Don Quixote Attacking The Windmill (source of image)
What could a short-sighted, slightly insane and fictitious “knight” from Spain teach us about leadership? Quite a bit apparently, especially if your heart for leadership has grown cold.
One of the greatest fictional works in the late 16th century by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote told the story of a seemingly deranged middle-aged retiree in his 50s who became obsessed with tales of knighthood, fantasy and chivalry.
Street art along a wall in North Richmond
Being an avid runner, I often jog around the Parkville and Carlton areas near my university campus and chance upon street art along various walls, pavements and fences. Some of the air-brushed displays are aesthetically beautifully and probably the result of considerable and painstaking effort to create enduring works of art. Surprisingly, I don’t see that many acts of graffiti which are overtly anti-establishment or vandalistic in nature (or perhaps I haven’t been to those neighbourhoods yet).
While musing on this phenomenon, I chanced upon this interesting article by Mark Holsworth who reported on how several merchants in the Brunswick suburb of Melbourne (just a stone’s throw away from where I am putting up at Carlton) have engaged street artists to decorate their shopfronts. Holsworth highlighted two examples of this could be done tastefully. The first is a convenience store located at the Lygon/Brunswick area:
One of the greatest challenges facing communicators and marketers in the arts is the balance between satisfying artistic input and commercial (or public) interest.
Courtesy of woodleywonderworks
I was invited to a sharing session yesterday afternoon by David Shaw, Director at Effective Brands and a former marketing stalwart at both Lenovo and HP. Founded by Marc De Swaan Arons, the company embarked on a worldwide global brand study seven-years ago which now includes close to 100 global brands with a database of about 40,000 marketers. In the study, the branding consultancy focused on global marketing challenges and possible solutions to overcome them.
Here are some of the key highlights which I picked up.
Photo by Pedro Lastra on Unsplash
In the age of networks and social media, it seemed that there are more and more gurus of globalisation emerging.
Just look at the bookshops and see the number of titles touting one worldwide effect after another. Naturally, some ideas are more worthy of consideration than others.
Courtesy of The Duran
“Yes we can! Yes we can!” went the deafening din in Grant Park, Chicago as history was made yesterday. America and the world is now celebrating the decisive win of Democrat Barack Hussein Obama over Republican John McCain in the 2008 US elections.
Was Obama’s win a Web 2.0 Windfall? Or did he also depend on other more traditional means of getting the word out?
Giving my two cents worth on Yesterday.sg
At the kind invitation of Yi Xuan from SMU, I had the privilege of attending Podcamp 2.0 – an unconference of sorts organised by SMU, where doyens of the digital space proferred their views and insights on social media. Together with me were several bloggers and podcasters like Claudia, Melvin Yuan, Priscilla Tan, Daniel Tsou and Farinelli (of Tech 65), DK, Coleman, Preetam, Michael Netzley, Amelia Wong and others.
Sharing the story of how the National Heritage Board (NHB) – probably Singapore’s most ancient organisation – could leverage on social media, I hoped that I inspired some of the corporate representatives to venture forth. As an interest-based blog, Yesterday.sg took the slow and steady growth approach and the blog is still going strong after being around for two-and-a-half years (or 31 months to be exact). Social media outreach is a team effort driven by my great colleagues from team CCIP (especially Kim, Wei Chong, Kenny and Roy), as well as our dear Friends of Yesterday who have stuck with us through thick and thin.
Panel discussion on Web 2.0 and Building Online Communities moderated by Mark Laudi
At the invitation of Text 100 and the Singapore IT Federation, I had the privilege of attending the recent Singapore Digital Media Festival 2008 Television 2.0: Internet Services & New Media Mashup.
Together with me were other bloggers and podcasters like Shunjie, Pat Law, Claudia, Bernard, Darryl, Daniel, Coleman, Clapping Trees, Preetam, Howie (from The Digital Movement), Andrew Peters, Shalabh, the Tech65 crew, and a few others.
I spotted the above spider making his home at the lift lobby just outside my home. The little guy has been there for weeks, and interestingly, no efforts have been made to clean up his silky home. I don’t really mind though as I have a thing for spiders.
In fact, there are some lessons that you can learn from them, which relates pretty well to the world of marketing.
Michelle Obama at the DNC (courtesy of AP Images)
[This post was updated twice on end March 2015 and 27 July 2016]
Michelle Obama brought the house down at the Democratic National Convention this year. Her wonderful speech affirming Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was widely lauded as one of the best speeches made in the ongoing race for the President of the United States, with elections slated for 8 November 2016.
Some have even proclaimed that she was the star of the show that night – and she isn’t even a politician by any measure of the word!