A vital communicatons lesson from the first great depression

It is prophesied that at the end of the year, we will see the coming of the second great depression. Nothing like this has been seen in a good 70 plus years since the 1930′s but like all human errors, we like to go in a cycle.

So from a communications perspective, how are things going to change with the coming of the second great depression? I wrote in a post earlier about a crappier economy=tighter budgets.

But what i would like to bring your attention to is the profilication of communications mediums during the first depression? Back in the good old days, we saw the rise of the radio. Not only as a rising communications tool, but a mergence with people’s lives. A way to understand the depressing world on a personal level. This was also the era when the first War of the World’s broadcast was done and it showed what influence radio had at that time. You can read more about that mass cultural movement here.

Fast forward to today, with the financial crisis and recession looming over us, a changing culture of gen Y attitudes and a medium which we allows us to understand what is going on in this complex world.

Seems like not only do errors go round, our behavior towards these errors follow a similar pattern too. We will seek that something which allows us to understand the complex issues more easily.

So do we seek to follow mass media because this is what we think everyone else must be thinking and we take comfort in that?

This article here seems to answer part of it. It claims that mass media such as TV and radio will dominate during these turbulent times because these forms of media are cheap to consumers. It seems to me we follow this because of costs and because we assume everyone else is thinking like that too.

But the difference between the first great depression and the second one would be the presence of digital media. With a changing internet landscape firming up to web2.0, we now know what the masses are really thinking about.

So to a comms person, is this important? Yup, we’re going back to basic of building deeper relationships to ensure the people we need to communicate with believe what we have to say. And considering this recession is predicted to last till 2010, isn’t it time we start learning from the past and use a medium which will best communicate our message to our audience?

JUST FOR FUN TUESDAY!!!

We made it. Yup, be proud that we did. Tuesday’s over!!!! Anyhows, today i want you to think of how you would live your live if you knew you only had a lifespan of 10 years….

How would your priorities change? How would you treat your loved ones? Is there anything you would do differently?

Why do i ask this? Because a dog’s avg life span is about 10 years, yet their enthusiasm and zest for life, their unfailing loyalty and their appreciation of the simple things are something which we should and can learn.

What inspired this post? I watched 10 promises yesterday and i thought it would be a good reflection of how we can lead our lives in a more simple manner. Enjoy the trailer, watch the show and give me your feedback…

Looking at MAS response

It’s always interesting to see how a regulatory body will respond in the midst of a crisis given that they are the ones who pretty much dictate everything within an economy admist the harsh external environmental factors.

MAS finally responded on the 17th of Oct to complaining investors who had funds tied up in Lehman Brother’s and were sold to them by local banks.

Local banks have responded to the call of MAS, DBS being one of the banks.DBS has already started compensating investors.

The response that MAS has given to the financial crisis can be summarized as follows:

• Said that it was changing tack by giving the public more information on what has been done behind-the-scenes;
• • Identified those investors (lowly-educated retirees) who needed immediate attention
• Cracked the whip publicly on the financial institutions that sold the structured products to the common man, by telling them not to be “overly legalistic” in their approach;

Yet the responses have been varied amongst the media. Looking at Today, its general impression was that of MAS taking a progressive step forward from passive to active.  (Like a regulatory body is suppose to do).

You can read more about the article here on what it had to say and quotes from experts on the subject. Yet, there are others who think MAS can do more with the power vested in them in such turbulent times.

A post on MAS being a headless chicken and taking cues from Hong Kong are such an example.

Action is being taken by MAS, despite is quiet initial start. It has worked with its main stakeholders, the banks, to pacify the public. This can be seen when the banks have each set up a a panal.

“…to headed by an independent person, respected individuals, so as to make sure this is a fair and serious process,’

I’m sitting on the side of the fence that the MAS has done a pretty good job in stepping forward. There are of course a whole host of external factors to take into consideration but the communications implicates a change in the way of thinking.

I’m now thinking of how the different panels of the banks can be collaborating online with secure firewalls to protect the flow of information. To address the employees on the progress so they don’t start self promoting themselves to being the head of corp comms and rubbish out rumors to media and other stakeholders.

This is a great opportunity for internal social media to come into the works. Considering how bank departments are so used to working in silos.

It would also be a great stepping stone to see if the demands MAS has placed on the banks are reasonable and effective. Then it would be easier to address the shareholders, investors, potential customers, the media and general public. We could even take this approach overseas and see how the US or Europe if it works!

