Jos'Blog

Advertising, the cultural thermometer

2010-04-14T19:24:00.002+08:00

Pay attention to ads and feel a nation's pulse. It's a sign of the enormous importance and focus on children's education if the country's top scorer in school leaving examinations is enough of a celebrity to endorse food supplements.

This poster was seen in Singapore, but it could just as well have been Japan, China or South Korea. Especially Korea, where traffic is throttled nationwide to give children the chance to concentrate on their all-important exams.

I'm trying to imagine a campaign like this in the education-blasé US or indeed any European country. It would meet with a collective shrug.

-- Post From My iPhone

Small ad space doesn't mean no ad space

2010-04-11T11:57:00.002+08:00

Singaporean public advertising is among the best I've ever seen. In contrast with the previous post, here's how you actually use taxis as an advertising medium.

Self explanatory, simple and clear. And visible from a distance, even with a crappy iPhone camera.

-- Post From My iPhone

Catch Cheating Websites Dot SG

2010-04-11T11:35:00.003+08:00

Intriguing little bit of advertising on Singapore's taxis. The advertiser, Kokusai Security Pte Ltd, looks like a legitimate private investigator whose 'founding members comprise public officers who have experience in police and armed forces training. They specialize in investigations, crowd control, security management and bodyguard services.' All of this according to their website.

Especially the divorce investigations bit seems a bit slow these days. How else to explain this narrow focus on (literally) making your name in Cheating Spouses? On the surface, taxis seem a good choice as a preferred form of anonymous transport by cheating spouses and their fellow conspirators. But Kokusai's agency (or did they do it themselves?) forgets that they're choosing an advertising medium here, not a getaway after an illicit tryst.

A poor choice, even more so because you have to key in the website from memory if the ad really has any effect. And if you do, chances are you key in dot com instead of dot sg, which lets you end up with exactly those cheating spouses that Kokusai fights tooth and nail.

Ads like these will only become effective if your phone cam starts recognising links like these straight from stll shots. Until then you run the risk of unintended advertising consequences.

-- Post From My iPhone

Engrish or English?

2010-04-11T11:13:00.001+08:00

Plenty are the jokes about the Asian pronunciation problems with the difference between 'l' and 'r'. Entire websites are devoted to silliness caused by errant Rs. So it's refreshing to see someone's found a workaround. After all, we all know the Customer is King, so is there really any difference between a Loyalty Program and a Royalty Program?

Kudos to The Coffee Club for finding an elegant solution. (picture: The Coffee Club Holland Village, Singapore)

-- Post From My iPhone

Millions clamouring at the door

2009-10-07T11:56:00.005+08:00

Every shopkeeper knows the phenomenon. Customer comes in, asks for an article you're not stocking. Ah well. Not long after that, another one. Same question. By the time the third customer comes in, you make a note.

Companies like Apple should (and probably do) thank God for the incredible amount of transparency any internet-related business model offers. Now we can track demand in more ways than you can imagine, even before the product is there. No need for expensive market testing.

Only thing needed now: marketers who heed the call. Apple ignores the masses at their peril.

Inane advertising

2009-09-04T15:26:00.003+08:00

This is the third time I've seen this ad on the back of my favourite newspaper, The Economist, and it's starting to annoy me.

"An icon that will change the way the world views Hong Kong."

Wow, that's an eye opener! I mean, until now you wouldn't think of Hong Kong as a place full of tall glass office towers, would you?

You see this type of ads more often, but this is a particularly inane specimen. I suspect their only purpose is to reassure the developer's shareholders. At least, that's the only purpose I can think of.

You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it (revisited)

2009-09-04T14:34:00.002+08:00

This quote, from Scott McNealy, is just a bit more than ten years old now. You'd almost call it McNealy's Law, because like Moore's and other laws of nature it doesn't show signs of losing its applicability. As is shown by this video from The Onion, a must for everyone remotely interested in internet privacy.

Marketing 3.0 - there's an app for that?

2009-09-04T13:31:00.007+08:00

All signs are pointing in the same direction: Apple's App Store is briskly on its way to two billion downloads, Forrester has just reported that gadget craziness is going mainstream, and now even the scientists have gotten hold of the fact that there's something significant going on here.

Especially the New Scientist article, here's the link again, is worth a read. It pretty much describes what happens to you if you enter app land and start leaving browsers and the internet-as-we-know-it pretty much behind you.

And let's face it. Apps, little icons on your always-on, always-with-you smartphone that have exactly the function you want right now, one touch screen click away, are so much more convenient than firing up a browser and doing a search or accessing a website. And that is precisely how they eat into quality time you used to spend on your browser, on Google, on Yahoo or other portals, or on any of your other favourite websites.

This has enormous consequences for marketing. Life ain't easy for today's marketer, who has already had to adapt from the traditional media to search marketing, maybe just got used to it and now has to completely change over again. It's also interesting to see that no one has really figured out how to adapt to the new model yet. Display ads in apps? Forget it,it's not happening, at least not yet. Selling your products via apps? The only examples I've seen so far are clumsy attempts to mimick a magazine or catalogue, or inane little gimmicks, like having your product (which happens to be a watch) function as an on-screen clock.

The best exception I've seen so far is Nike, with the iPhit Fitness Tracker, a nifty little app that lets you track your running or other fitness exercises in combination with a sensor in your Nike running shoes.

There's no quick-and-dirty way to figure out how to let your brand enter consumers' minds via an app that really has an impact on your target group's lives. It's more like guerilla marketing: a different approach for everybody. But great riches await those who get there first.

Marketing your iPhone apps

2009-04-26T21:20:00.005+08:00

iPhone AppStore Secrets - Pinch Media

The iPhone-plus-AppStore is a brilliant and groundbreaking model for the future of mobile marketing. I've written before how effective the two work in conjunction to give users the best mobile experience by far. By getting it completely right Apple has changed the mobile landscape forever. But how effective is the AppStore as a marketing tool?

This reveal-all presentation by iPhone analytics firm PinchMedia provides an early insight in the new medium. It tells us how important it is to get yourself into at least the Top 100 at some point in time ("bunch up your publicity"); why it's generally better to choose paid-for over an advertising-supported business model; and how sticky the various categories of apps really are (you'll be amazed).

PinchMedia, we thank you. Finally the iPhone/AppStore ecosystem comes alive, supported by some proper metrics.

Why should I buy New Moon rice?

2009-04-26T12:07:00.004+08:00

Looking at this poster I can think of three reasons:
1. It's Triple-A Premium. That sounds really, really premium.
2. I can choose from no fewer than six different packs.
3. The girl seems to like it.

So either this is the message New Moon choose to spend their advertising dollars on, or they need an advertising agency.

The wireless past

2009-04-25T17:29:00.008+08:00

In the old days conference tables looked like this: pristine...

... and this is what I came across the other day:

Somewhere along the line things have taken a wrong turn.

Increasing loyalty doesn't need to cost anything

2009-04-25T15:52:00.009+08:00

"Spot the differences"

Solitaire is the highest tier in Singapore Airlines' frequent flier programme. Its perks are incredibly popular. I know people who normally fly Economy (which doesn't contribute towards Solitaire qualification - you have to fly Business or First) but throughout the year carefully spend the extra money on a few Business Class flights in order to stay Solitaire. Perks are things like priority seat reservations and luggage handling, access to SIA's First Class lounges all over the world, and the prized First Class check in at Changi Airport (the Ritz Carlton among check ins).

So Singapore Airlines are a textbook example of perfect loyalty managers? Not always. In 2008, for inexplicable reasons, Singapore Airlines removed the number of membership years which until then had adorned each card. It's the easiest thing to do, and it doesn't cost the company a dime. Credit card companies have known this for a long time. It reminds people time and again of the period they've been valued customers, and it provides a subtle but continuous incentive to stay that way and increase the little magic number.

I just received my new Solitaire card, and I was pleased to see that SIA 1) hasn't thrown away the precious information of their top tier customers' seniority and 2) has put it back where it belongs - on the card.

If you want to increase customer loyalty you don't always need to throw money at it. Common sense helps too.

Facebook, The Electronic Friendship Generator

2009-04-20T16:43:00.002+08:00

Hilarious! I have nothing to add to this.

And please, PLEASE can someone make Twitter, blogging and email versions??

Starhub's Not-So-Digital-Lifestyle

2009-04-20T14:37:00.005+08:00

Some things you just don't make up. Digital superstar Starhub sends me an email, telling me there's such a thing as a "Digital Lifestyle" and how exciting it all is. Can you spare us a few minutes to answer a survey about it?

Of course, always. I mean, I practically live the digital lifestyle, sitting behind my desk, surrounded by heaps of gadgets and emailing, blogging and twittering my little heart out. So naturally I click on the link.

Sorry, your browser is not supported. Please use Internet Explorer version 6.0 and above, or FireFox version 2.0 and above. Your current browser is Safari 528.16

So much for Starhub's version of The Digital Lifestyle. I rest my case.

5 Reasons to pick up blogging

2009-04-19T12:52:00.004+08:00

After a two-and-a-half-year absence, blogging is back in my life. Why now? Five very different things have conspired to my re-entry in the blogosphere. One is personal. The other four are incredibly relevant to every marketer.

