Happy New Year! In time-honoured fashion, the start of the year signifies a time for us to make our new year resolutions.
These can be as massive as writing a book, scaling Mount Everest to something more manageable like losing 10 pounds, exercising every week, or having dinner with your family every fortnight.
Courtesy of Hong Kong – a Visual Research Blog
As we celebrate the arrival of the Black Water Dragon this Chinese New Year, the fengshui masters and economists have given varying prognoses of what it’ll bring for the year.
Taking a different trajectory, I thought it’d be fun to look at the traits of this mythical beast and propose what it could possibly mean for us, with a few lessons by the side.
Zig Ziglar (courtesy of Decisive Minds)
Zig Ziglar (Hilary Hinton) may be 85 years of age, but he sure packed a lot of punch in his speeches.
A highly respected motivational speaker grounded in Christian values, Zig is known for his fiery workshops and power-packed programmes focused on motivation, success and salesmanship. He is also a champion sales trainer, having mastered the art of selling.
In a recent podcast I listened to, Zig spoke about the story of the pump.
Have you used metaphors for your marketing efforts? What were the outcomes of your attempts?
An integral part of your everyday life, Analogies and Metaphors are popular storytelling methods which simplify complex ideas and imbue them with meaning. They help to make your advertisements, articles, and brand stories come alive.
Crystal Jade Golden Palace in The Paragon (courtesy of Crystal Jade)
In the restaurant-eat-restaurant world of F&B, few local brands have stood up as clearly as Crystal Jade, one of the market leaders in Singapore.
Celebrating its 20th anniversary last year with a refreshing of its identity that involved extensive refurbishments at its restaurants, Crystal Jade enjoyed a turnover of S$240 million in 2010.
Lucy wouldn’t have discovered Narnia if she didn’t open that wardrobe (courtesy of WikiNarnia)
As humans gripped by our lizard brain (aka the amygdala), our automatic reflex is to freeze in our tracks when encountering any of the following:
1) A potentially great product or service which does not have any known markets
Can you compete with the above brands on scale, distribution and price? (image source)
In the world of consumer businesses, there are probably three main ways to differentiate yourself from the hoi polloi.
These form the basis of virtually all forms of competition in marketing.
What secrets does mega-retailer Walmart hold? Is low-price retailing always good for the customer or does it exert other insidious impacts on one’s lifestyles?
The answer to those questions and more are answered in the bestselling book “The Wal-Mart Effect” authored by award winning editor of Fast Company Charles Fishman. Leaving no stone unturned, Fishman’s highly readable volume dived deeply into the massive impact exerted by Walmart, and paints a sobering and sordid picture of its true influence.
The beautifully designed Palace of the Elephants Theatre at Phuket FantaSea
Claimed to be the “Ultimate Nighttime Cultural Theme Park”, Phuket FantaSea is Thailand’s first cultural theme park located close to Kamala Beach on Phuket island. Focusing on a motley mix of “Myth, Mystery and Magic”, Phuket FantaSea blends Thailand’s exotic heritage with a carnivalesque Mardi Gras like feel that is more Vegas than Vegas itself.
Occupying a sprawling 140 acres (or approximately 57 hectares), it features the “Fantasy of a Kingdom” show in the 3,000 seat “Palace of the Elephants” theatre, a huge cavernous 4,000 seat restaurant (Golden Kinnaree Buffet Resataurant), a Tiger Jungle Adventure, the Similan Entertainment Centre featuring carnival games, and a Carnival Village offering lots of specialty retail outlets.
Source of image
Believe it or not, quitting isn’t necessarily the mark of a loser. There is a time and place for giving up. Just as there is a time and place for digging your heels in, gritting your teeth, and staying on.
Does that mean then that Napoleon Hill’s saying “a quitter never wins and a winner never quits” is moot?