Business and management articles | Cooler Insights

March 30, 2007 • Blog • 4 comments

Recently tackled as part of Nexus 2007, “Crowdsourcing the Media” looked at how citizen journalism was changing the dynamics of the media landscape. It saw social media provocateur Kevin Lim moderating a session with online media luminaries Kathy Teo of CNET Networks, Jennifer Lewis of SPH‘s STOMP, and James Seng, Editor extraordinaire of tomorrow.sg (Left to right above).

Discussions centred around citizen journalism and its various forms (youtube, wikipedia etc) and included fascinating insights into how CNET and STOMP operated. As Jennifer puts it, there tend to be more “loser-generated” rather than “user-generated” content, and she does get her fair share of junk being MMS-ed and SMS-ed to her via 75557.

Web 2.0 in a Nutshell

March 27, 2007 • Blog • no comments

Nat Torkington doing his 2.0-ish thang

At the recent Nexus 2007, Nathan Torkington, crowd favourite and Perl guru from O’Reilly Media, spoke about Disruption, Change, and Opportunity. In case you do not know, its founder Tim O’ Reilly coined the term Web 2.0 and have been in the business of technology trendspotting for quite a number of years. Nat cited key developments in the technology landscape over the decades:

1988 – X Windows Documentation

10 Tips to Hit the Headlines

February 20, 2007 • Public Relations • 9 comments

This is a rehash of something I wrote for a major national newspaper more than two years ago. I have tweaked it to be more comprehensive, with the general principles remaining the same.

Of course, this doesn’t guarantee coverage everytime, but if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again!

Word Of Mouth in a Nutshell

February 15, 2007 • Blog • 9 comments

Word of Mouse in Action!

I am currently reading the Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing, a book by George Silverman, which I borrowed from the National Library. Fascinating stuff in there with some explanation of how one can make Word Of Mouth (WOM) marketing work.

Let me highlight two key learning points. First is the Buying Decision Process. Those who studied Marketing 101 may be familiar with this. The stages are as follows:

20/20 Vision – 10 Wacky Ideas for Opticians

February 10, 2007 • Business and Management • 25 comments

Two out of three in my family wears specs!

I’ve never revealed it before, but I am a closet consultant. I love to provide business and marketing advice to people. After so many years working with entrepreneurs, media, lifestyle and tourism businesses, I do have some thoughts welling in my head. Whether they take it or not is another thing altogether of course.

Let’s start with the optical business. It is a booming business, with 80% of adult Singaporeans being shortsighted and us having one of the highest myopia rates in the world. What can opticians (like eastcoastlife‘s hubby Chris) do to make themselves stand out clearly from the competition?

Making Purple Cows Sneeze

January 19, 2007 • Book Reviews • 4 comments

Lately, I have been reading a little more than usual. Have only just picked up Purple Cow by Seth Godin.

It isn’t exactly brand new but some of its insights are still worth considering.

7 As of Marketing Experiences

January 12, 2007 • Business and Management, Public Relations • 1 comment

Sprite Shower – a great example of experiential marketing (courtesy of Exact Drive)

How do you market a theme park, museum, or holiday resort? Do the traditional 4 Ps of Product, Price, Place and Promotion still work?

The answer certainly lies less in your marketing mix and more in what I’d call your Experience Mix.

November 23, 2006 • Blog • 2 comments

Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba has created the 4 Fs of citizen marketers. This is an elegant idea which distills some of the types of bloggers and new media activists you find in the blogosphere.

How Analogies and Metaphors Uplifts Your Content

November 9, 2006 • Content Marketing • 2 comments

An example of an advertising analogy and metaphor

Have you wondered why certain speakers and writers can bring their ideas across so elegantly? How do they transform a complex (and sometimes obscure) concept into one which we can see in our heads with such clarity and definition?

The answer lies in their ability to to tell stories with rich and powerful analogies, allegories and metaphors.

We, the Citizen Journalists of Singapore