loner's heaven

By talking about only letting in foreigners with higher level education to come into Singapore, you are not limiting the problem. You are depriving Singaporeans of the opportunities to climb further up their career ladder.

More social problems will arise following the influx of the foreigners into Singapore. Yes, you are doing your best to save the economy, but at the expense of your people's standards of living and the countries' national values.

In National Service you taught us to not rely on other countries to defend ourselves. But in terms of economic defence, you're relying on foreigners to help boost the economy. In times of economic downturn, these people will LEAVE you. Who're the ones who're going to stay behind for you? It's the people whom you once left behind, my dear fellow Singaporeans.

posted by yang @ 4:25 PM 1 Comments

I know blogging is such a 19th century thing now, but I don't understand why one would like to subject themselves to a character limit of 140 (No, I have nothing against Twitter).

Recently lots of things happened between Germaine and me. I just hope things will turn out well. There are some things I really like about her, she's really a nice and kind-hearted girl and I feel really at ease when I'm with her.

But somehow I can't seem to resonate with her way of thinking sometimes. She's 4 years younger, that's probably why. Perhaps she thinks of me in this way too, I'm not sure. Maybe she really wishes to complete her studies and starting working cos she's really fed up with school? Or perhaps she just has an anger / stress management issue.

It's ok if you go for a drink or club occasionally, afterall when I was at that age, I did much crazier things too and I don't think I want to "restrict" her in any way. But I really cannot accept the fact that my girlfriend goes out in the middle of the night to a club / pub to drink with some guy friends.

Even when I know nothing's gonna happen, I don't like the thought. I don't even want to think about it. It sucks. It makes me contemplate whether I should carry on this relationship. I'm not young anymore. I wish to settle down too. But I don't want to rush into things.

posted by yang @ 4:18 PM 0 Comments

posted by yang @ 5:42 AM 0 Comments

Fighting the Civil War against the Brand Guerillas:
A.K.A. Communication with the internal audience (people want to hear vs you want them to hear):

1. What people want to hear:

a. Apart from falling under the same product category, do all the Business Units (BUs) have anything else in common, ie;

i. Markets / Target Audience / Use of product - All the products seem to be a stand-alone, they DO NOT complement one another

ii. Top Management Business Direction - How can we work together to bring them under the same umbrella as one whole suite of solution?

iii. Top Management Business Direction - Diverse Target Audience / Market / Product Group = Divided Brand Management views = Company losing its identity.

b. More info about the other business units

i. Overall business developments – get the bigger picture of the world around

ii. Latest developments – which are the new products relevant to me?

1. Which relevant products can complement my products?

2. How will their development affect me?

c. How much business is the company doing, each BU specifically.

i. Sales Figures / Current market situations

ii. Markets might be different, but the problems faced might be similar

iii. Review meetings might have shared these common issues between the BU Heads.

d. How healthy is their market in the current situation?

i. What are the upcoming trends? / Market statistics / analysis

ii. Any area of growth to develop / possible area of threat?

1. Predict / foretell future (Info to be shared by the individual BU PIC

e. How can the data in the newsletter become a sales / enhancement tool for them?

i. Sales figures? / Success stories?

ii. Embedded videos – Technology?

iii. Can these tools be passed to dealers as sales tools directly?

1. Minimal / no adaptation is needed

2. Straightforward – brochures (chop dealer’s info and use)

iv. How do we know that our marketing efforts have paid off?

1. Surveys / Feedback / Success Stories

2. Sales figures / Dealership requests / Distributorship requests

3. Sales Companies

a. Web Enquiries

b. Sales activities

i. Advertising / online / print

ii. Materials requests

1. Source files / brochures

4. Web traffic / enquiries

a. SEM / SEO

b. Contact Us

2. What you want them to hear:

a. Value in brand management

i. How does the company stand to benefit in having a consistent image and identity

1. Consistent image = trust and image building = better business

2. Strong brand image = trust from dealers / customers (2 ways)

b. Importance of Marketing Communications in augmenting sales activities (but not over-preaching)

i. Marcom ensures consistency in the brand management aspect

ii. Marcom is seen as the brand specialist

1. They know what you can do / cannot do.

2. They provide valuable advices on how you can enhance your overall image / sales promotions / events.

a. Even suggests sales tools which are possible for use

3. They augment sales activities with website / online and print advertisement

iii. They help to highlight the important aspects in a product, ensuring 100% accuracy and hit in marketing a product.

c. Ownership of brand management is shared; they have to understand, they can bypass Marcom at any point in time. But the right choice would have to be to consult Marcom on all branding issues first.

i. Though bypassing will not have any immediate effects / penalties per se. But results are imminent and extremely damaging.

ii. Losing brand identity = losing image consistency = losing trust of customers = lost of market shares = lost of revenues = closing down of company.

3. Dealer’s brand guide:

a. Why should they care about your consistent image?

b. How to motivate them to adhere to the brand guide?

i. How will company’s Brand consistency benefit the partners?

1. Company doing well = Partners will do well.

2. Partners are also brand ambassadors of the Company’s Brand.

a. Think along this line.

c. Put yourself in the dealer’s shoes, why should you care about the “upstream” when what is more important to you is actually the sales figures?

i. Partners depend on Company;

1. Sales support tools – what can we provide them with?

2. Products

ii. Company depend on Partners;

1. Brand management

2. Product sales

posted by yang @ 5:47 PM 0 Comments

I thought I would never be able to open my heart to another person again, if ever, it would have to be one similar to you. Behaves like you, eats like you, talks like you, smiles like you and even walks like you?!

But till she came into my life. Although I'm still not sure whether she thinks the same way i do for her, but so far, our times together have always been good.

There are times where I thought, when did I even started to have feelings for her? She is not even like you! Nothing in resemblance at all. I can't believe how it strikes me sometimes. Though she is kind at heart just like you, she certainly doesn't resemble you any single bit at all.

There are times when I still did compared her to you, but the conclusions is always this, "both of you are different." You were just a dream that I had when we were younger. True feelings were involved and we were so deeply in love with one another once, but now, we don't even talk online.

That's ok. Cos as long as you're happy, I wish you happiness. That being said, means I have also learnt to let go of my feelings for you. It also symbolises that I have also grown up from the person you used to know last time.

Let there be no grudges, no hate, also no love as I say this final goodbye to you.

At the same time, I'm filling my heart with feelings that I have for her. Though she is always busy with her school stuffs, she never fails to reply my sms-es, no matter how late it might be.

Sometimes out of the blue, I would SMS her, just to remind her that I'm thinking of her. I find myself racing to the phone when it rings or occasionally checking my phone to see if I have missed any of her messages.

Am I falling for her? I certainly do not know. How to know her feelings?

posted by yang @ 8:45 AM 0 Comments

Life's good so far. Work's good and life's not bad.

Recently I've got to know that my Marketing Communications Department is actually going to be closed down and the MarCom members will be absorbed into some other groups.

As far as I'm concerned, I am going to be absorbed to do market analysis, which will be something interesting, because by far~ I'm only involved in the communications portion of it. I haven't got much chance to really get down to do the real marketing stuffs.

Anyway, it's good because it's a new exposure, new job scope. Let's hope a new pay package is discussed as well =P

I guess I'm pretty lucky to be transferred to the other division, at least the boss is not someone who is being hated by everyone else. FYI - my current one is, anyway.

So that's all the updates about work. Now about personal life; actually nothing much as well. But thanks for bringing "Joy" to my life.

posted by yang @ 7:23 AM 0 Comments

http://www.askmen.com

posted by yang @ 7:15 AM 0 Comments