My brain has a lot of knowledge in it. I kid you not. However, my brain doesn't seem to retain much Trivia. For two weeks in a row I've attended the Howl At The Moon (HATM)Singapore Trivia Night. I haven't fared well. The "Groovey Ganders" remain confused.
It's a very entertaining scene - two pianists and a comedian asking you questions which leave you completely baffled. Well, not everyone is of course. There are the "intellectuals" up the back who challenge that a question has THREE, not ONE answer and so on... (what's more they call their team "Satan's Underpants"). The buggers actually won by one point to another team called "Multiple Scoregasms". They scored a case of beer. Good let em get drunk and play!! (hee hee)
The penny dropped for the irrepressible TJ, "Singapore's black Ang Moh", our irreverent host, as to the relationship between Trivia and Music last night. He rang me today to express his excitement about it. He nearly had a scoregasm himself over Scott (the leader of the band) devising an Usher song played in a Beatles tune manner. He left it up to Scott to come up with the final question in this manner. Most of the audience couldn't tell... well we didn't know the lyrics to Usher's songs did we!
People get frustrated that the HATM Trivia Night isn't presented in categories. But we don't want to copy other people's stuff. We are unique in that we have live musicians playing TV theme songs, tunes, and baffling us by mixing up the lyrics with weird tunes. Yes, we are rapidly evolving as a Music Trivia Night.
So if you think you know all about music, come on down to Howl At The Moon, near Emerald Hill, next Tuesday by 7.30pm. You will be assessed by your Team Name. See you there. I'm the baffled one at the front.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Wondering when the scales will tip for PR V2.0
An online friend asked me tonight why I keep mentioning Facebook in a business context when he sees it as purely social, and Linked In as business.
In principle I agree. Most of my family and friends are networked with me on Facebook and not on LinkedIn.
But it's all changed in the last month. A colleague sold out a tattoo show using Facebook that was expecting 1,500 visitors and they got 15,000. He chose 10 strategic people to give the message to, and those people shared, and their friends shared and so on until 15,000 people turned up for the tattoo show.
Last month, Facebook changed their layout, why? So many people were displeased with the new layout, but the reasons behind it were strategic. The lines between business and pleasure online are blurring, people. Just like they have offline. Facebook gave us the new layout to better sync information with Twitter, with Linked In, with Plaxo for example.
So now I am wondering, how long is it going to take for corporate marketing managers to understand that digital PR is THE way to do business now?
SEO, SEM and Social Networking are time consuming. That's why you need to outsource it to people who have the time and know how to do it. That's no longer the developers, the webmasters and others, but those who can craft your brand positioning. Yep, the PR managers.
If you need one who knows it - call me ;-)
cheers, Illka
In principle I agree. Most of my family and friends are networked with me on Facebook and not on LinkedIn.
But it's all changed in the last month. A colleague sold out a tattoo show using Facebook that was expecting 1,500 visitors and they got 15,000. He chose 10 strategic people to give the message to, and those people shared, and their friends shared and so on until 15,000 people turned up for the tattoo show.
Last month, Facebook changed their layout, why? So many people were displeased with the new layout, but the reasons behind it were strategic. The lines between business and pleasure online are blurring, people. Just like they have offline. Facebook gave us the new layout to better sync information with Twitter, with Linked In, with Plaxo for example.
So now I am wondering, how long is it going to take for corporate marketing managers to understand that digital PR is THE way to do business now?
SEO, SEM and Social Networking are time consuming. That's why you need to outsource it to people who have the time and know how to do it. That's no longer the developers, the webmasters and others, but those who can craft your brand positioning. Yep, the PR managers.
If you need one who knows it - call me ;-)
cheers, Illka
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Talking about Digital Communications
There's been a lot of buzz lately about Public Relations 2.0.
This involves getting your public relations consultant to manage your digital communications. That is how you communicate and what information people receive about you. Which is essential, because your public relations efforts should be placing messages about you in strategic places.
These days, you need to carefully consider what your blogs say, what people blog about you, the inbound links to your website, your keywords, your URLs, how you optimise how people find you through your search engine among other elements.
It is all very time consuming. That's why you should outsource it.
Most people are too busy in their every day jobs just getting revenue building. By outsourcing your public relations efforts, especially in the digital world, you can focus on what you do best.
This involves getting your public relations consultant to manage your digital communications. That is how you communicate and what information people receive about you. Which is essential, because your public relations efforts should be placing messages about you in strategic places.
These days, you need to carefully consider what your blogs say, what people blog about you, the inbound links to your website, your keywords, your URLs, how you optimise how people find you through your search engine among other elements.
It is all very time consuming. That's why you should outsource it.
