Participants and facilitators of the inaugural YLT in Singapore
As Facebook’s IPO continue to garner interest (both good and bad), the question on many people’s lips is this: Can Singapore produce business leaders who started young such as Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, or Bill Gates?
Well, perhaps the Young Leaders of Tomorrow (YLT) programme can help to usher the way.
Courtesy of Putting People First
Shrink that proposal. Shorten that memo. Simplify that presentation.
Do it in four pages (or less). Better yet if you can tell me what decision you need in 30 seconds flat. Starting from now…
Fantasy Parade at Everland Theme Park
“안녕하세요 (Annyeong Haseyo)!” greeted our tour guide Colin every morning, rowsing the weary coach-load of travellers during our recent holiday in Korea. With an action-packed itinerary packed into 7 days, one could hardly consider Korea as the “Land of the Morning Calm”.
Squeezing a population of 50 million packed into 100,000 square kilometres of mostly mountainous space, South Korea is both an economic and cultural miracle. With a GDP of US$1.164 trillion (2011), the “Miracle on the Han River” is fast overtaking Japan in global prominence. Korea’s tremendous influence on popular culture in terms of K-Pop and soap dramas is also unprecedented.
Source: Edelman Insights
Thanks to a blog post from Jackie Huba of Church of the Customer, I came to learn about Edelman Insights Presentation titled “Key Employee Engagement Findings from Edelman’s 2012 Trust Barometer”. From the survey results (graphic above), several facts seemed to pop out:
1) People are increasingly losing their trust in the heads of organisations like CEOs. This has dropped by a whopping 12% in 2012 compared to 2011.
Are you addicted to social networks? (courtesy of Salsafrica Blog)
I’ve just watched a TED video featuring a highly impactful talk by psychologist Sherry Turkle on how we’re all becoming increasingly connected while becoming increasingly alone.
It really set me thinking. Hard.
Courtesy of Jenny White
How can you make social media marketing work harder for you? What can you do to optimize your social media properties?
By now, almost everybody (and their dogs and cats) would have a social media presence. Be it on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, blogs or forums.
Courtesy of Tab Juice (via Brian Solis)
Thanks to a recent post by social media guru Brian Solis, I chanced upon this brilliant infographic on the psychology of social commerce.
According to the post, there are six heuristics or pillars in social commerce: social proof; authority; scarcity; like; consistency; and reciprocity.
Let me go through each of these in turn and give my layman’s take on what it means for us.
Thanks to June, Tiffany and Laura of the Coca-Cola Singapore team, I was invited to the cosy 126th birthday party for Coca-Cola held at the Dallas Restaurant and Bar at Boat Quay. As a marketer and a publicist, I’ve always admired how the world’s largest beverage company continually reinvented its flagship Coca-Cola brand despite having such a long heritage. It was fascinating to see how the brand associates itself with values such as fun, happiness and enjoyment through activities that resonate with its customers.
At the thematic party adorned with Coca-Cola’s unmistakeable reds and whites, I learned how the company continually innovated its marketing and PR efforts. Other than traditional advertising on mainstream channels, Coke experimented successfully with guerrilla marketing, emotional marketing, buzz and viral marketing, co-branding, sponsorship (Coke has sponsored the Olympics movement for 84 years in total!) as well as immersive experience rich events and showcases (such as the party itself). The company further embraced its role as a corporate citizen by sponsoring and encouraging sustainable and civic-minded practices such as recycling and caring for the less fortunate.
Courtesy of Royal Caribbean International
Launching its maiden voyage from the new Marina Bay Cruise Centre Singapore, Royal Caribbean International’s Voyager of the Seas weighs 137,276 tons and can carry a staggering 3,840 guests at full capacity. At 1,020 feet long with 14 passenger decks, the colossal vessel is Asia’s largest luxury cruise ship, serviced by an international crew of some 1,176 staff.
Debunking conventional wisdom that human beings are rational and logical beings, Predictably Irrational by behavioural economist Dan Ariely provides an entertaining and enlightening read in the market-tested tradition of authors like Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner (Freakonomics series), Malcolm Gladwell, and Ori and Ron Brafman (Sway). Using the results of empirical research conducted at MIT and other university campuses, Ariely explains why we do the things we do despite their contrary effects on our health, wealth and long-term success.
Written in a light-hearted, jargon-free prose, Predictably Irrational takes us through several themes. They include the fallacy of supply and demand (ie why pricing can be so arbitrary in certain markets), the overwhelming power of FREE, the danger of turning social norms into market norms (or why you shouldn’t pay your mother-in-law for cooking a delicious family dinner), the effects of expectations (what you visualise is what you get), and two chapters on honesty and dishonesty in humans, among others.