Valentine’s Day
Feb 14th
My mum always had little stickers on the tiles in the toilet. Every sticker represented a month of the year and every month had a little rhyme. The month of february said: “Start de dag met een glimlach, want the 14e is het Valentijnsdag (start the day with a smile, because it’s Valentine’s day on the 14th). Coming from a background in which valentine is not celebrate very elaborately, I had to ask my mum what valentine was all about. I guess from that time the sense and nonsense of valentine has been imprinted in my memory as something silly and unnecessary. Maybe that doesn’t reflect her opinion, but it does reflect the impression I got from it back-then. Quite right…
My opinion about Valentine hasn’t changed much over time. Just like santa-clause, who was invented by Coca Cola (I hope you all know that he has nothing to do with the “spirit of christmas and was invented in the greatest marketing campaign ever), Valentine looks more like a another very carefully planned marketing campaign for flower-shops, restaurants and the chocolate industry. It would also not surprise me if Coca Cola is in this list as well, as they of course get their share through the restaurants.
So why do people celebrate Valentine’s day anyway? Because the minister of commerce says so! Together with the industry, every year the Valentine’s-campaign is planned extremely carefully and delicately through major PR in most media targeting at women. Many of these magazines elaborately write about Valentine and do their share of conditioning to create those demands. Now, the thing about demand generation campaigns is that you try to seduce a person into buying your goods. For the valentine campaign it works even trickier, instead of generating the demand at your target market, the demand is generated at their partners. This is a very smart and when the demands are carried over to the purchaser, the message becomes
Oh my dearest Haseenah!!
Feb 4th
My dear wife has been reading my blogs everyday and everytime after she read a story, she always asks me why she is never mentioned in the story. Of course that’s not true, because you can even see her picture popping up on my blog. It’s just that she wanted to have a full story dedicated to her. Well, here you go my dear, a full blog-line dedicated to you. And yes yes, of course I love you my darling Haseenah! Hasssseeeeeeeeenaaaahhhhh!! (I’m sure this will keep her happy for a while)
By the way, she’s pregnant again! It’s 2 months now, while my eldest kid is barely 7 months. It was a bit of an accident, because we hadn’t planned to have another baby for a couple of years at least, but it happened. As they say: God moves in mysterious ways, especially considering the fact that we have just found out that Haseenah is pregnant with twins!
Wish us luck guys, that’s gonna be difficult to feed 3 crying babies at the same time. Oh and mum & dad, if you happen to read this, let me know of all the houses that are coming up for sale next to you. We really really need your help!!!
Muhammad cartoon vs freedom of speech
Feb 3rd
I wanted to write a story about the uproar that was caused by a cartoon in the newspapers in Europe. I had a story in mind about freedom of speech, but I’m not going to do that. Why? Simple, I don’t want to die yet: I’m too young and I have a family to take care of. Especially lines like “an Islamic group called for the artists to be put to death for blasphemy“ on the ChannelNewsAsia website are scary.
I think I would just like to ask people to be a bit open-minded when it comes so satire. The entire idea of satire is that publishers are looking with a magnifying glass into a certain topic and try to bring weird/fun/bad stuff to your attention. I would also like to remind people that popes, prime ministers, kings, dalai lama, Ghandi, Buddha and Jesus are very famous “actors” in satire and similar cartoons. Just to save the peace: please don’t over-react, it’s probably not worth it. I think you could take an example of my dad. My father used to to have a very simple approach when it came to the (ab)use of Jesus. If it upset him he just switched off the TV or even cancelled his newspaper subscription. Easy does it, right?
Oh, and this part from the ChannelNewsAsia report was also interesting: “One poster during the demonstrations in Jakarta said: Let’s slaughter the Danish ambassador!”. Obviously he forgot that neither the Danish ambassador, nor the Danish government has any authority over what’s published in the media. It makes me wonder what they were doing in front of the embassy in the first place. Shouldn’t they be demonstrating in front of the newspaper’s office instead? What does the embassy have to do with it? And did you know that the editor of the French and Jordanian newspapers that printed cartoons have already been sacked? The Danish cartoonists are in hiding, fearing for their lives.
What also struck me is the magnitude of the uproar about this cartoon-issue, and the number of people that have hit the streets. I understand the strictures in Islam against images of Muhammad, but Islam also doesn’t approve flying planes into buildings or exploding bombs in crowded markets for the purpose of killing the innocent. Yet after those attacks, there weren’t any demonstrations in front of the embassy of Afghanistan, there weren’t any protests again the killing of innocent hostages and there were no threaths to slaughter the Indonesian president for what happened in Bali…
At the other side: It wasn’t the most tactful thing to publish these cartoons… Naughty, naughty.