1. Popular demand. Lots of people over the past years told me it was a pity I'd stopped posting. Apart from the flattering effect (which wears off pretty quickly) it built up to an increasing feeling of guilt. Contrarily to feeling flattered, guilt lingers. And it builds up over time. All it then needs is some help, which came from technology.

2. Phone cameras. Pictures help incredibly when you want to get a point across. Speaking for myself, the reverse is even true: one feels compelled to make a point when one sees the picture that goes with it. So always having a camera in your pocket has an enormous impact your ability to shape thoughts and share them with the world. Add to that the fact that a few phone makers were quick to recognize this and turned their horrible crapcams into fully-blown, usable cameras. Thank you, Nokia.

3. Online social networks. It's great to be able to stay connected and communicate with many friends and business contacts, bridging enormous distances and gaps in time. But while doing that I feel an increasing need to have an 'anchor presence' on the Web as well. A place where you put your own original content, a place where you can express ideas and thougts that are larger than bite-size. A profile page is not enough. A blog gives you all the room in the world.

44. Twitter. So now we've covered three basic human needs: a social network, the ability to communicate, and a place you can call your mental home. Anything missing? Yes, opportunity. Enter Twitter. Twitter fills the little gaps in between. What's more important, it does to blogging what the phone camera did to photography. It may not be an ideal tool but it's simple and lightweight, and you can afford to always have it on you and use it on the go. But a person cannot live by bite sized thoughts and visuals only. (At least I can't - I'm not speaking for the average politician of course.) So for me, tweeting and blogging are inseparable - one cannot live long without the other.

5. The iPhone. Or in my case, the iPod Touch. Hat off to Apple, who came up not just with a brilliant little gadget, but withba while ecosystem that put them at the nexus of all mobile developments. It's not just that we now have an elegant mobile device with a decent operating system, allowing us to do just about everything that you previously needed a laptop for. Nokia did that already, except that their OS is deeply inferior. But on top of that Apple managed to create an exosphere of developers who continuously come up with brilliant little apps for every possible need. Want to tweet? Dozens of apps are available. Want to publish to your blog? Pick and choose. Not to mention everything else under the Sun, but that's another day and another blog post. My only nags are that Apple still need to work a bit on the phone, and are still in the crapcam phase. Which is why I now carry two devices around.

So there you are. I know this is a bit if a risk. Having said what I just committed to posterity means that I now have no excuse not to blog. So be it. Meanwhile, see you on Twitter!

-- Post From My iPod

Another new advertising medium: Sailboards

2007-09-04T18:41:00.000+08:00

If you think the online space has a monopoly on additions to the ever-growing list of media, think again. Here come the Sailboards.

The world's fastest growing cities are all sitting on either rivers or harbours. A giant TV screen sailing back and forth is guaranteed to reach a massive audience. And let's face it, riverfront property is most expensive in the world, so purchase power guaranteed!

Not sure if this has been done before, but Shanghai is the first place where I've ever seen this.

Unstoppable

2007-09-04T11:23:00.000+08:00

Technorati Tags: China, Shanghai, Architecture, Travel

Coming back to Shanghai after a few months' absence always has the same effect: shock and awe. The building boom goes on and on, higher and higher and on an ever grander scale. Hardly have we gotten used to the 420m Jin Mao Tower's skyline domination, or next to it arises the world's tallest bottle opener, the 455m Shanghai World Financial Center.

Literally around the corner, the old Shanghai is still being demolished. Maybe the Bottle Opener will be joined by a Corkscrew? Don't say it out too loud. This is Shanghai, after all.

Back to the roots of Marketing

2007-08-24T16:01:00.000+08:00

Technorati Tags: Marketing, Indochina, Cambodia, Travel

Siem Reap is doing well. The tourist trade is booming, hordes of Korean and Chinese tourists overrun the ancient temples of the Kingdom of Angkor. Everyone in the service industry is doing a brisk trade.

Take for instance the remorques, tiny taxis consisting of a two- or fourseater compartment pulled by a moped. Remorques are a bit of a commodity, they're all alike and your negotiation position as a tourist is good. A US Dollar will get you anywhere.

Except this one. This entrepreneur has discovered the value of advertising. If you make yourself heard, and shout just a little bit harder than the others, you will get more business and you can charge just a little bit more. We paid this gentlemen $3.

Next step is branding, of course. A transport tycoon in the making.

Germany funding minefields?

2007-08-24T15:43:00.000+08:00

Technorati Tags: Indochina, Cambodia, Germany, Travel, Engrish, Minefields

The Cambodian Mine Action Centre (CMAC) does good work, removing a lethal danger that still lurks in parts of Cambodia's civil war scarred soil.

Too bad then that the Germans keep funding new minefields, according to this CMAC sign near Siem Reap. Or do they mean the opposite?

This grammatical minefield would've been funny, given a less deathly serious subject. Wonder how many of these signs can be found throughout Cambodia, and what effect they have on Germany's public image?

Hello Kitty Unlimited

2007-08-16T11:45:00.001+08:00

Technorati Tags: Hong Kong, Hello Kitty, Marketing, Travel

If you've ever visited Hello Kitty Hell then you know that the Hello Kitty Universe knows no bounds.

Thanks to Hong Kong's MTR Corporation it now has an underground railway too. Complete with trains and uniforms.

Hong Kong respects global brands too

2007-08-16T11:30:00.000+08:00

Technorati Tags: Hong Kong, Marketing, Branding, Counterfeit, Travel

Welcome to Lamma Island, home to just about every Leading Hotel of the World:

True sign of globalization: each country its own speciality

2007-08-16T11:26:00.000+08:00

Technorati Tags: Macau, Marketing, Travel, Globalisation

Cuba's was already well known. But Macau's?

Asia's continuing IP crisis

2007-08-16T11:21:00.000+08:00

Technorati Tags: Macau, Counterfeit, Travel

Just a high street pharmacy. This one's in Macau, but could be anywhere in China or Southeast Asia.

Honestly. No fakes. Cross my heart, hope to die.

Ugliest skycraper. Ever.

2007-08-16T11:11:00.000+08:00

Technorati Tags: Macau, Architecture, Travel, Casinos

Stanley Ho's Grand Macau Lisboa atrocity may not be finished yet, but it already dominates the skyline of Macau. Too ugly for words, I guess it'll easily take the trophy for Macau's most photographed building. Here's the definitive picture angle.

Alien is Alien, and English is English...

2007-08-02T22:37:00.001+08:00

Technorati Tags: London, Architecture, Travel

... and never the twain shall meet. I bet Rudyard Kipling lies turning in his grave.

Some like it French

2007-08-02T22:30:00.000+08:00

Technorati Tags: London, Globalisation, Travel, French language, Culture

Not a word of English in this little tableau. Still, it's in South Kensington. Or shall we say Quensington du Sud?

English may dominate the business community. But from Sydney to London, French is the global language for the culinary world.

No fusion here...

2007-08-02T22:26:00.000+08:00

Technorati Tags: London, Travel, Globalisation, Culture

... at least some of London's stock brokers seem to prefer it English through-and-through.

Anglo-Japano-Greco-Thai fusion

2007-08-02T22:19:00.000+08:00

From a distance it looks like your typical wood paneled English corner pub. Up close, it turns out to be a Thai restaurant. Design cues from ancient Greece (Ionic columns). And the name? "The Rising Sun."

Not that there were any doubts that London is one of the most cosmopolitan cities on Earth. But this pushes the envelope.

"You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it."

2007-08-02T22:07:00.000+08:00

Scott McNealy's classic quote is now over 8 years old. But it turned out to be quite visionary. UK's largest credit bureau Experian seems to think so too. In this tube ad Experian tries to educate the English consumer to not only accept this fact of life, but to try to make the best of it too. "Our information affects your position in life," it seems to say. "Why not come and check it, and ensure it's up to date?"

Quite the double-edged sword. One wonders if an ad like this would have the desired effect in other cultures as well. Would it work in, say, China? Somehow I doubt it.

Pottermania in action

2007-08-02T21:57:00.000+08:00

Quick research in the London Underground, morning rush hour:
1. One in two spend their tube time reading;
2. One in four readers reads Harry Potter.

By the looks of it J.K. Rowling's books are not only enjoying record sales, they're being read too. By adults.

Concrete scarcity: a blessing in disguise

2007-07-23T14:08:00.000+08:00

Concrete has become scarce and expensive in Singapore, since Indonesia started blocking sand exports to the little city state. If you compare Singapore's brand new skyscrapers with the old ones, I'm not sure whether that's a curse, or a blessing.

And by the way, the quality you can get out of your Nokia N95's camera on a bright, sunny day is impressive...

High-tech endangers low-tech

2007-07-23T13:45:00.000+08:00

Seen at Singapore General Hospital. Acupuncture is a venerable, 5000 years old medical technology; mobile phones a 50 year old communications tool.

One wonders in what way handphones pose dangers for 'sensitive' acupuncture equipment. Have today's needles become electronic gadgets, coming a long way from the Bronze Age's sharpened stones? Or do loud conversations interfere with the serene atmosphere in which the needles are being applied?

