marginally subversive

Nostalgia: As I finish my last days in Universal McCann

Eight years which started in October 1999 and started with my boarding a Vietnam Airlines flight to Ho Chi Minh City from Manila:  That was the length of time that I spent in the Universal McCann.  I was proud of what I have achieved in those eight years - but somehow, I cannot help ask myself if I did the right things always.

• When I left Vietnam in September 2001, was I too selfish and scared of the things that could unfold further in the market?
• When I left the network in September 2002 to join another company, did I make the right decision?  Obviously not... since a mere 8 months later, I was back in Vietnam to officially launch the office.
• When I left Vietnam - again - in 2004, did I leave before I could have done the best that I could?  Did I make myself heard enough?

And as I leave now to pursue a new track in my career and start a new chapter in my life, I am bugged by the questions:  Could I have done more?  Could I have made my voice heard more?  Could I have been more aggressive and more intelligent and wiser and better in how I did my job?  Have I been remarkable?  Have I been better?  Could I have done more and more to raise the profile of the company?  Could I have been better?

I guess I won't know.

I wonder if when all is done anyone heard my voice...
But from the start, we have no choice. Our journeys just begin
I'll never know if I was right.  Did I fight hard enough?
Or when the battles grew too rough, should I have given in?
But here I stand and swear to you: I did the best that I could do
I know my voice was just a whisper.  But someone may have heard
There were nights the moon above me stirred. And let me grab ahold
My hands have touched the gold.

Gold
Music: Frank Wildhorn
Lyrics: Nan Knighton

Are these insecurities?  I don't think so. 

Perhaps, it is my commitment to being remarkable, to being the best that I could be, to be able to deliver only the thing that can only be delivered by me - perhaps it is that part of me talking and thinking all these thoughts.

I bring with me memories - and a lot of things that I have learned along the way:  good and bad.

Most of all, I learned that people are people wherever you go.  I discovered, lost, and re-discovered the good in people - whilst I also caught glimpse of the devious nature of the human and how cunning, wily, and manipulative the human can be.

The journey's just begun.

WPP and Open Workspace Environment

This is really funny...

And given that Universal McCann has just moved offices, perhaps we should consider creating some sort of a similar video.

(Hey...  This is a serious suggestion!)

 

Technorati tags: WPP, Openspace Work Environment, Funny, Universal McCann, UM Singapore, Interpublic Group

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From the Age of Information to the Age of Info- and Intelligence-Management and Deployment

Seth Godin in his blog says that: 

For now, the data is far far ahead of the tools.

Which started to make me think:  Is it the same for marketing communications companies?  Is it the same for marketing departments and clients?  Is it the same for businesses?

My stint in a consultancy role has given me a lot of access to different information sets - from primary research that I have personally designed or my team has steered, from robust secondary data sources, from information- and knowledge-banks, from clients' own research databases - in the quest for knowledge.

I am of the belief that within marketing companies there resides a lot of information. 

And it won't go away.

We've long talked about this age to be all about the age of information.  I would agree to that.  But I would go even further:  The age of information is about to end.  The age of how we handle, manage, and deploy these information is upon us.

The amount of information that is available on the web is phenomenal - and that consumers are willing to share their lives online - through blogs, through twitter.com, through facebook - is increasing the quality of the kinds of information that are available online.

I was recently asked by a colleague about twitter and what it is for:  I said I don't know.  All I know is that it's people sharing their lives - moment by moment - to the whole world.  And if someone could make sense of these golden nuggets of information, we will have created a great platform of understanding why people twitter and make sense of the information therein.

Talking to Singaporean Opinion Leaders One Thursday Evening...

I sat in a group discussion (and boy, I hate group discussions - but this one I truly loved) amongst opinion leaders in Singapore.  We had a discussion guide prepared - as all good moderators should do.  But in the first 15 minutes of the session, my colleague and I knew we would get more if we let the discussion flow rather than stick to some strict guidelines and theories of "good group moderation".

And we got a lot.

One of the things that came out of the group:  How these opinion leaders hated those websites or ads that are trying too hard to catch your attention - and how sometimes, those seemingly simple - yet intelligent - ads and websites become a hit.

Here's a group of individuals - all of them opinion-leaders in their own cliques - talking about simplicity and how simplicity is preferred.