Most people are too busy in their every day jobs just getting revenue building. By outsourcing your public relations efforts, especially in the digital world, you can focus on what you do best.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Melka: LCCs and Budget Hotels
Dennis Melka of East Pacific Capital, a founder of the Tune budget hotels chain in South East Asia spoke last Friday about the relationship between low cost carriers and budget hotels.
Low Cost Carriers have become a mega trend in the past eight years. In 2001 there were two budget carrier planes and in 2009 there are one hundred and twelve.
According to Melka, the budget carriers did not take market share from the established carriers. In fact, they created market share, some forty million new travellers.
In Southeast Asia (SE Asia), the big hotel chains shunned catering to the low end of the market, so there was no organised, safe branded budget hotels of value to cater to this new market segment.
The founders of AirAsia identified this opportunity and called on Melka to further research it and to establish what is now Tune hotels.
What Melka found was that there was no reason a clean, safe, family product for under USD50 wouldn’t work in SE Asia. In fact, he found that at USD25 a room night, there was a 99% decrease in product value from a USD100 room.
With a market opportunity of forty million travellers, Melka, along with 3 team members, set about planning a chain of budget hotels. Having established where he wanted his price point to be, he then focused on driving down costs for a product that he intended to last for twenty to forty years. How could he differentiate Tune from other hotels?
Melka realised is that 80% of customers in regular hotels did not use most of the facilities that 40% of the construction cost of the hotel. He also found that most travellers at that price point travelled with their own towels. He therefore focused on what really mattered to them: a functional room, with a great bed and a decent bathroom with a good shower. Everything else was to be outsourced.
Like low cost carriers, Melka has found ways to maximise revenue generation:
- advertising on the walls
- rental income from food and beverage and convenience stores
- towels and soaps are provided but for sales
- air conditioning is provided, at an extra charge
- in the early hotels, television is provided, at an extra charge.
In the way of marketing, Tune advertises extensively on AirAsia and Tiger Airways websites. They do not bundle with the carriers as they found that their guests prefer to buy direct, which they do over the internet.
Does Melka expect competitors to move in?
Yes. In China, and India there are several budget hotel chains that have had tremendous success. Melka says that he will stay focused on the ASEAN region. He does expect competition, however he acknowledges that the local know how of the myriad of legal tangles, building and other licences puts them at an advantage. The gestation period would take a long time.
Low Cost Carriers have become a mega trend in the past eight years. In 2001 there were two budget carrier planes and in 2009 there are one hundred and twelve.
According to Melka, the budget carriers did not take market share from the established carriers. In fact, they created market share, some forty million new travellers.
In Southeast Asia (SE Asia), the big hotel chains shunned catering to the low end of the market, so there was no organised, safe branded budget hotels of value to cater to this new market segment.
The founders of AirAsia identified this opportunity and called on Melka to further research it and to establish what is now Tune hotels.
What Melka found was that there was no reason a clean, safe, family product for under USD50 wouldn’t work in SE Asia. In fact, he found that at USD25 a room night, there was a 99% decrease in product value from a USD100 room.
With a market opportunity of forty million travellers, Melka, along with 3 team members, set about planning a chain of budget hotels. Having established where he wanted his price point to be, he then focused on driving down costs for a product that he intended to last for twenty to forty years. How could he differentiate Tune from other hotels?
Melka realised is that 80% of customers in regular hotels did not use most of the facilities that 40% of the construction cost of the hotel. He also found that most travellers at that price point travelled with their own towels. He therefore focused on what really mattered to them: a functional room, with a great bed and a decent bathroom with a good shower. Everything else was to be outsourced.
Like low cost carriers, Melka has found ways to maximise revenue generation:
- advertising on the walls
- rental income from food and beverage and convenience stores
- towels and soaps are provided but for sales
- air conditioning is provided, at an extra charge
- in the early hotels, television is provided, at an extra charge.
In the way of marketing, Tune advertises extensively on AirAsia and Tiger Airways websites. They do not bundle with the carriers as they found that their guests prefer to buy direct, which they do over the internet.
Does Melka expect competitors to move in?
Yes. In China, and India there are several budget hotel chains that have had tremendous success. Melka says that he will stay focused on the ASEAN region. He does expect competition, however he acknowledges that the local know how of the myriad of legal tangles, building and other licences puts them at an advantage. The gestation period would take a long time.
Tune Hotels, CNI's Dean’s Distinguished Lecture Series
This morning I attended the first lecture in the Cornell-Nanyang Institute of Hospitality Management's Dean’s Distinguished Lecture Series. The lectures are well worth your time attending!
