Have a heritage feast at IMD this year! (courtesy of Shaun Wong)
Ever wondered what a “Kamcheng” is used for? Wanna dive into more than 50,000 pieces of vintage toys across two centuries? How about flying a real rubber-powered aircraft?
Well, you can do all that and much much more at International Museum Day 2008. Yes, it is the time of the year again for all things heritage and museums.
Hell Hath No Fury… (courtesy of Dinghy Blonde)
If you think being a personal blogger is difficult, wait till you try corporate blogging. It isn’t just a walk in the park. Just ask Coleman (a fellow media socialist), who wrote this excellent post on making your corporate blogs succeed.
But then, isn’t blogging just about shooting your mouth/fingers off and saying whatever you want to say. After all, it is the age of conversations, and everybody is a citizen journalist. Besides, people don’t want to just hear the filtered, fluffed up, fantastic stuff from the gatekeepers (like yours truly).
Following a tip-off from Jessica Greenwood at the recent Verge event, I went to do some online sleuthing to find out more about China’s ambitious plans to create the world’s largest virtual world.
In case you do not know, the number of internet users in China has already eclipsed that of the United States, and blogging has taken the huge country by storm. More and more Chinese are relying on online sources of information, opinions and news. E-commerce has also taken off with predictions that more than a million internet entrepreneurs may be born.
Got clued in to this brilliant revelation by Steve Rubel on how most of us are still living in the Jurassic Age when it comes to staying constantly connected via a myriad of digital tools and networks. Yep, that’s right, according to the chart below (courtesy of Nortel), only 16% of us are truly hyperconnected and about 48% are either passively online or hardly at all.
Source: IDC/Nortel White Paper – The Hyperconnected: Here They Come!
This shows that despite what some of the pundits say, we are still living largely in an old-fashioned, traditional media oriented, physically based world.
Is humour in advertising overrated? Or a fundamental element of attracting customers to your brand? Well, it depends on how they are applied.
Anybody who has watched the following VISA commercials would agree that they are highly entertaining yet memorable. It helps that they have a sterling cast and a certain style which makes them unmistakably VISA.
An example is this one with Catherine Zeta-Jones…
The horrific Sichuan Earthquake left many dead or injured (courtesy of szbluewater)
The recent spate of cataclysmic events happening around our region is simply awful. To date, more than 50,000 people in the Sichuan area are either dead, missing or buried, and Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar has left more than two million homeless and tens of thousands dead. As we flip the papers, page after page describes the sad story of human tragedy caused by these natural/ manmade (some say that the cyclone is due to global warming) catastrophes.
From what I understand, both incidents are still unfolding. In other words, they will continue to dominate media spaces for quite some time.
Henderson Waves Bridge courtesy of chooyutshing
After viewing the launch of the Southern Ridges by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong last night on Channel News Asia, I felt an inner voice tell me that I need to run up those hills. Stretching across from Alexandra Road (Gillman area) to Telok Blangah Park and Mount Faber, there were three new linkways stretching 1.3 km long which range in height from three to 18 metres high. At the highest point across Henderson Road, it is about 36 metres above the road.
From my home at the Bukit Purmei area, I ran this morning along Telok Blangah Rise, all the way to Henderson Road, and then through Depot Road till I reached Alexandra Road near the old Gillman Camp area. Gazing upwards at the Alexandra Arch, I felt an great attraction in scaling up those heights, even though I knew that it wasn’t exactly child’s play to run up those steel structures. I wasn’t alone though as there were many families, silver-haired folks, and youths up there enjoying the breathtaking view of lush forests and beautiful landscape.
As a botanist by training specialising in tropical ecology, I have always harboured a deep interest in nature. One of my favourite haunts was the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve – a small 410 acre area of lush primary rainforest, and probably the only place in Singapore where you can see tall towering dipterocarps in all their glory. Housing over 840 species of flowering plants and 500 species of fauna together with the Central Catchment area, Bukit Timah Nature Reserve was established way back in 1883 by the British Straits Settlement government. Dr David Bellamy, a renowned conservationist, once pointed out that the number of plant species growing in the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve is more than that in the whole of North America! It is indeed a green jewel in our concrete jungle – a natural oasis in the hectic city.
To celebrate Shutdown Day (yes I switched off all computers and did not SMS or call for 24 hours) last week, I brought my wife and kid to Singapore’s highest hill (at a grand 164m tall) for a couple of hours in the morning.
Greeting us at the entrance was a visitor centre, which has fascinating specimens of animals, birds and plants on display.
In the age of increasing emphasis on individual preferences, coupled with the prevalence of social media, the traditional rules of marketing would need to change. We are no longer talking about market segments that aggregate themselves neatly into discrete demographic groups, or consumer preferences that follow neat patterns. Information is available fast and free, and the general levels of trust in advertising has descended to an all-time low.
How do marketers hope to thrive in this landscape? Enter the concept of I-Marketing.
I-Marketing (or iMarketing if you prefer) is centred on the inherent quality of social relationships and consumer culture in the age of new media. The word “I” represents a clear focus on the singular person and what makes him or her tick in this day and age. It also reflects a sea-change in thinking, and moves away from the mass-produced age of television commercials and newspaper advertising to strategies that are more natural and organic, which flows better with people’s behaviours and wants.