Acupuncture is from Venus, handphones are from Mars.

Commercial email getting more threatening?

2007-07-23T11:41:00.000+08:00

Guess those Webroot guys are used to dealing with spammers and other vermin. Bit of a cruel way to treat your customers, though. Wouldn't "Your subscription has expired" sound a bit more friendly, and less lethal?

Sunset over the East Coast...

2007-07-19T10:50:00.000+08:00

... and Moonrise over Suntec City:
You see too few of these pictures around. It leads one to believe that Singaporeans value their own cityscape too little. The fact that the Government has to put pressure on developers to build landmark buildings speaks volumes. And yes, we are starting to cherish our conservation bungalows and shophouses, but they're still being razed and mutilated by the dozen.

Thirty years from now, the next generation will start to regret what happened even today.

Fortunately the tide has turned. Too slow, as always, but already visible in places, such as Blair Road, the street where I live.

Hopefully, as the old becomes scarce, we'll start to cherish the new as well.

Relaxing Singapore

2007-07-12T12:04:00.000+08:00

This is new. By this I don't mean the picture, taken at One15, the new yacht club and marina at Sentosa, but the title of this post. Singapore has made it, it's not only about living to work any more. We now work to live. But Singapore wouldn't be Singapore if 'working to live' would not be made into a business itself. So now we build marinas, casinos, and resorts. By the dozen.

Bustling Singapore

2007-07-12T11:59:00.000+08:00

The old and the new. But looks deceive. Capital Tower looks new, Ann Siang Hill's shophouses in the foreground old. Reality is, Capital Tower is occupied by old-style financial institutions. Ann Siang Hill is the home of up-and-coming interactive advertising agencies, and internet startups.

Booming Singapore

2007-07-12T11:51:00.000+08:00

Palm trees and building cranes.

The Age of the Internet has arrived. Books have become decorations

2007-07-12T11:40:00.000+08:00

Remember books? You know, the stuff we used to read when they still had paper? Well, they've completely done up the new food court at Suntec with them. How quaint.

Do Not Disturb

2007-07-02T13:55:00.000+08:00

Interesting post from Jan Chipchase on Future Perfect. Hutch in India apparently offers a blanket opt out for sending commercial text messages through to your phone.

Jan frets about the 72 hours before the block will be in place, and the unspecified time it will take for Hutch's marketing clients to comply.

If Hutch gets this right (that's a big if), client compliance should not be a problem. Mobile providers, after all, are known for 'keeping the keys to the Kingdom', allowing their customers access only to those bits of cyberspace they make money off, and generally blocking the kind of progress we've seen on the wider Internet. But that should work both ways.

The flip side of the medal is the provider's responsibility to shield their customers from unwanted communications. Either accept that responsibility, or take you hands off the whole thing and let your subscribers roam freely across the Web.

Unfortunately this logic does not appeal to telcos, judging by their initial reactions in last year's mTouche scandal in Singapore.

"Sorry Officer - I was just praying for free parking"

2007-06-27T18:46:00.000+08:00

The best excuse for not getting a parking ticket in Singapore - ever.

Hong Kong's cultural identity...

2007-06-22T16:41:00.001+08:00

... Impatience.

Still life with presentation materials, anno 2007

2007-06-22T14:51:00.000+08:00

Typical shot during a 21st century presentation. Presenter brought a laptop, a projector, and speakers. The quaint, authentic 20th century whiteboard stays unused in the corner.

Wonder how this tableau will look in another 20 years...

France, count your blessings

2007-06-21T17:31:00.000+08:00

French Governments have a tendency to keep whining about the French language being endangered by globalisation, even to the extent that official words have been proclaimed for new media, to counteract English.

This picture was taken in an Australian pub, on a street corner in The Rocks, the fashionable downtown Sydney neighbourhood. As Ozzie as it gets, with bitters and ales and rugby on the TV screen in the corner. And the word 'BRASSERIE' in bold letters on the age-old ceiling beams.

Who says only the English contribute to the global Lingua Franca?

Cultural crossroads

2007-06-21T16:44:00.001+08:00

The quintessential Flower Power Volkswagen Van, sitting along a road in New South Wales. In the sixties you'd just know who drove this: bandana'ed, pot smoking hippies with guitars and flowers in their hair.

Forty years on, Flower Power is over. Free lifestyles have become multiple lifestyles. People are so much more difficult to pinpoint. Who owns this van? A poor guy who lives in it? A well-off collector, with a sprawling place in Watson Bay and a sentimental yearning to his student days? Australian gypsies, if these exist?

And what's the wilting flower garden doing up there? Is it a remnant of the Flower Power days, or is the owner just trying to make his vehicle carbon neutral?

Lifestyles are fragmenting. Every crossroad has become a cultural crossroad.

Commercial overload

2007-06-21T16:21:00.000+08:00

Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Just another view, waiting for the shuttle train between the main terminals. Literally every surface is covered with advertising messages, some of them static, some of them dynamic. Dynamic means you see another message every few seconds. So in this shot you see ten messages, or fifteen, or twenty, depending on how long you're looking. And my camera phone doesn't cover as wide an angle as my eyes.

Every day we receive around 3,000 commercial messages. On paper and packaging, TVs and radios, posters and billboards, interior walls and the sides of buildings. On websites when we surf, in our webmail if we use the free variant, even when we're playing games.

Meanwhile, we keep hearing that we need to relinquish some of our privacy in order to help marketers increase their accuracy in targeting. My answer: fine, if you have to, but for chrissake show me some results!

How long until we all succumb to information overload?

QR codes conquering Asia by accident?

2006-05-01T15:06:00.000+08:00

QR codes are continuing their progress through Asia. Japan has been converted for a while, and recently Taiwan got added to the response efficiency crowd.

Some additions happen by accident, it seems: Vodaphone just introduced a QR capable phone in the Philippines. It looks like an accidental launch, however, since it's one of Toshiba's Japanese phones, with QR readiness buried deep in the mostly Japanese-language manual.

But Philippino marketers, don't be deterred by this: you've got the tools now, so starting using them!

Birth of a new advertising medium

2006-04-26T13:47:00.000+08:00

Of course this was unavoidable. Google Earth makes viewing the Earth's surface from above so easy that it becomes an advertising medium.

Only the scale of this (75-by-110ft) is a bit disappointing. C'mon guys - you Americans can do better than this. I'm thinking a few square miles of coloured sand in the Nevada Desert here - in the shape of a roulette wheel, of course.

The Emirates pioneered the idea, with the Palm Islands. Who follows? Giant Olympic Rings circling the mountain tops around the Great Wall?

Plus, we need a descriptor. Earthboards? Adscapes? We're open for suggestions.

If Business Class becomes more business-like, what about Cattle Class?

2006-04-26T10:58:00.000+08:00

For years we've been drooling now over proposals from aircraft builders and their interior design suppliers, promising us dramatic improvements in on-board space and luxury. (See Goodbye to Red-eyes, say hello to Dreamers and Beemers and As we're expecting turbulence, may we request passengers to leave the bar, restaurant, sauna and fitness club and return to their seats?)

But this one seems to go the other way: a NY Times article about standing-room-only "economy class seats" (free registration required). Looks like Cattle Class is becoming an increasingly apt descriptor.

Of course we should've known: all that extra space in Business and First in the future has to come from somewhere. And there's no such thing as a free lunch. At least, not in the Economy Class of the future.

Airbus, the NY Times reports, is working on a proposal in which passengers in the standing section would be propped against a padded backboard, held in place with a harness. "To call it a seat would be misleading," said Volker Mellert, a physics professor at Oldenburg University in Germany, who has done research on airline seat comfort and has seen the design. No kidding.

Fortunately all of this is still on the drawing boards. But even current cattle class is getting more cramped as we blog, as new materials allow thinner seat backs that still fulfil strict safety regulations. Originally these seats were introduced under the motto "More Room Throughout Coach", but cost cutting measures put an end to that. Seats have been slid together and the campaign has quietly been withdrawn.

Anyway, let's hope it won't come to The Onion's take on Air India's Untouchable Coach Class, 'which is towed behind Air India jetliners in a giant burlap sack.'

Air rage pandemic on its way

2006-04-26T10:24:00.000+08:00

Airbus subsidiary OnAir announced plans to release a GSM network for making and receiving calls on board of airliners. TAP and Air France have signed up to the service, to start operations in 2007.

Not sure if this is a good idea. For starters, I don't like the grin on the guy's face in the publicity photo. Neither does the girl next to him, it seems.

"Comrade Hu, instead of jailing human rights activists, why don't we let them hold Tupperware parties?"

2006-04-24T14:48:00.000+08:00

Everybody who has followed the news around Google's, Yahoo's, and more recently, Skype's activities in China knows it: people who think they can publish freely are bound to get into trouble. Big trouble. Off-limits subjects cover a wide range: democracy, human rights, Falun Gong. And indecent material, of course.

Unless you're doing it for commercial purposes, that is. Real estate developers in Shanghai enlist models wearing body paint and very little else to sell apartments, a Changchun fish restaurant pins menus to its waitresses breasts so patrons have an excuse to ogle them, and Hooters' first China branch is doing brisk business.

