Archive for the 'Marketing Rants' Category

Starhub Timeouts

Starhub’s internet access is worse than the dial-up connection I used when the world went online. Constant timeouts. Web 2.0 features on some websites not really loading up. This has been going on since October last year for some reason. Been happening since October last year.

I couldn’t take it anymore and decided to give them a call to see what the problem is.

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How to Sell Legal Loans

For those of you who frequent the CBD area in Singapore, you’ll be treated to an amazing new ad campaign that was launched earlier this week and launched extensively on the litter bins of Singapore. Miss Tan, a bonafide lender, has employed a marketing genius to take care of her campaign.

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Firstly, her messaging leverages on a key consumer insight: we all want quick cash. She also addresses our biggest fear: that quick cash is too good to be true. She reassures us that the loan is legal since you might have some niggling doubts with the generic surname and mobile telephone number.

(My only critique here on this excellent campaign is that maybe she should have added Bahasa to make her message appeal to a wider audience.)

Miss Tan is no fool, she knows that frequency is also a key to delivering a good message. That’s why she’s developed several iterations of her ad (in some case, even promising 24 hour loan approval):

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And lastly, placement is key. She dumped these outside of an insurance company called Aviva. Nothing like getting your product or service message out in the right places.

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Wishing Everyone a Happy CNY!

Happy chinese new year to everyone! I’m still in the process of wishing all the appropriate folks in my life the prosperity and good health they all deserve. It is taking me an age to get through all the Chinese folks I know but I still have a few more days of CNY to complete the task.

Actually, it is surprising because I am getting a lot of responses back from folks that I don’t normally speak to regularly. It was sort of part of (Western) New Year’s resolutions to try and stay in touch with friends more1
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  1. Most of you have reached the stage of not caring where the hell I’ve been as its been so damned long since you heard anything from me. []

New Facebook Revolution

What went wrong with Facebook? It grew rapidly as a popular site with fun features and cute little widgets that everyone seemed to like1. I, for one, advocated it to as many folks as I could find just short of becoming a Friend Whore2. With the redesign of Facebook (which incidentally, I do actually like), and with no way of going back to the old version, a lot of people are in uproar about the next generation FB.

I think this is symbolic of what Mark Zuckerberg is getting wrong with Facebook. Here’s are three reasons why Facebook is getting it wrong.

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  1. Although how useful some of them were is questionable. No, I don’t want a pet egg. []
  2. Friend Whore – To link excessively to people you have the briefest of contacts []

Starhub Scam or Sales

I received a call yesterday which went a little like this:

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