There was one who said that "I like the Mac because it's simple - easy to use, you don't need to download stuff every now and then.  I like it because when I sit in front of my Mac - all I want to do is do my stuff.  Not update my PC or my laptop or my virus scanner. I just want to do what I want to do."

There was another who said that "the secret of Google's success was its simplicity.  You go to Google to search.  You don't go to Google to see ads.  You search.  The same is true with their email.  You go to Gmail.Com to email.  Not look at ads.  Their ads now inside the emails?  Man, it's like intruding into your conversations!"

And there was another who said "I have apps that block ads on my PC - all ads - and I have a friend who's trying to look for a way to block text-ads.  I have my flash player turned off - so no animation.  Please - I am bombarded by ads everyday.  I go to the web for some peace and quiet - I don't do ads."

Facebook amongst these people are a big thing.  But it's also losing its touch.  "I wonder if Facebook is going the way of Google - you know, cluttered with text ads and more ads or those marketeers who try to get you to include them in your network." 

For now, Facebook's value in the lives of these opinion leaders is still high - we saw strong indications of Facebook's ability to create affinity with its audiences by delivering something relevant to these opinion-leaders who are well-networked, well-connected, and outspoken.

We also heard about their reservations about the evolution of Facebook.

Facebook is now a brand owned by the people that use Facebook.  Facebook is now owned by its users - and guess what?  They are concerned about what's going to happen next in Facebook.

Facebook is a classic case of a brand evolving (really fast!) before our very eyes.  Right now, it has that special relationship with its audiences.  In creating its future, Facebook ought to heed what its users are saying:  "I Facebook because it's Facebook...  Once it is no longer Facebook (for me), time to reconsider my options..."

Technorati tags: Research Methodology, Facebook, Activities, Insights, Singapore, Social-Networking Sites

del.icio.us tags: Research Methodology, Facebook, Activities, Insights, Singapore, Social-Networking Sites

Good Enough and Excellent Websites

I was about to write a rant about Seth Godin's entry on "how to build good-enough websites" when I read his next entry on "how to create a great website".  The rant would have been around the idea of "why bother building something that's not great in the morass of the web?  Why bother doing something - creating something, getting involved in something - that is simply "good-enough" and not "great" and not "remarkable"?"

Coming from Seth Godin, who, in The Dip, wrote about being excellent, remarkable, stellar, and about Zipf's Law, it was quite unnerving (for a fan, at least) to see that he's now writing about "good-enough" things.

But thank God he wrote another one about building great websites.

The beauty of great websites (not that I am an expert in building them - look at this blog!) is that it doesn't have to be full of the latest tech stuff.  It doesn't have to be filled with animation, with flash, with the whole shebang.  Sometimes, simplicity in and of itself commands greatness.  It's not just the design - it's also the overall relevance of the website.

Anyway, my take is simple - If it's not going to be great, it's probably not worth doing.

And Seth Godin's advice on how to build great websites are very relevant - not just in creating websites, but in creating something great whether they are ads, media plans, communications plans, marketing plans, business plans, business vision and mission statements, living...

It's all about being great.  And excellent.  In all things one does.

1. Fire the committee.

2. Change the interaction.

3. Less. Fewer words, fewer pages, less fine print.

4. What works, works. Theory is irrelevant.

5. Patience.

6. Measure.

7. Insight is good, clever is bad. Many websites say, “look at me.” Your goal ought to be to say, “here’s what you were looking for.”

8. If you hire a professional: hire a great one. The best one.

9. One voice, one vision.

10. Don’t settle.

Technorati tags: Seth Godin, Great Websites, Being Excellent, Being Remarkable

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Google wins in blind search test... but not that significantly

The good news:  In a  blind test where participants where to use three unidentified, unbranded search engines and vote for the ones with the best results, Google won with 51%.

The bad news:  It only won 51% of the votes.  Live Search results had 35% and Yahoo had 30%.  Given that Google's success had been built on search - and that it has been always been believed and presumed that Google leads the pack tremendously, it only garnered 51% of the votes. 

The report from C|NET News which I picked up had this to say:

That's according to the results of a poll created last week by the Google Operating System blog. Participants could try out three unidentified search engines and vote which had the best results. The results are in and 51 percent of the more than 2,000 people who voted said Google had the best results. That was followed by 35 percent for Live Search and 30 percent for Yahoo. In comments to the blog post people said they were surprised Microsoft was ahead of Yahoo, but also surprised Google's percentage wasn't higher.