On more than one occasion censorship in China has used porn as an excuse to block foreign websites. This farce was effectively undone when the Washington Post and other media obtained a list of keywords for filtering web content that didn't contain any type of indecent expression (apart from the quite intriguing "Hire a killer to murder one's wife").

It now seems this chink in the armour has been picked up with gusto by China's ever-entrepreneurial commercial sector. Another sign that commercial interests are driving significant change in China's society, despite the fact that commerce and politics are being kept strictly separated.

Carrefour means "you're toast" in Chinese

2006-04-21T17:46:00.000+08:00

For years Western governments and companies alike have lambasted China for its lack of protection of -mainly Western- brand names, resulting in rampant piracy. If you've ever set one foot on Shanghai's Nanjing Road or Beijing's Wangfujing Avenue, you know how ubiquitous and easy to obtain fake goods are in China, from $10 Rolex watches to $5 Louis Vuitton bags and Hermès scarves.

Even with new brand protection laws in place (a condition for China's much-desired WTO membership) suing sellers of fake goods is nigh impossible, as most of these are fly-by-night operations and the Chinese judicial system isn't the most efficient in the world either.

So it's good to see that finally luxury brand maker Louis Vuitton has succeeded in getting a favourable verdict against a seller of fake LV branded handbags, getting awarded Y300,000 (US$40,000) in damages from ... French supermarket chain Carrefour.

Turns out, roadside sellers of gazillions of fake watches, handbags and scarves are untouchable in China. But a global retail chain with 37 fake LV bags on the shelves of its Shanghai hypermarket is an easy target.

As the old Chinese saying goes: life ain't always fair for a sitting duck.

Google discovering Chinese word for 'minefield'

2006-04-21T16:48:00.000+08:00

Google's Chinese search engine wasn't born under a lucky star, it seems. First we had the brouhaha over Google's conformity to Chinese censorship (see Suggested new motto: "Don't Be Hypocrites", Brin to blogosphere: "Forget about Don't Be Evil. We're now going for Do Be Practical", OK. Who ordered the 'Google #1 Hypocrite' mugs? and "No, we're not evil. And we don't want to talk about it"); and now Google's recently unveiled Chinese name has attracted the scorn of its Chinese user base.

'Gu Ge' are the newly chosen Chinese characters, which means as much as 'Valley Song' or 'Harvest Song', and they have undoubtedly been chosen for their combinination of sound similarity with 'Google', and a positive meaning.

Choosing a Chinese name for your brand is a tricky game, much like navigating a minefield. A cause célèbre are Coca-Cola's early Chinese years, during which it was marketed under four characters with the correct Ko-Ka-Ko-La sound, that unfortunately meant something like Bite Your Wax Tadpole. The story goes that the name had been chosen by a Cantonese-speaking secretary in Coca-Cola's Guangzhou head office, who had no idea what was at stake.

Sinds the early 90s Coca-Cola in China is known as 'Ke Kou Ke Le', which is a pun on 'Tasteful Soft Drink' and 'Happy Tasting Drink' respectively. 'Ke Le' has even become the Chinese word for 'soft drink'.

Over to Google, whose advisers must've been keen on avoiding a blooper like this. But alas, a minefield has many mines. 'Valley Song' doesn't only sound rural in English, but also in Chinese. Which is decidedly uncool in the eyes of Chinese digerati, who populate the glass and steel canyons of Beijing's and Shanghai's business district and do not like to be reminded of the undeveloped, uncivilized and utterly poor agricultural hinterland that still takes up most of China.

Unhappy Chinese Google fans have even set up an online petition under the unambiguous name NoGuGe.com, where thousands of signatures have been collected since its inception last Wednesday. Google should be cool, and 'Gu Ge' doesn't cut it.

Doing business in China ain't easy.

"Rolex: the men's watch women prefer"

2006-04-20T23:59:00.000+08:00

Rolex, the company that practically invented wristwatch marketing a couple of decades ago, has since studiously ignored just about every trend in watch land. The model lineup, with legendary models like the Daytona chronograph, the Sea Dweller diver's watch, and the President gentleman's watch, has remained basically the same during the last, say, 40 years or so.

The most eye catching trend in watches is their increase in size: whereas average men's watches used to measure typically 30-35mm in diameter 15 years ago, 40-45mm is now the norm. Women's wristwatches grew from 20-25mm to 30-35mm.

Apparently this is starting to become a problem for Rolex. So what do you do in such a situation? Either one of two things:

Redesign your complete model range (expensive and risky); or
Tell the world that your 30-35mm men's watches are actually women's watches (brilliant and cheap).

Marketing can be amazingly simple.

"Leave the tomatoes. Take the Da Vinci QR Code T-shirt"

2006-04-20T12:03:00.000+08:00

Yesterday Taiwanese mobile operator Far Eastone Telecommunications (FET) unveiled its first QR code capable handset, the Sharp WX-T91.

Funny enough, of all the possible examples how QR codes can be used, FET chose the ability for consumers in supermarkets to do a background check on tomatoes. It's not the first I'd personally think of, but fortunately printing the codes in magazine ads and on outdoor posters and billboards for generated spectacularly efficient consumer responses get a mention as well.

FET will launch the QR code phone with a marketing campaign linked to the Da Vinci Code. Customers who sign up for a contract including the Sharp WX-T91 will be able to participate in a treasure hunt, with prizes like a luxury Da Vinci Code trip to France for two, movie tickets, or goodies with 'Da Vinci Code Classic Paintings' printed on them.

FET claims that QR is the emerging standard for mobile response in Taiwan, which makes it the second QR market after Japan, where QR codes are taking off in a big way with tens of millions of handsets already QR capable.

The third market could be Singapore, where Sistic, the ticket agent responsible for about 80% of theater and concert ticket sales in the island state, has announced the intention to move to a completely QR based ticket sales solution.

With numerous technologies for mobile response evolving all over the globe (here's a small list) it's still early days to claim victory for QR.

But de facto standards are all-important for consumer acceptance, and it certainly looks like QR is a serious contender.

Of course we have ways to make you participate in our survey

2006-04-19T14:34:00.000+08:00

Shame on you, United States: China has just issued an official methodology for collecting e-commerce statistics, claiming to be the first country to do so.

The methods have first been put to use in the 2004-2005 China E-Commerce Report, a survey that covers 6 industry sectors across all of China's 31 provinces. Being the first major country where such a reporting standard is implemented may sound impressive, although China probably has a better starting position than others in enforcing compliance.

Still, it's a major achievement and an example that deserves following. Both the report and the claim come on the back of recent reports that the number of Chinese internet users has surpassed that of the US, possibly even by 50 million.

Should the United States start to worry? Only when the Chinese come up with an equivalent of Silicon Valley as well, I guess. Forbidden Silicon City, perhaps?

Doctor, I keep hearing these voices. Is something wrong with me?

2006-04-17T10:27:00.000+08:00

Things are really starting to happen in the outdoor advertising space. Change was in the air, considering the number of new technologies that can make posters interactive:

Bluecasting, Hypertag, and others: installing a small Bluetooth server that interacts with passers-by's mobile phones;
QR codes: printing two-dimensional barcodes on a poster or ad that can interact with camera phones;
Colorzip: same as QR codes, except that the interactive patterns can be 'hidden' in coloured pictures;
AdRunner: a system for mobile media on taxis or buses that adapts the message according to the surrounding demographics, with help of GPS and a mobile phone network;
Embedding RFID chips that can interact with RFID carrying passers-by;
And many others, as startups around the world race to provide the market with the killer targeting app that will give us the next Google. Speaking of which, I wouldn't be surprised if Google itself wouldn't make a move into this space, given the richness of their data and the fact that they don't shy away from going into radio advertising either.

Mainstream media are picking up on this trend, too, judging from a very informative article in this week's Time Magazine, and an article in Planet MultiMedia about AdRunner (Dutch language) last Friday.

As is pretty much the fashion in articles about this subject, it closes off with "Pretty cool stuff — and maybe just a little scary." Scaremongering? Well, it does tell you that there's a touchy nerve among consumers that can easily turn into antagonism and damage responsiveness after the newness has worn off - call it the Minority Report effect.

But these are fascinating techniques, and it would be a pity if the opportunity to better target and lower annoyance levels in this advertising-soaked world would be spoiled by privacy scares.

For that reason perhaps it's better to stick to techniques that leave the initiative with the consumer. QR and Colorzip codes leave it up to the consumer to point his or her camera at the ad and click to download the information in the code, rather than suddenly finding something's going on in your phone and wondering where the Hell it's come from. And what about the Seattle experiment in which storefront loudspeakers start blaring personalized messages when you pass by? Creepy...

To be continued.

'Synovative' approach to market research

2006-04-13T11:21:00.000+08:00

More news from the marketing frontlines in Singapore: here's the outcome of a small war between two of Singapore's, erm, "No. 1" society magazines.

Singapore Tatler claimed the title in a brochure calling itself "the best magazine for advertising" compared to Prestige and The Peak, its two nearest competitors. Tatler based its claims on research by Synovate, a global market research firm.