This morning, Dennis Melka, of East Pacific Capital and a founder of the budget Tune Hotels chain was the guest speaker. He spoke at length on entrepreneurship, using the Tune chain as an example. I like what he said and I paraphrase it here: "If you have a good idea, a smart idea, money will find you. In a down market, good ideas will get funded. In a bull market, good and bad ideas will get funded. The bad ideas just don't get funded in a down market".
Some other information he dished out:
Senior hospitality executives from leading organizations including the InterContinental Hotels Group, Jetstar Asia Airways, Menu Pte Ltd, East Pacific Capital, Oxley Capital Group and TMS Asia Pacific will participate in this series through to the 8th of May, 2009. The public are welcome.
This morning, Dennis Melka, of East Pacific Capital and a founder of the budget Tune Hotels chain was the guest speaker. He spoke at length on entrepreneurship, using the Tune chain as an example. I like what he said and I paraphrase it here: "If you have a good idea, a smart idea, money will find you. In a down market, good ideas will get funded. In a bull market, good and bad ideas will get funded. The bad ideas just don't get funded in a down market".
Some other information he dished out:
- 67% of Tune hotels customers are under 35
- 38% of guests make less than USD500 per month.
- 20-25% of guests are foreigners who are seeking value based accommodation, as opposed to being backpackers.
- The weekends see more leisure travellers, whilst the week accommodates business travellers.
- They charge for air conditioning, towels and soap.
- The cleaning, F&B and convenience stores are outsourced and they earn income in rent from the latter two.
- The holding company established a USD 5m property fund in third quarter 2007, along with an investment of USD18m from private equity.
- The founders expect the fund to grow within two years to 19 times the initial capital.
- The cash yield for the business is 500 to 1000 basis points multiplied over western models, which typically yield 10-15%.
- The chain currently makes 22% net profit and has no direct competitors in the region.
- Melka is devising a cashless operating system for the hotels.
- Melka has sourced a modular building method which will enable him to build a 2,500 room hotel in one week.
- Tune hotels currently use 40% less building materials than in a typical construction.
Senior hospitality executives from leading organizations including the InterContinental Hotels Group, Jetstar Asia Airways, Menu Pte Ltd, East Pacific Capital, Oxley Capital Group and TMS Asia Pacific will participate in this series through to the 8th of May, 2009. The public are welcome.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
How Twitter Changed My Life in One Week
Last week I blogged about my resistance to register for Twitter and why I suspected it was just noise. This week I’m here to tell you how it changed my life.
A week ago I was faced with the awful inevitable. I lost my biggest account to the suffering economy and along with a couple of other accounts I had dropped; I lost more than half of my monthly income in a space of three weeks. That got me thinking about how to reinvent myself in this economy.
I realised that I had to focus on what I do best. That is, EDM (newsletters and fliers for publicity), PR (I seem to get the most clippings from the web based news channels) and media relations (many of my tools and contacts are all based online). I had to re-brand my company and me I decided. Rebrand it to me.
People online know me. Sure they refer to my company, but it’s always about me and seldom about the other people in my company. So I figured that it was about time to create and launch illkagobius.com.
After my blog last week a close friend asked me “so have you quit Twitter yet?” I replied no, that I wanted to wait and see what it brought over the next week.
What did it bring? Swathes of information. I suddenly had insight into an industry that I’ve been on the fringes of for some time. What people are doing to develop the way we do business, by reaching people through electronic communication, has been an eye opener for me. You know how they share links and stuff on Facebook? Well on Twitter it happens constantly. If you have a bit of time and click through to some of the links, you learn some truly fascinating information.
I have been intrigued by articles on ‘Time Management in the Age of Social Media’ by David Allen for Business Week; I’ve learned about ‘Travel Social Bookmarking Websites’ on a blog by Ed Whiting for example.
What’s more is that I see a renaissance building. Web 2.0 and even Web 3.0 is becoming mainstream.
It also strikes me that it really doesn’t matter where you live any more. The online community brings people really close together. In your face, as we used to say as school children in Australia. Twitter offers you an opportunity to tell a huge random network of people about your business.
Which brings me to another point; initially I thought that Twitter was for people who just shared random thoughts about what they were doing at any one point in time, like having a coffee etc. On the twitter.com website they actually ask you “what are you doing now?” However almost everyone I follow uses it to communicate their business, what they are learning about and from whom and how they are applying those thoughts.
So through these newfound revelations I have launched illkagobius.com, which focuses on offering PR and media relations solutions using online tools. I launched it to the online community first through Twitter, then through Facebook, Linked In and Plaxo.
A week ago I was faced with the awful inevitable. I lost my biggest account to the suffering economy and along with a couple of other accounts I had dropped; I lost more than half of my monthly income in a space of three weeks. That got me thinking about how to reinvent myself in this economy.