From the Google Operating System Blog, there were a lot comments on the results.

How do I interpret these results?

I have always liked blind tests as a methodology (specially, double blind tests where even the researchers don't know who get what!).  I think it removes a lot of bias - prior knowledge, branding, marketing, etc. - when applied in the world of marketing and consumer research.  Of course, it's not perfect, but there is still some nugget of usable information that can be transformed into insights in these tests.

But here's my take:  Could it be that the perceived popularity and dominance of Google in search is just that - perceived popularity and dominance?  That when one removes all hype, branding (Google - regardless of the simplicity of its site and its services and the absence of big marketing campaign - has in fact built a very strong brand!), and the buzz - and everything is at a level playing field amongst consumers - Google loses its appeal.

My take is I guess simplistic yet I think worth a think:  Could this be all about media as brands?  Let's not even get into user-experience and all.  Just media as brands.  It's simple.  Google commands something as a brand.  Yahoo does the same.  MSN does the same. 

And all these are part of a virtuous cycle that feeds on itself.

If one is to choose, brand impacts and effects dominate in the consumers' choice.  (So much for rational choices!)  But when debranded, removed of all icons that could influence the choice - that's when real "products" and "results" come into play.

[OK, I am not an algorithm expert - and even if you presented me the Google algorithm and the Yahoo algorithm and the Live Search algorithms, I still won't be able to find the differences across them (and in fact, tell apart which one is which).]

When "Atlas Shrugged"...

I swear—by my life and my love of it—that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.

When I was younger - 15 or 16, to be exact - and was taking my philosophy classes at the Ateneo, I had a chance encounter at the library with Ayn Rand's books.  It took me weeks - and lots of trips to the library to renew my library card - to finish Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.  In between classes, projects, case studies, and academic readings, Ayn Rand's books gave me a 'break' - it was all conscious breaks, however.

It was all worth it.

For some reason, I was enamoured by the speech of John Galt of Atlas Shrugged - to the point that in my philosophy of morality, I had an argument with my professor about Ayn Rand, Immanuel Kant, and Schiller.  (Of course, he won - he had a Ph D in Philosophy whilst I was just trying hard to be philosophical... Haha!)

For years, since I left the academia, I never got back to Ayn Rand until today.

And rereading Atlas Shrugged - particularly the speech of John Galt at this blog - it became apparent to me why it had so much an impact on me.

I have since mellowed down - the messiahnic and "infallible/impenetrable" complex that adolescents are wont to have have all waned.  I have since tempered my idealism - consciously or unconsciously, I don't know.

What makes the re-reading of the speech special at this point in time is somehow far deeper than when I was younger.  These days, I see this speech as a declaration of excellence - the drive, the admission, the unabashed commitment to excellence and being remarkable.  No, not perfectionism - but being remarkable and being the best that I could be.

Here is the part of John Galt's speech addressed to those who have yet to accept who they are - and from my point of view, to those who are yet to accept their ability to be excellent and to those who are apologetic (seemingly) for being excellent and wanting to be excellent.

The last of my words will be addressed to those heroes who might still be hidden in the world, those who are held prisoner, not by their evasions, but by their virtues and their desperate courage.

My brothers in spirit, check on your virtues and on the nature of the enemies you’re serving. Your destroyers hold you by means of your endurance, your generosity, your innocence, your love—the endurance that carries their burdens—the generosity that responds to their cries of despair—the innocence that is unable to conceive of their evil and gives them the benefit of every doubt, refusing to condemn them without understanding and incapable of understanding such motives as theirs—the love, your love of life, which makes you believe that they are men and that they love it, too. But the world of today is the world they wanted; life is the object of their hatred.

... don’t exhaust the greatness of your soul on achieving the triumph of the evil of theirs. Do you hear me … my love?    

"In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice this world to those who are its worst. In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved his title. Do not lose your knowledge that man’s proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads. Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it’s yours.

...

You will win when you are ready to pronounce the oath I have taken at the start of my battle—and for those who wish to know the day of my return, I shall now repeat it to the hearing of the world:

I swear—by my life and my love of it—that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.

 

Technorati tags: John Galt, Excellence, Being Remarkable, Remarkable, Seth Godin

patterns, not people...

I have been reading the book The Social Atom by Mark Buchanan.  I have not finished it - but it's proving to be a worthwhile investment.  One of the things that hit me is his statement on "observe patterns, not people".  It is somewhere in the first three chapters of the book.