Both competitors sued. The Peak settled out of court last December, but Prestige pressed on. And after six embarassing days in court, Tatler threw in the towel. Total damage: S$300,000 (about US$200k), as Tatler will pay Prestige's legal costs as well.

Turns out, Synovate's research was conducted only among people attending Tatler's events. Synovate, that touts itself as one of the world's top global market research firms, should be the most embarassed party here. To conduct an exit survey at Tatler's events and report the results is one thing. But to actually use these results to corroborate claims about your market position (Synovate actually vetted the brochure and wrote the introductory letter!) is something else indeed.

Should future dictionary makers need a clear example for the lemma 'bias', this looks like a good place to start...
(Source: The Straits Times)

Mobile spam in Singapore: $150,000 fine

2006-04-13T09:38:00.000+08:00

Singapore has its way of sending signals to the business community. Fining a small firm S$150,000 is one of them.

It all started on Chinese New Year, when MyGlobalFun, a Chinese client of mobile services provider mTouche sent 300,000 MMS New Year Greetings to mTouche's subscriber database. That's a privacy violation in itself, but things went rapidly downhill two weeks later, when $1 charges started to appear on the recipients' phone bills.

MyGlobalFun's messages were not intended to be free, as it turned out. Protests were rife and after angry letters started to appear in the newspaper, the local telcos (SingTel, M1 and StarHub) quickly reversed the charges. But on February 21st mTouche was slapped with a six-month suspension to conduct business in Singapore, and now there's also the S$150,000 (around US$100k) fine.

Meanwhile, fly-by-night operation MyGlobalFun has disappeared from the radar screen as quickly as it turned up. And the phone number list circulates somewhere in China.

Singaporean subscribers don't need to be too worried, though. The IDA (InfoCommm Development Authority of Singapore) has warned the telcos to prevent illegitime billing via their monthly statements in the future. Trust me, they'll all remember mTouche.
(Source: The Straits Times)

12 Years ago today: Canter&Siegel enter Internet purgatory as inventors of spam

2006-04-12T17:03:00.000+08:00

Would you believe spam is only 12 years old? On April 12th, 1994 Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel decided to blanket the entire Usenet population with their infamous 'Green Card Lottery'.

It wasn't the first Usenet spam, nor was it the worst of all - that was Global Alert For All: Jesus Is Coming Soon, which brought Usenet to a virtuall standstill on January 19th, 1994.

But as far as I can see this was the first junk email that was actually called 'spam', a name that was derived from the famous Monty Python sketch in which the word 'spam' is used 94 times. The unfortunate couple unleashed a torrent of criticism with their actions, even giving rise to the invention of special cancelbots that were sent out on the Usenet with the specific purpose of deleting Canter&Siegel messages.

Were Laurence and Martha embarassed by this backlash? Were they sorry? Did they mend their ways? Nothing of the sort. They even published a manual so that others could copy their 'success', How to Make a Fortune on the Information Superhighway, contributing actively to today's staggering number of 12.5 billion spam emails per day.

April 12th, 1994 was a sad day in the history of the Internet.
(Source: 'Woensdag Gehaktdag' (Dutch), column in Planet Internet, Sept 17th, 2004)

Dutch using cows and sheep in advertising?

2006-04-12T16:09:00.000+08:00

I'd expect nothing less. But to see taxis dressed up (or rather: down) as cows in Singapore is a bit baffling. But then, what would you expect from an outdoor media company called Moove?

Dotcoms still busy redefining mobile media

2006-04-12T15:44:00.000+08:00

No comment.

UPDATE 4/12/2006 5:48PM: The mayor of Skarsterlan, the small Frisian municipality in which this pastoral ad tableau takes place, has ordered the immediate removal of the sheep ads. Skarsterlan fears that motorists will be overly distracted while navigating the motorway. (Thanks Molblog)

Disney definitively starting to connect with Generation C

2006-04-11T11:03:00.000+08:00

Disney's Bob Iger is definitely getting the hang of it. Not only was Disney the first of the majors to cut a deal with Apple making TV series episodes available for download on iTunes, it now is first to cross the line making full-length TV shows available on the Internet, free of any restriction.

And that's not all of it: the media giant is breaking ground on a new business model for advertising breaks as well. According to the Wall Street Journal (paid access) a choice of ads will be offered during commercial breaks, all from the same advertiser. The viewer can choose between several types of commercial, with varying degrees of interactivity.

This is a novel approach, obviously aimed at capturing the interest of "Generation C": consumers who increasingly want control over creative content, whether it be entertainment or commercials. Possibly something for mainstream TV advertising by the time DVRs become ubiquitous?

Looking at this from a different amgle, this is another shot at something General Motors tried to do recently as well, with, ehmm, mixed results. GM offered consumers a menu of choices with which they could build their own Chevy Tahoe commercials. From a viral distribution point of view the exercise was a hit, except for the fact that the Tahoe quickly became the whipping boy of car commercials.

Ah well, you go out and experiment, you win some and you lose some, as they say...

Bikini War alert: Phase Orange?

2006-04-09T13:51:00.000+08:00

The Muhammad cartoons took around four months to develop into a full-blown worldwide international incident, from their posting in Jyllands-Posten on September 30th, 2005, to the eruption of riots in the beginning of February, 2006. (See the excellent summary on Wikipedia and there's even a website that keeps tally of the Cartoon wars' body count.)

So it'll be interesting to see how long it takes for protests to erupt around the display of bikini designs based on the national flags of participants in the 2006 World Soccer Championships, among which numerous flags of Islamic nations.

The display took place during the 14th China International Fashion Week in Beijing. Asia Pundit was the first to report on it in an April 5th post.

The Cartoon Wars were triggered by a group of Danish imams who spent a lot of time during a tour of the Middle East distributing a dossier on the offensive materials. Will others go to the same lengths to trigger Bikini Wars?

Web karaoke: China takes the lead in a new trend

2006-04-09T12:47:00.000+08:00

Looking back, you wonder why this took so long. All the ingedients were there: Asia is the home of karaoke, the art of lip synching in front of a private audience and a TV playing sound tracks; and then there was the aftermath of the Tammy NYP affair that showed that even Singaporean youths are not afraid to put their most intimate moments on video and on the web.

So here's our next Big Trend: combining karaoke with a web cam.

Cute indeed. And quite a bit more innocent than posting sex videos, one could say.

As an added bonus, the Back Dormitory Boys, as they are known now, show that you can become a celebrity in the process, not only with dedicated fan sites but even with your own TV show.

Watch this space, we'll see more of this trend.

New media, old censorship

2006-04-04T23:30:00.000+08:00

Singapore is not a free country. Normally you don't notice this. It's a transparent society, you can move around freely and you can write what you want as long as it's not about politics. Actually, not a bad place at all. So where's the lack of freedom?

In daily life, mainly in the fact that you're not allowed to form a society or association, or speak in public, unless you have the explicit permission of the government. Which doesn't bother you very often, since most people don't make a habit of that.

There are the little things, of course. As a member of the Association of Dutch Businessmen I once asked the Chairman why his monthly foreword in the society's magazine was in English, while it was written by a Dutchman and only read by countrymen? The answer was simple: had to be in English, otherwise the censors couldn't read it.

But now it's General Election time, and that's when the lack of democracy really shows. Today, in the face of the impending election campaigns Singapore's Senior Minister of State for Information, Communications and the Arts, Dr Balaji Sadavisan, laid down the law. After all, we don't want misunderstandings, what with all those new media around.

So here are the rules: campaigning is allowed in chatrooms, discussion forums and websites, but not in podcasts, videocasts, or blogs. Furthermore, websites and blogs that want to make a habit of publishing political contents (the occasional outcry is apparently exempt from this, so this post is probably OK) have to be registered with the Media Development Authority (MDA). The MDA will monitor these sites and screen them for election advertising, which is not allowed.

Email and SMS can be used under similar constraints, but Dr Balaji added ominously that "However, individuals seeking to use mass email and mass SMS to influence people, or to affect the outcome of an election, should realize that they are still governed by the laws of the land. And these include libel."

These last four words carry special weight in a country where opposition leaders in the past have routinely been driven into bankruptcy by libel suits brought by senior members of the ruling party, the PAP.

Interesting modus operandi for a country that seeks to play a prominent role in the use of new media.
(Source: The Straits Times)

US Data Protection Deficiencies becoming pretty obvious

2006-04-04T12:10:00.000+08:00

It's flattering to see that this blog is read at Business Week's editorial offices. Either that, or BW have identified the same problem plaguing US privacy issues as this blog did yesterday (see US privacy legislation becoming an inextricable mess of inexplicable measures).

Business Week calls it Dazed and Confused: Data Law Disarray. We get the picture.

Don't Be Evil. Just Do As We Say

2006-04-04T11:26:00.000+08:00

First Google lost its virginity. Then it lost its innocence. And now, to add insult to injury, it's losing its coolness.

Google has joined the hordes of companies that employ the vermin of Capitol Hill: lobbyists. You can just see the famous motto "Don't Be Evil" hanging askew in a dark corner, in a cracked frame on a rusty nail. Cobwebs partially obscure your view of the statement that once proudly adorned Google's gleaming lobby.