I’m sure the Investor Relations guys will welcome this idea.

What other suggestions can you think of to use social media in this context? Do share!

Looking for Asian websites with marcomms news

Sorry for the lack of updates, just eformatted my com and it’s a lot faster and smoother now. Amazing stuff.

Anyhows, I was wondering if it would be possible to share some sites you might know which would contain Asian Marcomms campaigns, be it digital or offline media. I wanna update my Google reader with more Asian campaigns.

I have the usual Marketing VOX, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, etc.

I was wondering if there were any others which i should be taking note of. I’m aware of Marketing Interactive, but is there anywhere else i can find out more campaigns ongoing in Asia? Do share!!

Solving poverty with Web2.0 in Singapore

This post is in line with thus year’s blog action’s day theme of poverty. So how can social media or web 2.0 solve poverty?

Although i had images of homeless people living on the street, kids searching through piles of trash and beggars and tramps roaming around as poverty. But first, let’s define poverty. You can see the various definitions here and for convenience sake, I’ll pick 1.

The state of living on less than $2 a day, according to the World Bank. Poverty can also represent a lack of opportunity and empowerment, and bad quality of life in general.

Now let’s head back into Singapore then, apparently our Population below poverty line is NA%. And its been said that the poverty level is measured by a monthly household income of $600 or less per household to be considered poor.

But what this doesn’t address is per head in the household, whats the income they’re receiving? So if i have one guy in the house earning $500 monthly, he’s poor and gets help. But if i have a guy earning $900, and has to support 5 ppl, each person gets $180 monthly… Now tell me, who’s worse off?

I’m not blaming the government here because i think they’re doing everything they can with their limited manpower. But shouldn’t we review this poverty level?

So back to the question, how can we use web 2.0 to solve poverty? Being a medium which is able to generate feedback, the one obvious way address the issue would be raising it in blogs like this and through campaigns like blog action day.

I chanced upon Andrew Tan (Soical Worker) and his post on poverty in Singapore and who’s responsible?

He proposes minimum wage guidelines due to ever increasing cost, just another way to solve the poverty issue in Singapore. Some comments included cause and effect scenarios whereby each individual is responsible for their own actions. The post itself includes links to other areas of discussion.

So with suggestions being thrown around, it might not be imposed, but the one thing that is going on is that it can help to address the issue in a real and direct way. Quite honestly, I’m sick of fund raisers on tv and while Edelman’s trust barometer points towards growing trust in NGOs, NKF and other NGOs frauds over the last couple of years have put a dent on the trust people have in these organizations. While i love a campaign with a good CSR dose, some of it is being overdone…

But what ppl forget is that these organizations are not THE ISSUE. They represent an issue which they believe in and ppl have to remember that at the end of the day, it’s the issue that they have to deal with. And in this case, poverty needs to be dealt with and not get caught up in the media hyped sensationalized news of frauds…

I propose web 2.0 to be a platform to raise awareness of the issue and allow a healthy discussion of solutions. 10 brains are better than 1 and the more people are aware, the more we can do something to help with the issue of poverty in Singapore.

What do you think social media evangelist? How else can we use web2.0 to help poverty in Singapore?

JUST FOR FUN TUESDAY!!

Wow, it’s another week pass and u’ve passed THE day…. lol… Anyhows, today I’ll be sharing about Blog Action Day. I learnt about it from Priscilla‘s post and it’s a really interesting social campaign. This campaign basically asks bloggers around the world to join in and blog (Blog, video, etc.) about a common social topic on the same day, and this year it’s on the 15th Oct 2008. Last year’s topic was environmental and this year’s topic is poverty.

Basically, using the theme of you blog (Tech, Fashion, food, etc..) and see how your blog can help to ease some of the social problem by spreading a good message around.

And ppl said only bloggers of the same category should be invited to join an initiative, I think this exception is truly wonderful and a worthy cause…I’ll blog about it from a marketing perspective and why i think what a wonderful cause this is later in the week.

Current count 8834 sites with a readership of near 9.5 million.

I’m in, are you?

Mainstream blogs trustworthy in Asia?

I know i i blogged about this b4 in The blogosphere to be the next tabloid and a sub topic under ethical blogging. But reading Mitch Joel’s post on Bloggers have no ethics a few days back, it provides a great flipside from the traditional media’s perspective on what they think on the blogpsphere. They discredit bloggers yet they have to own a blog because of the growing emergence and reliance of their readers of obtaining news online… Check out the number of blogs that each reporter in channelNews Asia now has… I think Mitch poses a good question at the end,

Are Blogs written and produced by the mainstream media the only ones the general public should trust?