I am a psychology major.  Whilst I am proud to be one, I really couldn't say without blinking that the psychology-training I received was as rigorous as can be.  It was more humanistic, more qualitative, more "Rogerian", "Jungian", and well, "Freudian" than say, biological or neurological or even metrics-orientated.

Couple that with the ongoing debate in my past academic circles on "psychology as a science".  For something to be a science, it has to be 'replicable' - but the problem with replicating something in psychology is very complex - since every individual is different, we cannot replicate feelings, emotions, etc.  (Of course, I was on the side of "yes, psychology is indeed a science!")

Anyway, Buchanan's book is so far a great read.  And I am beginning to revisit my thoughts in university about "watching, measuring, observing people". 

Which of course, is now beginning to be watching patterns.

the sound of one hand clapping...

i sprained my brain today.

it was like being asked to imagine the sound of one hand clapping.

what is the sound of one hand clapping?

Filipino Doctors, Professionals, Racism and Bigotry

In an episode of "Desperate Housewives", one of the characters asks her doctor "OK, before we go any further, can I check these diplomas? Just to make sure they aren't, like, from some med school in the Philippines?"

Excuse me. 

But as a pre-medicine student myself and someone who wanted to be a medical doctor and in fact, got accepted to attend - yes - one of the major medical universities in the Philippines, this is an insult.

In fact, it is not just an insult to doctors from the Philippines - it is an insult to all Filipino professionals who have graduated from any university in the Philippines.

I graduated from the Ateneo de Manila University - and just for the information of the writers of Desperate Housewives, Ateneo is one of the best-run universities in the world.  So are the rest - the University of the Philippines, the University of Santo Tomas (one of the oldest universities in the world), De La Salle University, University of the East, San Beda College - and a whole lot more other tertiary, academic institutions.

In order for me to get my degree from the Ateneo, I need not only be knowledgeable in my chosen specialization - I also had to be good in Philosophy, in Theology, in English, in Filipino, in Literature, in a "foreign, non-English" language.  We had to take all of these whilst we maintain our scholastic standing in 'specialization subjects'.  And our GPAs - which we call Quality Point Indices (QPIs) - are monitored year on year.

True, there might be - and there are - some who simply want to get by and whose simple objective is to pass their subjects and get out of "university hell" with a diploma. 

But there are some of us - in fact, I would believe, a lot of us - who strive to be excellent in whatever field that we decided to pursue.  There are some of us who never stop learning.  There are some of us who proceed to Harvard, to Stanford, to the University of Chicago, to the London School of Economics, to other research centers that make a difference in the world.  There are some of us who go on and climb the corporate ladder - inside and outside our home country.

And there are some of us who dedicate our lives to service - raising kids that are not our own, cleaning and managing households that are not ours, nursing patients back to health in spite of them not being a part of our immediate family, constructing buildings that we will never live in.  They are perhaps even more deserving of respect because they give themselves wholeheartedly to serve people who are not at all related to them by blood - "service by choice".

We deserve respect.  Filipino professionals deserve respect.

And we deserve more than an apology.

Saying "there was no intent to disparage the integrity of any aspect of the medical community in the Philippines," the producers of a television show that insulted health workers here offered their "sincere apologies" to Filipinos on Wednesday.

In an episode aired Sept. 30, "Desperate Housewives" character Susan asks her doctor: "OK, before we go any further, can I check these diplomas? Just to make sure they aren't, like, from some med school in the Philippines?"

"Sorry" just don't cut it, ABC.

 

Technorati tags: Filipinos, Racism, Bigotry, ABC, Advertising planning, Activism, Beliefs

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Smart Economy: Predicting the impacts of any new technology

This blog entry from Walter Derzko is very interesting because I have always believed that nobody - not even the best in their fields - can predict the future with 100% accuracy.  Nobody, for example, saw the coming of age of MySpace, Facebook and Twitter - and how Google could monetize their services.  My belief is that we cannot foresee the future - but by observing what is happening now and why and how these things are happening, evolving, and expanding, we could catch a glimpse of what may and could be in the future.  The driving forces behind such shifts are far more important than the actual technology that will empower these shifts.

