus was on two athletic buddies, Brady and J.J., and their sporting adventures. Not a razor in sight. Viewers came back to the YouTube channel to catch the latest episode, not to learn about male grooming, but Schick’s messages still made it through. Teach them Today’s consumers are hungry for information – especially when it makes life easier or more satisfying. At Kraftrecipes.com, visitors can attend “cooking school”, watching videos with step-by-step recipes and tips, and even inputting ingredients they have on hand in order to call up recipes that feature those items. In the Community section, cooks can exchange recipes, upload images of their favorite dishes, join discussion groups, and post their own blog essays. The trick is to combine elements in such a way as to create a site that is both “sticky” (keeping people there) and “bouncy” (making it easy for them to share content with others). That’s what keeps the buzz alive.

Do you think Andy Warhol’s “fifteen minutes” opinion is still valid in this day and age? Well, the future is here so let’s give the expression an acid test, shall we?

When I was a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I have often heard my business professors say that companies must continue to invest in marketing even during a recession because that will help them come out of the recession stronger than ever. I must admit I was a bit skeptical. I was thinking to myself, "Really? Do these academics know what they are talking about? Spend more money in a recession? That's counter intuitive." Many, many years later, I realised that I have been taught by some very smart professors in that university because I have seen the proof with my own eyes. The last global financial crisis that was precipitated by the fall of Lehman Brothers caused many of my clients to see a sharp drop in business. The average fall was around 30% but some clients experienced drops of up to 80%. I remembered having breakfast with one of our clients to discuss the next step in his rebranding project. This CEO looked distracted and he was frowning more than usual so I asked him what's wrong? Is he worried about the business? He told me (still frowning heavily) that business has dropped about 30% but he's not worried about that because he expects the market to rebound in 2 years but what is giving him sleepless nights is how he can make full use of the slowdown to ensure that when the economy picks up again, his business will pick up even faster than the rest of his competitors. I asked him, "What do you have in mind?" And this CEO told me, "You know we are already doing a rebranding project with your firm because I now have more time to work with you guys to iron out the flaws in my corporate branding strategy. I don't know what they are but I know they are there. It's your job to find out and help me improve the brand so that when the economy picks up, I have a better brand to fight with my competitors. But that is just one thing! I also need to figure out how to prepare my engineering team and my marketing team better. I am cracking my head to see what kind of training programmes or courses I can send them to. And I am also trying to hire more people now, put them on whatever projects we have so that by the time we get new projects, they will be ready." I am rarely speechless. That morning was one of those rare occasions that I was speechless. Instead of cutting back, this company is investing in rebranding the company and retraining its engineering and marketing teams. But this company wasn't unique. Among my clients, many were doing that - they were investing in things or competencies that will help them compete better when the economy picks up. One client decided to replace its entire IT infrastructure with a state-of-the-art ERP system that is able to give management and the sales team real time information on inventory, sales, and each geographic market's performance while they are on the go. One client decided to hire an additional 100 people because according to them, a recession is the best time to grab talent and anchor them to the company. One client decided that the recession is the best time to do cross-training so that their people can learn how to do each other's jobs which according to the client increased productivity and reduced errors. There are many such cases from among my clients and you know what? These companies emerged from the recession much stronger. Some of them grew by as much as 250% post-recession. Some have managed to topple their long-time rivals. Some are now No. 1 in their key markets. It was an incredible thing to watch. And as their brand consultant, I had a front row seat. I watched them from the inside out. The Winning Difference Now that we are facing the prospect of another global recession, it is time to take stock of what you have, and what is lacking in your company. Then, decide on what you want to fix and what areas you want to pour investments into. All of this seems to make sense but how come only some companies are doing it. What is the key difference between companies that do it and companies that don't? It has nothing to do with money. Many of the companies who don't do it are cash-rich companies, mind you. The difference is actually the mindset of the CEO. Companies that invest during a recession and win are companies with CEOs that have a positive, we-will-win attitude. They see the recession as something that is temporary. They believe that economies will go into recession, rebound, go into recession, rebound. They don't lose sight of the goals and the targets of the company. Are you such a CEO? Do you work for a company with such a CEO? 2012 will be an exciting time. Sure, there will be bloodshed and casualties in the corporate world but you will also see some visionary Singapore companies invest in rebuilding their brand through various means and they will emerge stronger, faster and deadlier when the economy picks up again. I can't wait and I hope that I will get a few more front row seats.