I was wondering from an Asian perspective, where diary blogs are more prominent, do we share the same problems of trust for objective and reliable news from citizen journalism? Or are we more willing to trust our community? Do share!

App Review: Social Calender!

I realized i haven’t done a review for a while, so i tot i would do one now. There’s a new app for Facebook and Bebo called social calender. It’s a calender that integrates with ur social networking site and allows u to track bdays, plan events and know what other ppl’s wish list are, including your own.

It’s a pretty ordinary app but its a nice thought of integrating every1 on your social networking site to have a common platform to plan things etc. You can read more about another review here.

There, another review, so as not to loose track of doing that, lol….

Crappy Economy=Tighter budgets

Not the best way to end the year for 2008 and to start 2009 with job cuts expected in December, it’s gonna be a sad x’mas (especially for a graduating student like me…)

With that said, i get the sense in the market that marketing budgets are shrinking. There’ve been several posts on the shrinking marketing budget and the rise of digital media being the cheaper alternative. I’ve just picked 2 of those posts to discuss. Leslie Postpon did a post on Is social Advertising a safe haven for marketing budgets? It’s a great post which brings out one of the 2 critical issues which i find essential to a campaign. She brought out the issue of ROI and i blogged about it here and here.

In addition, the issue of transparency when using social media was mentioned which I found crucial to communicating with your stakeholders online. There’s an interesting experiment that was done on this transparency issue and was blogged by John Butman and it was called 90 days. Beautiful process, I’ve just read through the first few posts and I’m looking forward to reading more after this.

Walter Lim shared a post on Marketing Strategies in a downturn and provided some awesome examples of what some companies have done and can do with their marketing efforts in this economy downturn. While Walter thinks of this as a back to basic approach, I’m inclined to agree to some extent.

Looking at points 9,

which is Agencies must also get into the act together with their clients

and

10 which is Customer analytics gains primary importance

I think these 2 points allow a flourish and  rise of digital media, not only because it’s cheaper, but also because the fact that with point 9, i see a better chance of online and instant collaboration without having 10,000 emails flying about causing great miscomms which can happen. In addition, customer analytics for online behavior can be tracked, but involving yourself in your brand’s community can also lead to behavioral patterns offline. (What they like to do with your brand, where do they get it, what do they use it with etc.)

I now agree that the downturn will have folks tightening their budgets and turning towards cheaper forms of media. However, it will also mean that it will force them to stop just spamming banner ads and force them to start getting involved with the consumers. After all, isn’t it better to target a behavioral group of people then just plain demographics?

To answer Daryl’s post on Where are the corporates taking the lead? I don’t know the where, but i think the when is coming really soon. Therefore, social media evangelists, is this the time we have been waiting for where companies finally have to get their hands dirty? I sure hope so….

Your Internet Footprint

I was looking through my Facebook today and i came across this article that was being shared on the late Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam. For those who don’t know him, he was an opposition member in the parliament. You can read more about him here.

Now while i respect what he did, i was hesitant about sharing his story further using my logged in Facebook account. Why? Because i like the PAP, i don’t get whats the fuss about the lack of freedom of speech in Singapore, i think it’s fine. And i’m worried that by sharing this article, it might make me appear to be inclining towards supporting the opposition. Essentially, I’m worried about my internet footprint. Sure, its no big deal to some, but don’t you worry? I mean Google and Yahoo! have web anaylytics now that can track your movement for targeting their advertisements to you. Don’t you think the government could do the same with your behavior? (Watch Eagle Eye and you know what i mean…)

Am i paranoid? I don’t think so, your internet footprint can leave a huge impact on your future state. Daryl has a post on your online identity and how it could affect your employment prospects here and here. Is it not worrying that HR has turned to just Googling Yahooing your name? That my blog and my facebook profile are the things that they are going to see. To make matters worse, if you live in a small country like Singapore, everyone knows everyone somehow and it isn’t all that hard to trace.

Think it only applies to the general community? Think again! Even politicians are affected, in a big big way… This post demonstrates how conservative candidates in Canada have been affected by their past, or rather, by the internet footprint they’ve left behind….

So still thinking of cursing at your boss on your twitter or blog? Still wanna post those drunken pics? Maybe it’s time we do up 2 accounts, one for professional views and the other purely for social networking.

What have you done to control your internet footprint?