The rationale for this move is evident: privacy is rapidly becoming a major issue, in the US as much as elsewhere. And Google is sitting squarely in the middle of it. It wants to organize and hence store and handle the world's information, much of which is of a personal nature. Pictures, videos, emails, your search and surfing behaviour, together they form an increasingly complete picture of your life.

Google (so far) has no design on all that data but others do, as the US Government is already showing. Other governments will follow, not all of them as democratic as you'd want. So will organized crime (see Anatomy of a phishing attempt).

Google is headed straight for a position in the middle of a tug of war between maintaining privacy and giving others access to private data. It is continually signalling its intention to handle this in the consumer's best interest.

So far, so good. But Google is also consistently indicating that it will figure out our best interests on its own, without others looking over their shoulders. Hiring lobbyists fits that picture. So far, not good enough any more.

US privacy legislation becoming an inextricable mess of inexplicable measures

2006-04-03T12:04:00.000+08:00

Europe has universal privacy and data protection legislation. Japan has such a law since April 1st last year. China is working on one. Meanwhile the US privacy and data protection landscape is rapidly turning into an inexplicable mess. Let's look at a few examples.

As it turns out, shady privacy detective-type agencies are in the habit of bribing telco employees into handing over telephone records of people they're stalking. This is a blatant violation of privacy rights by any measure. What is US legislators' response? Propose a bill banning sales of telephone records. Well, that clears that up.

Next one on the list: how about your tax advisor selling your most intimate financial details to the highest bidder? Shouldn't citizens of the country with the most complicated and intractable tax code of all time be able to trust their tax statement preparers completely? No, not at all: it's common practice and you better watch those tiny tick boxes at the bottom of your acceptance form. And unaware of the need for more privacy and protection against identity theft, the IRS now proposes to make this even easier. Will the US legislature start ~~wasting its time~~ working on a special bill to prevent that too?

Not that we're talking about marginally necessary or luxury measures here. A recent survey reports that two thirds of FTSE100 companies are failing the most elementary privacy and data protection standards.

Regular readers of this blog know that we're not talking peanuts, either, where security breaches are concerned: for the most recent crop, see Data protection? You mean we have to lock our cars?, "Next time you break into our database, could you please leave the Californians alone?", There are morons, there are criminal morons, and there's Deloitte, and Every minute a sucker is born, with a one in two chance of being robbed of his identity.

Privacy is well on its way to become the most important human right of the 21st century. In an increasingly information-based, nay information-dependant society, no civilized country can afford to fail its citizens in protection against identity theft and other abuses of their personal data.

The US needs an umbrella privacy and data protection law to guards its citizens' rights to a life without fear of being invaded, robbed of their identities, or having the most intimate details of their lives exposed. And it needs it now, lest it becomes the 'Dirty Old Man of Privacy'.

With a CEO like that, who needs enemies?

2006-04-03T11:15:00.000+08:00

OK. So if you're the world's biggest and most successful software company the word "PR disaster" doesn't hold the same meaning for you as it does to other, more vulnerable creatures.

One can only imagine what kind of thinking leads to behaviour like this. Does Steve Ballmer think he has to compensate for his Lord and Master's famous lack of on-stage charisma?

"PR Disaster" is one thing. But with a CEO like that the word "PR liability" springs to mind. And don't even start on the subject of chair-throwing.

I think it might be time for Microsoft to start winning developers' hearts and minds, rather than bullying them into thinking this is anywhere close to a role model...

Engrish: so close, and yet so far away...

2006-04-02T19:07:00.000+08:00

Found in C.K. Tang's department store in Orchard Road, Singapore. Quite endearing, to be so close to your customers that you feel the need to apologize.

Muhammad cartoons not the first Danish attempt to disgust Muslims

2006-04-02T18:46:00.000+08:00

For people who think Danish insensitivity to islamic beliefs is a recent phenomenon: here's a golden oldie, a commercial for Danish bacon that should put you off heavy breakfasts for a looong time.

(Warning: content possibly objectionable to vegetarians)

Doing business in Singapore

2006-04-02T18:23:00.000+08:00

Back to blogging after ten days in which the day job got the upper hand. This was my first project in the city where I live, and an opportunity to see the city from another side. This view is towards the Central Business District from Suntec City, across the river.

Google caught rewriting its corporate history

2006-03-22T09:07:00.000+08:00

Yesterday Google launched its newest offspring, a less-than-impressive Google Finance site.

But wait, what was that remark in Google's 'Ten Things' Philosophy?

"2. It's best to do one thing really, really well.
Google does search. With one of the world's largest research groups focused exclusively on solving search problems, we know what we do well, and how we could do it better."

No, that's not how I remember it. Fortunately there's the Wayback Machine. The previous (April 1st, 2005) version of this page says it all:

"2. It's best to do one thing really, really well.
Google does search. Google does not do horoscopes, financial advice or chat. With the largest research group in the world focused exclusively on solving search problems, Google knows what it does well and how it could be done better."

Ah, that's more like it. Let's see - chat, financial advice... Wonder when Google Horoscopes will hit the market?

As we're expecting turbulence, may we request passengers to leave the bar, restaurant, sauna and fitness club and return to their seats?

2006-03-20T15:13:00.000+08:00

The previous post in this blog reminded me of the Airbus A380, whose humongous space offers hitherto unknown possibilities for spectacular aircraft interior designs.

Interestingly Singapore Airlines, despite making a lot of hay about being the first to fly A380, offer an extensive picture gallery plus video with everything but the interior in it.

Fortunately Airbus themselves are less secretive. Only question remains, how much of this showroom will end up in SQ's A380s, at the end of this year?

Goodbye to Red-eyes, say hello to Dreamers and Beemers

2006-03-20T13:03:00.001+08:00

To Boeing the honour of coming up with the idea of advanced cabin lighting first (for its soon-to-be-launched 787 'Dreamliner')

but to Airbus the honour of taking the concept a big step further. With the help of BMW, no less. A350 Beemliner, perhaps?

Personally I can't wait for one of these concepts to hit the market. Red-eyes will become so much more bearable. Maybe even sooner, in Singapore Airlines' new A380 please?

"I'll have 'A west bean pays the fish a soup' and retchup to go, please"

2006-03-20T11:46:00.000+08:00

From time to time this blog reports on the little morsels of Engrish that are an inevitable part of traveling in Asia (see Fondle me admiringly, Asiana Airlines and the art of omission, and Et tu, Brute).

But morsels they are, and I acknowledge my master for here is a veritable feast. Lucky blogger Jon Rahoi ran into the "Edinburgh Western Chinese Restaurant" in Foshan, and put the menu on his blog.

Have a look and feast on things like Cowboy Leg with Retchup, Benumbed hot vegetables fries fuck silk, and many many more. Enough Engrish here to last a lifetime!

"You forgot your password and tried WHAT??"

2006-03-19T23:48:00.000+08:00

Urban nomads travel, and they carry data around. And just like companies who don't want to rely on lobbyists for protection against security breaches they suffer from security breach anxiety.

Fear no more, Kingston to the fore: here is the DataTravel Elite Privacy-Edition. Kingston's unfortunate naming habits aside, this memory key not only offers 128-bit data encryption, but also wipes itself clean after 25 failed attempts to access. Cool.

"Even one renegade (or lazy) employee presents a compliance risk," Kingston's press release reads. Guess they read this blog. Available in various sizes, from 256MB to 4GB.

Personal data at risk? Quick, call in the lobbyists!

2006-03-19T23:33:00.000+08:00

Seems the Laziness Lobby in the US is stronger than the need for personal data protection. At least that's the only logical explanation for what happened in the US House Financial Services Committee last Thursday.

Case in question is a proposal of law that shamelessly waters down disclosure laws requiring companies to disclose security breaches that put personal data at risk (see "Next time you break into our database, could you please leave the Californians alone?". The House Committee voted 48-17 for a law that leaves it up to companies themselves to determine whether a security breach is harmful enough to warrant disclosure. The law would also neutralize existing disclosure laws (currently 11 States have them) that mandate disclosure after any privacy-sensitive data breach.

The irony is that the legislative effort in question was triggered by a serious incident at data broker ChoicePoint in february, 2005, where criminals accessed 160,000 records and robbed 800 of them.

And it's not as if Corporate America has been particularly careful since: security breaches seem to get sillier by the month (see There are morons, there are criminal morons, and there's Deloitte).

Google China's true translation

2006-03-17T18:02:00.000+08:00

The gazillionth take on Google's Chinese search site. But too funny to miss, so here it is. (Thanks BlogNoot)

Why sue Google when a bit of cash will do the trick?

2006-03-17T15:40:00.000+08:00

Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad opens today with a spectacular-sounding story on how Google helps child porn surfers find the right keywords (in Dutch).

Searchers for child porn, it seems, have their own jargon, which is not always easy to follow for outsiders (which is what jargon is all about, of course). But don't panic, Google's here to help. Just use Google's Adwords Suggestion Tools, and for a few dollars you'll be handed the right synonyms on a golden platter.