Mr. Derzko summarizes some of the common sources of errors that we (and including me) are guilt of when we look at new technology.  Below are his takes on the common errors that cloud our judgment when we look at new technologies (and I quote verbatim from his blog):

• The early hype error. In the stort term, marketers, promoters and eager inventors  seem to overestimate the impacts of any new technology and in the long term underestimate such impacts and consequences (see the Gartner Hype curves)
• The replacement hype error - the belief that new technology will  replace the existing incumbent technology & that this will happen relatively fast. In reality competing technologies often coexist over a long period of time (i.e. Radio & TV)
• The enhancement error-The belief that new technology will only solve old problems & supplement existing technological systems. Instead new technologies, especially platform or core technologies often lay the groundwork for entirely new systems and new resulting systemic problems.  (ie the electric motor for the railway, the car for the roadway infrastructure, the PC for the Internet, nanotech & biotech  for our bodies "intra-structure" (the Human Genome project, the HapMap & SNP's), the impacts of which we do not fully understand yet.
• The panacea error-The mistaken belief that new technology will function as a panacea for various social problems
• The patterning and sense-making error-The difficulty of seeing new important links between seemingly unrelated and different fields of technology, especially in cases where this novel combination of fields is precisely what will offer major accelerated development opportunities
• The social impacts error-Often people who have tried to predict the future have become bogged down in the actual technology and neglected the economic and social aspects.
• The prisoners of our times error-That without realizing it, people tend to be prisoners of the spirit of their times ( Zeitgeist), erroneously believing that the big issues of today will also be the big issues of tomorrow
• The decision criteria error-The belief that only rational economic considerations are the only factors behind that choice of one technology over another. However, for many people, seemingly irrational considerations determine such choices
• The information gap error-The information on which science and technology (S&T) foresight studies are based on is often insufficient. Technology development is not linear, transparent or fully predictable, with surprise development coming out of left field such as the secret work that is done in the military or a new startup working in stealth  mode before it goes public with a breakthrough. Entrepreneurs have to deal with many unknowns -complexity, uncertainty, equivocality, ambiguity, the trap of dichotomous thinking or dichotomy, contradiction or paradox and infoglut.

I think anyone and everyone who is interested in what's going to happen in the future should take heed.

 

Technorati tags: Futurists, Future, Predictions, Projections, New Technologies, Innovations, Diffusion of Technology, Technology Adoption, Trendwatching, Trends, Technology Trends, MEdia Agency, Marketing Sciences, Marketing Planning, Media Planning

Going through The Dip

The Dip is probably one of the best books that I have read so far this year.  I liked Seth Godin's way of writing - very readable.  And there's something about the way he wrote this book that every time I read it (I read it again over the weekend, by the pool, whilst recovering from a hangover) I find something new about it.

Anyway, I stumbled upon this entry from Seth Godin's entry about the winner of the BGT/Britain's Got Talent program - and how the winner overcame his own dip and pushed on to be the best.  It reminded me of Kurt Nilsen, the "World Idol" winner from sometime ago - who was criticized for his "unappealing look" but went on to become, well, the winner, besting even Kelly Clarkson from the US.

In this entry, Mr. Godin writes:

The market is a harsh critic. It's not always fair and it can be demoralizing. Fortunately for us, Paul ignored all of them until he had pushed through the Dip.

I couldn't agree more.  The market - whatever that market is [the office, the world, the 'experts', the executives, the bosses, the human resource department, the supposedly 'talent managers' in each office] - is a harsh critic.  Heck, even shareholders of a company are a harsh critic - encaging CEO to play the "results by quarter" game rather than really looking forward into the future.

But the winner just went on.  As we all should when we encounter the dip.

I have encountered my dip - and realized it was a cul-de-sac.  And that made all the difference in my career.  As I set out to carve a new niche in my life, a new path as someone beyond communications planning and consultancy, I am excited and fearful - and well, still determined and committed to do my best. 

Regardless.

 

Technorati tags: Seth Godin, Marketing, Communications, Strategies, The Dip

Seth's Blog

Seth Godin simply has the talent of distilling marketing thoughts into one-liners that capture what text books and case studies try to impart on its readers.  In his latest blog entry, he talks about constant queues outside Avis's booth (I guess in NY?) and why other competitors to Avis in the area are not capitalizing on this.

He distills his observations and recommendations into these simple steps: 

Attract people in trouble-->Help solve their problems-->Build your reputation-->Sales happen.

Simple enough, isn't it?

Technorati tags: Marketing Communications Planning Media Planning CommunicationsPlanning SethGodin, Seth Godin