Anyway: Enough said. I want to live.
Related links:
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…
If I do it, so does the rest of the world
Dec 14th
What always amazes me is how marketing consultants extrapolate their own behavior to the rest of the world. I was reading a story in Marketing Magazine in which Simon Bond (Proximity Singapore) explained that if your TV-ads were enticing enough, they’ll get seen, TIVO or no TIVO. This was based on the fact that there was once in his TIVO-enabled home, he found family members watching a commercial over an over again. Although I doubt the authenticity of the story (I mean: who would do that?), I certainly don’t think that you can project something that happened in one household (sample size = 1) could be projected over all people’s behavior. If you’re in the middle of a show, would you really care going through a commercial, even several times?
If I look at my own behaviour (I don’t have a Tivo, but do have a PVR), I don’t look at TV commercials at all. My PVR is so advanced that I don’t even have to fast forward through it anymore, it automatically removes the commercials at recording time. Even if I wanted to see the commercials, it’s too bad, because they’re not even recorded (if you want to know what I use, it’s comskip, which works very effectively in Singapore).
If you’d ask my opinion (without projecting my personal situation to the rest of the world), the marketing industry should be moving to other media instead of TV media. Instead of sticking to the conventional and pumping even more funds into it (because the ads need to be more enticing, more creative), try to be more creative in media choice. The world is changing quite drastically and people don’t seem to rely on just one media at a time anymore. Often they’re watching TV and browsing the web at the same time, or reading a magazine and listing to podcasts at the same time (and this is based on stats, not my personal behavior). This changing environment opens great opportunities, with great challenges that require a lot new kind of creativity in media-planning. These are going to be exciting times!
Hypocrital Italian
Dec 12th
I was watching BBC-World, while suddenly my attention was focussed on a comment that was sent in by a guy by the name of Govin or something, an Italian that happened to play tourist in Amsterdam a while ago. He mentioned in his comment that Amsterdam was probably the sleaziest city in the world and that it could have had so much more to offer.
Hearing that through BBC World, from a fellow that comes from a country that is famous for breeding the world’s horniest hypocritical bastards is simply unbelievable. It wouldn’t surprise me if this guy, just like virtually every Italian visiting Amsterdam, would have been walking the streets in Amsterdam’s red-light district every night. Yet, he has the shame to make such a statement about Amsterdam. Probably he was trying to keep up the appearances for his family at home, perhaps his family was even making him write the letter after they found out what he’s been doing on his trip…
Well Govin (if that’s your name), it seems that you’ve been looking for the sleaziness yourself, and Amsterdam DOES have a lot to offer! It’s just that if you would take the effort to get your prick out of “de walletjes” for one night, you would have had the chance to experience it! Besides a liberal environment, Amsterdam has a rich cultural heritage, diverse & creative culture, commercial dynamism and high quality of life.
Too detailed registration duty is a security risk
Nov 28th
In Singapore, I’ve gotten used to big brother watching over my shoulder. In most cases, I don’t mind sacrificing a little bit of privacy in order not to compromise on security. I guess I’m not that European in that sense. In most of those cases it just make sense. And don’t get me wrong, I would object if a country starts doing stupid stuff, and a police state as the US is definitely what I’d be looking forward to. The Singaporean way is actually still quite alright.
"As part of an ongoing and holistic security review by the Government to boost Singapore’s security, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), in collaboration with the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), have worked together with mobile service providers on a practical regulatory regime over prepaid SIM cards". Good deal, terrorists will also need to register their SIM card and can’t just easily detonate bombs through the GSM anymore (there are a hell lot of other possibilities, but that’s besides the point).
So what’s my problem? The thing is that every employee of those companies that you need to register your details with has complete insight in that information. Every employee at Singtel can look at all my details at Singtel. Every employee at Singapore Power can look at all my details. Every employee at the bank can look at all my details.
Actually, this wouldn’t be such a big problem, except that the information that these people have insight in is just to sensitive, especially when it comes to e.g. your IC number, which to my irritation is asked all the time for the most irrelevant matters. And IC number is a very important number that should be kept as safe as a credit card number. If you’re making a phone call to a bank, usually your account number, IC number and date of birth is sufficient information to get access to your account. So, guess what combination of personal information all these employees of Sintel, Singapore Power and banks have in their hands… Scary?
With this I would actually like to plead for the following:
Dear IDA, if you make detailed registration duties compulsory, please also make detailed corporate privacy security compulsory for those corporations that collect this information.
Related links:
» IDA – Regulatory Controls on Prepaid SIM Cards