Funny, that. The US Federal Government at this very moment is suing Google for precisely that kind of information. Did anyone tell them that all they need to do is log in on their Adwords accounts and pull their creditcards?

UPDATE: I went a bit off course here. The US DoJ are suing Google for information on 'innocent' searches, as they want to find out how many of these yield porn and other stuff you don't want your children (or the DoJ) to see. The AD report describes a method that would lead the DoJ to demanding searches from Google. It's quite a scoop, thanks to Dutch search expert and AD editor Henk van Ess.

Van Ess suggests that prosecutors in general and the DoJ in particular should make more use of this type of method, as it can lead them to many kinds of questionable activities, such as drugs and money laundering. An additional bonus is that Google's service also supplies translations in many languages, enabling the user to conduct his research across borders.

Although the service is of at least as much use to criminals as it is to those who hunt them, an idea would be to just remove the objectionable synonyms. This would make life decidedly more difficult for child porn surfers, drug users and the like. In a first reaction, however, Google Netherlands denied it's an issue for them, citing Google's neutrality. (Thanks Peter)

In Hong Kong, Big Brother turns into Big Crook

2006-03-17T11:17:00.000+08:00

Due to increasingly popular disclosure legislation in the US data security breaches are almost starting to look like an American problem (see Every minute a sucker is born, with a one in two chance of being robbed of his identity).

But of course life is more cruel than that. Earlier this week a serious incident was reported in Hong Kong, where 20,000 confidential police complaints appeared on the Net, apparently because somone wanted to work on them from home. But it does look like Hong Kongers have more of a sense of humour about it. After the breach came to light the website containing the complaints was swiftly taken offline, and with Google's help even removed from the Google cache.

But on Tuesday a poster in a local newsgroup, using the alias "Big Crook", pointed out that the complaints file was still doing the rounds on BitTorrent having been downloaded more than 200,000 times.

"Big Crook" is a familair alias in Hong Kong: it used to belong to Chan Nai-ming, who was convicted of copyright infringement last November for sharing movies on the BitTorrent network.

RFID arms race officially started

2006-03-16T15:35:00.000+08:00

RFID tags haven't really hit the consumer space yet (and hopefully never will, because better alternatives are available), but the arms race between sneaky taggers and privacy-conscious consumers has already started.

And DIFRwear intends to become a major arms supplier on the consumer side, with blocking apparel based on the venerable principle of the Faraday cage. The company's first products are a wallet and a passport case.

This is a signal that should be picked up by everybody who considers building tracking techniques into their service model. People are becoming increasingly conscious of their privacy, and it doesn't help if tracking their behaviour becomes more intrusive than strictly necessary.

You don't need to tag everything and everybody in order to optimize your business: you can often use other techniques, such as QR codes or Colorzip icons.

There's a simple rule of thumb here: objects don't act, so these need to be tagged; they also don't need privacy. People can act on their own, so you want their cooperation. Make them react to your offers or instructions of their own free will; that way you create committed customers and you don't unnecessarily invade people's privacy.

And people won't start using large-scale countermeasures. Be warned.

Lust Pigs beware: Big Brother's on his way

2006-03-15T21:35:00.000+08:00

The cat's not completely out of the bag yet, but the judge has announced to open it just a little.

That, at least, can be concluded from US District Judge's James Ware's announcement that he intends to give the US Justice Department access to a sample of Google's search records.

The Judge's upcoming decision is driven by the fact that the Feds have finally asked someone with a freshman's course in statistics, finding out that 10,000 URLs and 1,000 search queries would do just as fine as the initially requested 1 million of each.

But an important bridge is being crossed. The Justice Department wants the data to illustrate what everybody already knows: huge numbers of people use search engines to find naughty pictures. I can't help wondering what's going to happen when all these people find out their searches are being recorded.

Fact is, a big majority has no idea they're being watched while happily trolling for porn. Chances are, the publicity around Google's handing over data to the Federal Government will let that cat out as well, causing a major privacy backlash.

Google better start preparing their damage control plan for when that happens.

And don't forget...

2006-03-14T22:43:00.000+08:00

...today's Pi Day. In remembrance of Archimede, whose constant it is, and Euclid, who did all the hard work.

And for those who have nothing better to do: you can also watch the giant Pi drop, at 1:59PM EST and again at 1:59PM PST.

Enjoy!

After sex videos: nude wedding photographs

2006-03-14T16:38:00.000+08:00

Why didn't I see this coming?

After this year's fad in Valentine pictures of couples in the nude the same thing turns out to be happening in wedding photography. At least that's what the China Daily reports, in a derisory article that calls "such exhibitionism [...] a surprisingly common feature of modern Chinese life." The newspaper quotes an angry mother who discovered one of these 'personal statements of modernity' in her daughter's album, besides the official wedding photographs in full drag.

Since most studios use digital cameras these days, you can just wait for some particularly juicy specimens to find their way to the internet, as happened with the now infamous Tammy Nyp video.

Apparently this already happened, as a little surfing shows here and here...

"Hi, this is my daughter. She's just wondering about your position requirements"

2006-03-13T18:22:00.000+08:00

Everybody who's visited China knows the phenomenon: the Little Emperor.

China has had its famous one-child policy for decades, and enforcement has been particularly effective in the well-structured cities. And it's those cities that have seen a spectacular rise in wealth and buying power as well.

The result? One-child families that have more money than they ever dreamt of, and only one child to spend it on. If you've ever been in one of the glitzy shopping centres in Shanghai or Beijing you've seen these little groups: a single well-dressed and well-fed child, surrounded by two proud parents, at least two grandparents, and possibly an aunt or two. All of these adults are continuously monitoring the child's every possible need.

This generation is now leaving school and starting to look for jobs, as this hilarious article in Shanghai Daily describes. Turns out, the parents' habit of sorting out anything their Little Emperor needs is not easily shedded. Recruiters complain of finding one job applicant after another in their offices, accompanied by a parent who acts as their spokesman, personal manager and chaperon in one.

Very funny, but for the alert marketer also a great opportunity. Here's a generation with unprecendented spending power not only because of their education and resulting job levels, but aso through their doting parents.

With the right tone of voice, communication channel and marketing message 'Little Emperor Marketing' can be a unique way to tap into the vast potential of China's evolving consumer market. Any takers?

When will they ever learn?

2006-03-13T12:36:00.000+08:00

Yesterday this blog mentioned the increasingly popular Demolish-Your-Own-Privacy soap series.

That was meant as a joke, people! But like so often in these gadget-rich times, reality overtakes imagination. You'd think the Tammy affair would've been a warning signal to teens with videophones. And to many it probably was. Indeed, an increasing number of Singaporeans is showing signs of worry about pictures circulating in cyber space, even ones taken surreptitiously by passers-by.

So it's interesting to see that a warning signal to many is a follow-me signal for others: the Tammy video has drawn out quite a number of wannabes who think it's cool to make sex videos of yourself, and share them with others. The Straits Times reports at least seven of them, circulating on the web, on file sharing services like YouTube.com, or on peer-to-peer networks like eMule.com.

There's even a naming convention: the kinky thing to do seems to be naming the video after the location where it was filmed (surreptitiously, no doubt - after all this is still Singapore). Fo avid searchers: the most popular ones out there are Bukit Batok and Airport. (No, not the 1975 movie.)

To each his own, as they say. But it puts yesterday's M1 WebCam value Plus ad in an even shriller light...

Teens distributing home made sex videos? Let's hand out webcams to their parents!

2006-03-11T15:03:00.000+08:00

Hardly has Singapore recovered from the shock of the 'Tammy' sex video, or mobile phone company M1 offers the next instalment in the increasingly fashionable Demolish-Your-Own-Privacy soap series.

The Tammy Nyp affair tells us two things, loud and clear:

Tech-savvy teens badly need to learn how to match technology skills with data protection;
Their poor tech-unsavvy parents don't have the faintest clue what's going on behind the wallpapers on their kids' screens, or what to do about it.

So what's M1's answer? More webcams! Let's give them away with mobile phone subscriptions, so they can broadcast their videos right away! And guess what? Let's hand them out to people who are least capable to use them and are likely to wreak most havoc on both their own and their kids' privacy!

Actually, M1 says it so much better in the ad found in today's Straits Times: 'Want to see what your angel's been up to when you're not there? Now you'll never miss a moment's action with M1 WebCam Value Plus. No kidding...

I have no idea what M1 has in mind with this large-scale distribution of accidents-waiting-to-happen but boy would I like a quick word with the Einstein who thought this one up.

Great design from Singapore

2006-03-11T14:28:00.000+08:00

No more jokes about Singabore. With bar top dancing now allowed and two giant casino resorts on the way, Singapore finally enters the world class design fray as well.

Lo and behold, Jaren Goh's take on one of Sony Ericsson's camera phones. It's arguably one of the sleekest handphone designs the world has ever seen, featuring state of the art technology with a borderless OLED screen and making Nokia's ludicrously overpriced Vertu phones look like the clunky pathetic things they really are.