I realised that I had to focus on what I do best. That is, EDM (newsletters and fliers for publicity), PR (I seem to get the most clippings from the web based news channels) and media relations (many of my tools and contacts are all based online). I had to re-brand my company and me I decided. Rebrand it to me.
People online know me. Sure they refer to my company, but it’s always about me and seldom about the other people in my company. So I figured that it was about time to create and launch illkagobius.com.
After my blog last week a close friend asked me “so have you quit Twitter yet?” I replied no, that I wanted to wait and see what it brought over the next week.
What did it bring? Swathes of information. I suddenly had insight into an industry that I’ve been on the fringes of for some time. What people are doing to develop the way we do business, by reaching people through electronic communication, has been an eye opener for me. You know how they share links and stuff on Facebook? Well on Twitter it happens constantly. If you have a bit of time and click through to some of the links, you learn some truly fascinating information.
I have been intrigued by articles on ‘Time Management in the Age of Social Media’ by David Allen for Business Week; I’ve learned about ‘Travel Social Bookmarking Websites’ on a blog by Ed Whiting for example.
What’s more is that I see a renaissance building. Web 2.0 and even Web 3.0 is becoming mainstream.
It also strikes me that it really doesn’t matter where you live any more. The online community brings people really close together. In your face, as we used to say as school children in Australia. Twitter offers you an opportunity to tell a huge random network of people about your business.
Which brings me to another point; initially I thought that Twitter was for people who just shared random thoughts about what they were doing at any one point in time, like having a coffee etc. On the twitter.com website they actually ask you “what are you doing now?” However almost everyone I follow uses it to communicate their business, what they are learning about and from whom and how they are applying those thoughts.
So through these newfound revelations I have launched illkagobius.com, which focuses on offering PR and media relations solutions using online tools. I launched it to the online community first through Twitter, then through Facebook, Linked In and Plaxo.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
A Twitter Twit
I have always had an unquenchable thirst for technology and am definitely an early adopter. I dived head first into laptops (an Amstrad for $600 in 1988), a mobile phone (I had a brick phone in 1995), PDA’s (remember the Psion?) and got into Plaxo and LinkedIn before My Space and Facebook, yet for some reason I’ve resisted Twitter.
It probably would have stayed that way if I hadn’t read an article on marketing-interactive.com today entitled “Two minute twitt-torial”.
I’ve looked at twitter.com a couple of times lately as increasingly there is more buzz about twittering. Yet I’ve procrastinated, unable to get what some of my friends on Facebook are talking about. Who needs another noisy distraction, right?
I joined today however. What sold me was the comment in the article and I quote “The best use of twitter for busy marketers and agency folk is to keep abreast of what is happening right now in your industry. If you "follow" the right people (do this by searching terms like "marketing twitter" or "agency twitter" in a search engine and you will find lists that say things like "200+ Internet Marketing gurus on Twitter". Follow these guys and you'd be surprised by the connections you can make and the great ideas and link sharing you will be exposed to.”
I searched “marketing in Asia” which was blah, and then “travel marketing” which yielded more interesting results. Before I knew it I was learning in depth about Travel SEO & Internet Marketing.
Within five minutes and before I’d even had time to “register my device” (mobile phone) or build my “profile”, I had someone random “following” me. I am now “following” such strangers as Perez Hilton, Coldplay, receiving alerts from CNN, defamer.com and yet, now I am convinced I was right all along – it is all noise.
It probably would have stayed that way if I hadn’t read an article on marketing-interactive.com today entitled “Two minute twitt-torial”.
I’ve looked at twitter.com a couple of times lately as increasingly there is more buzz about twittering. Yet I’ve procrastinated, unable to get what some of my friends on Facebook are talking about. Who needs another noisy distraction, right?
I joined today however. What sold me was the comment in the article and I quote “The best use of twitter for busy marketers and agency folk is to keep abreast of what is happening right now in your industry. If you "follow" the right people (do this by searching terms like "marketing twitter" or "agency twitter" in a search engine and you will find lists that say things like "200+ Internet Marketing gurus on Twitter". Follow these guys and you'd be surprised by the connections you can make and the great ideas and link sharing you will be exposed to.”
I searched “marketing in Asia” which was blah, and then “travel marketing” which yielded more interesting results. Before I knew it I was learning in depth about Travel SEO & Internet Marketing.
Within five minutes and before I’d even had time to “register my device” (mobile phone) or build my “profile”, I had someone random “following” me. I am now “following” such strangers as Perez Hilton, Coldplay, receiving alerts from CNN, defamer.com and yet, now I am convinced I was right all along – it is all noise.
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