Walter | Cooler Insights

To Market Or Not To Market?

March 11, 2009 • Blog • no comments

One of the greatest challenges facing communicators and marketers in the arts is the balance between satisfying artistic input and commercial (or public) interest.

How does one reach out to new customers and audiences without diluting one’s craft? Should we be setting the agenda and pushing the envelope in terms of experimenting with new art forms? Or should we cater to the most mass of markets and stick to what everybody likes to see, hear or experience?

According to some academics, the arts should be kept pure and undiluted from the transgressions of the commercial world. Artists, curators, musicians and dancers should exist in their own little bubble of creative experimentation, oblivious to the grind of dollars and cents while dreaming up that next original work of genius.

The role of marketers would then be that of publicists helping to generate the greatest amount of buzz, media coverage and advertising effectiveness. Visitors and audiences should thus be attracted towards their artistic inspirations in an organic fashion.

This is what has been termed as being “product focused”. Build it and they will come. Or arts for arts sake.

The Whats and Hows of Global Brands

November 18, 2008 • Blog • no comments

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.

Are We Living in a Flat, Spiky or Curved World?

November 9, 2008 • Business and Management • 2 comments

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.

Podcamp 2.0 and The Story of Yesterday.sg

November 3, 2008 • Blog • 5 comments

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.

Debates, Discussions and Dilemmas at DMFest 2008

November 2, 2008 • Blog • no comments

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.

The Parable of the Spider

September 21, 2008 • Blog • 6 comments

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.

How To Write a Great Speech

September 17, 2008 • Public Relations • 4 comments

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!

Author: coolerinsights