Engrish in Germany

2006-03-10T14:04:00.000+08:00

Engrish is not beholden to Asia, as this absolutely hilarious video shows. Great commercial from Berlitz, a company that promises to solve all your Engrish problems, be they German, Japanese or otherwise...

(Thanks Danie).

If we copy Nokia's cleverness and Apple's marketing style, how can we go wrong?

2006-03-09T22:41:00.000+08:00

So Microsoft tried to play the Apple game, and succesfully, too.

Today it unveiled the Origami, and both blogosphere and traditional press went for it, lock, stock, and barrel. Teaser sites, teaser videos, the rumour mill, no means was shunned and boy did we go for it. Heck, even I am writing about it, ain't I?

Having said that, what on Earth makes the WinTel partnership think this hybrid in-between-pocket-and-portable will succeed where Newton, PDA and Tablet PC failed?

Unless it's the unexpected success of the Nokia 770, of course.

Ignorance and greed leave F1 fans in need

2006-03-08T18:38:00.000+08:00

Formula 1 fans have a host of very capable websites available, giving them access to any type of news, backgrounds, results or whatever else they want to know about the sports, the races, the cars and the drivers.

Formula1.com is arguably the most greedy of these. The site's news articles provide a watered-down version of reality that go nicely together with the ubiquitous F1 politics, but by virtue of being the official F1 site it has one single advantage: it's the only site that offers a live feed during races.

The most annoying aspect of the site is its utter greediness: right-click your mouse anywhere over its pages and you see this message. No copying of any kind is allowed, not even a quick copy&paste of a bit of text into an email message to a friend.

But wait, there's news! F1.com has now taken greediness to the next level: it offers text and picture messages on your mobile phone!

Rejoice, until you see the rates: $6.50 for one race delivers you 15 text messages; pay $4 extra and one fuzzy low-res picture will appear on your tiny mobile phone screen! And as a sign of F1.com's boundless generosity, you're offered big savings, too: $120 for a whole season!

My cup runneth over. This will be a predictably short-lived initiative. Clearly, F1.com have a lot of learning curve to cover in the realm of mobile marketing...

Web2.0? I'll give you Web2.0!

2006-03-08T13:57:00.000+08:00

It looks like Microsofts latest and most unusual CTO choice Ray Ozzie is coming into his own at the Redmond software giant.

Ozzie, creator of Lotus Notes and founder of Groove Networks, is the pioneer and undisputed champion of collaboration software, and apparently finding ways for people to meaningfully connect each others' efforts is still at the top of his mind.

Yesterday Ozzie announced"Live Clipboard", a Java based application that will allow copying structured information from PC to website or website to website much in the way Microsoft's Clipboard now works beteen its own applications. Ozzie demonstrated how he dropped contact information from his Outlook into an online shopping checkout page, and location data from his blog onto a social networking site.

To make the point that this is not just another proprietary Microsoft interface, he used Firefox for the demo. Apparently the intention is for Microsoft to freely licence Live Clipboard under the Creative Commons licence.

Web-based? Browser-independent? Creative Commons? You'd almost think Google, not Microsoft. But then again, I'm one of those people who regularly wonder how history would be changed if Ozzie would've chosen Google and Vint Cerf worked at Microsoft, instead of the other way round...

User friendliness still an elusive concept for gadget makers

2006-03-07T14:29:00.000+08:00

Average Philips consumer

What was blindingly obvious to all of us has now been scientifically proven: half of all malfunctioning products returned by consumers are in full working order, except the buyers never figured out how to operate them.

This Nobel Prize worthy result has been uncovered by Technical University of Eindhoven researcher Elke den Ouden. Elke presented her thesis to a group of managers at consumer electronics giant Philips, but only after giving them some of their own products to try out over the weekend. The Philips managers scored even worse than the average consumer: none of them got the gadgets to work.

One big question remains: will we ever see any tangible results of this revelation, and if yes, when?

Boxcar for Best Sound: And The Winner Is Honda

2006-03-06T12:38:00.000+08:00

Listening to Oscar Night, you realize how good Hollywood is at promoting its own work.

Makes you wish the TV Commercial industry had a similar event. Every year enormous amounts of talent, resources and money are poured into tiny films, anywhere between a couple of seconds and a couple of minutes in length, and exclusively destined for the flickering box.

So here they are: the Boxcars.

And please allow me to kick off with this year's winner for Best Achievement in Sound:
The Honda Civic Choir commercial

Too many car ads stick to the all too familiar pattern of wide shots of cars driving on winding roads, accompanied by pompous muzak and a baritone voice over. This commercial makes a difference in more ways than can be summed up in the traditional 45" Boxcar acceptance speech. Let me just point you to the Making Of video on Honda's special site for this commercial.

Thanks Honda, for showing us that there are so much better ways to tell the message!

More Muhammad? No thanks, I personally prefer Osama cartoons

2006-03-05T13:55:00.000+08:00

Every once in a while, but not often, do you see an ad campaign that combines such power with such simplicity.

But here's one: AlmapBBDO's print campaign for Brazil's Veja Magazine. Illustrator Roberto Fernandez shows us how powerful the combination is of image and word, in one simple cartoon. Or actually, a series of three: George Bush and Saddam Hussein are also 'honoured'.

Can't help thinking what Mr Fernandez would've made of a Muhammad cartoon...

Thailand: the next advertising powerhouse?

2006-03-05T13:00:00.000+08:00

China has become the world's manufacturer, India the world's high-tech outsourcing centre. But in both cases, the creative work that provides the foundation for all these activities is still firmly rooted in the West.

How long will it take for conceptual and design work to be outsourced to the Far East as well?

This is what occurred to me when I saw Media Magazine's annual creative ranking. Of the Creatives' Top Ten nothing less than the Top 8 are occupied by creatives from Thailand. Media compiles its annual list on the basis of award wins at 15 selected award shows in the past year. The award festivals include world class shows like Cannes and Clio, regional ones like Media's own Spikes, and national shows from India to New-Zealand and practically everything in between.

This is not an overnight phenomenon: Bangkok has been an Asian advertising hotspot for quite a while. Many campaigns are designed and produced in Bangkok, to be rolled out over many other Asian countries subsequently.

The question is, how long will it take Western advertisers to realize that all they have to do for top quality campaigns for lower costs is go to Thailand? Media's list of prize winners (paid access; registration required) Their only problem is having to learn to pronounce Thai names.

For interested would-be outsourcers, here's the complete list:

Prangthip Praditpong, Creative Juice/G1 (picture shows her work for Tamiya, 2005's most-awarded print campaign)
Nutchnanun Chiaphanumas, Creative Juice/G1
Kittitat Larppitakpong, Saatchi&Saatchi (previously Creative Juice/G1)
Passapol Limpisirisan, Euro RSCG Flagship
Wiboon Leepakpreeda, Euro RSCG Flagship
Jon Chalermwong, Creative Juice/G1
Nucharat Nuntananonchai and Taya Sutthinun (ex aequo), Euro RSCG Flagship

Personally, I think it's about time that Asia shows it can make a significant contribution to global creativity, instead of merely executing other cultures' concepts.

How to royally piss off your customers

2006-03-03T07:08:00.000+08:00

This is wrong on sooo many levels. Behold an email from Citibank, advertising paperless statements.

It's a FREE service, we learn. It'd better be, Citibank, considering the amount of money you save by not having to mail the stuff every week. Plus, of course we're not aware that EVERYONE offers this service for free.

It helps you protect yourself from identity theft, too. Really? And paper statements don't? Also notice they way it's formulated: Citibank doesn't protect you, it 'helps you protect yourself.' No kidding. Does Citi think we were born yesterday?

But most insulting of all is the graphic:a 60s housewife with her head in rollers. This was sent to a friend of mine, a senior marketing consultant. Female yes, rollers no.

And no Citi, she didn't appreciate the gently humorous touch that was undoubtedly intended. At least I hope that was the intention.

Plug In + Disconnect

2006-03-03T06:55:00.000+08:00

'Unplug + Connect.' That's the slogan with which naviPlay markets its Bluetooth Stereo Headset for iPod.

This thing works with both your iPod and your mobile phone, switching from one to th'other when calls come in or end. Stick it on your head and you achieve a number of things at once:

You'll look like a dork;
You'll be completely oblivious to any sound, human or otherwise, around you;
Don't even THINK about going into traffic.

But the sellers are undeterred. 'Take it with you cycling,' they crow. Probably forgot to consult their lawyers.

Thanks, not for me, I've got agoraphobia

2006-02-28T22:09:00.000+08:00

It's been almost a year and a half now, but I can still remember that buying a twin screen PC brought the biggest productivity jump since I acquired a computer with a hard disk in it.

So it's fun to see that you can now buy ready-made solutions from guys who take the multi-screen idea to the extreme. ZenView offers anything from twin screens, portrait or landscape, up to this 6-fold 24" monster with a combined 5760x2400 resolution. That's almost 14 megapixels.

Even among supergeeks this is not for the faint hearted. It takes a desk that can accomodate the small car you just sold to afford the $12k price tag. Which won't be enough, as you need a serious PC with 3 PCI Express slots holding high-end graphics cards as well.

On second thought, maybe my next upgrade will just be a triple screen solution...