Archive for January, 2006
Gong Xi Fa Cai!
Jan 31st
Gong xi fa cai, gong hei fat choi, gung hay fat choy, khung xie fat jay, khiong hie fat choy!
Can someone tell to me why Happy New Year is written in so many ways?
Bombing in Dajaur: UN, do something!
Jan 16th
The US has bombed Dajaur and killed 18 innocent people, including women and children. As a reaction, senator McCain said that such casualties are “unavoidable” as Washington robustly pursues its war on terror. It really struck me that it was so easy for him to sacrifice people from another country. But on top of that, I wonder if McCain would have said the same if the women and children that died were US citizens instead of Pakistanis. Would he actually sacrifice American women and children for the same cause as he did with these Pakistani people?
It
Marketing budget cuts and blunders?
Jan 13th
The year has just started and some folks are really blundering their way through marketing-city. It almost looks like the only resolutions for 2006 were budget cuts, or people are perhaps still a bit intoxicated of the New Year celebrations. So what have I seen:
Carlsberg – Chinese new year TV-ad:
Two sisters are decorating their house for Chinese New Year, slow pace, in an educational way, all about luck and prosperity and doing it right. It appears to be another commercial from the national-campaign-lusty Singapore government, but eventually the crux comes around the corner: the fridge opens. What’s in there is Carlsberg beer and then the door opens with friends to help them to finish the booze.
So what went wrong: because of the slow pace is looks like a cheap $25 commercial. The fridge is a nice surprise in the commercial, but I expected to see some sort of cheap Chinese brand beer in the fridge, not Carlsberg. Oh and then the compulsory element of friends that come and visit. It was “squeezed in”, but doesn’t “blend in”, obviously a must-have dictated from the HQ…
Courts – Budget TV Ad:
It starts with “Court appologizes for the fact that this ad looks like at $25 ad”. Well, appologies not accepted, end of story. Man, I’ve seen lame commercials from Courts, especially the ones with Jamie Yeo as a newscaster, but this beats everything. They should seriously kick their TV-ad agencies’ butt to get to work (or maybe they should mess less with their work, so that they can be more creative).
Budget terminal – Branding of the LCC-terminal:
CAAS has started branding their new terminal, but have come up with the lamest name they could probably find (even after a contest about the name). Budget terminal sounds so el-cheapo and I really can’t imagine that there was really nothing better in the contest-entries than that. And even if you don’t want to call it e.g. “Sky blue terminal” or “Go go terminal”, it might have even been better to just brand it as “high-value terminal” or perhaps even “Changi terminal 3″ rather that something negative like “the Budget terminal”. Oh, and if you happen to go there, please take your umbrella, because I’m not sure if the builders of the “budget terminal” had the funds to build a roof over it…
Appologies not accepted!
IC number for everything
Jan 2nd
Recently, I wrote in my blog about those large companies that have so much critical personal data and that make this information available to all their employees for their easy reference, but which causes a potential security risk. If you’re interested in reading about it, just click here.
Another type of identity theft can very easily happen through those marketing sites that are also asking for a tad to much personal information (which the probably don’t even need). An example is the sign-up section of the micro-site of the Ministry of Sound: http://www.ministryofsound.com.sg/site/microsite.htm
I wonder why they need so much information: They’re asking for a name, an IC number and date of birth (all compulsory), which would already be quite sufficient for an identity-confirmation when you’re calling e.g. DBS. And through who’s hands is this information going? Are all these folks bonafide? If it’s just to get a ‘key’ or get rid of duplicate entries, there are a pletoria of other ways to get around this, an IC number is really not necessary.
Actually, what’s more scary is that my sister in law apparently just signed up. Most folks apparently trust these kind of sites very much. And I wonder how many people actually did a dilligence-check and had a look at whether this is really a bonafide website, or a website operated by a bunch of identity crooks.
Sometimes I wonder, folks in Singapore can sometimes be so cautious and calculative (kiasu was invented here), but at the same time, they could fall in the simplest traps with both eyes wide open…
