Capital Stupid

I went out on a date last Friday night after work in one of the popular watering holes in Makati. Turns out, it became a group event and I ended up side by side with a couple of women who works as Marketing Officers/Brand Managers for Rustans. Since I am a kind person, and I don’t want anyone getting fired out of the management’s embarrassment, I will not mention the specific brands that they handle. I’ll just explain how the so-so stature of Rustans based on my assessment hit rock bottom in a couple of minutes by merely talking to these women.

Anyway, as expected, we ended talking up work. They mentioned their brands, I mentioned mine. The rest followed, or at least, mentioned what they do for a living as a career. Of course, there’s always someone who’s got a better job, or at least, a better-paying job. It turns out that one of the guys present is from P&G. Fine, fine, you work for THEM (I will not deny I dream about working for them before, but now, unless they take me in with my current position, I’m afraid an entry- or lower-level job will never do).

What really ticked me off was how these girls from Rustans badgered me and the P&G guy about how we had it easy. They find it difficult to market their brands because they don’t have an allocated marketing budget. First things first, I don’t work for a multinational, hence, I don’t have the right and the privilege to burn an insanely huge amount of money just to fuel my ego. Second, marketing is not measured by budget. It is measured by skills.

I will not deny that the brand I handle is quite respectable, if not BIG. However, we are not an MNC thus my budget is not trailing with zeros. Each step, each tactic, is like a thesis defense as I professionally advice, cajoled, begged, and shocked the big boss just to release the funds. That’s how we do it. With an actual marketing budget allocation or not, we do it that way: the hard way. This is why as a marketer, I always find new ways and means to make churn my ideas into realities without spending a single cent. After all, without any financial-matters, it’s readily my call to do ANYTHING!

This is where I use the brand I handle as a leverage. Guys, learn to negotiate. Somewhere out there is another marketing fellow who is dying to tie-up with you. When I say dying, bleed them out. Let them spend for you. Trust me, you’ll be surprised how far they will go to share your glory.

I know, I know, Rustans isn’t really that big much more if you are just 1 of the many smaller private labels they sell. But come on, Rustans still smell luxurious even after all the bad things the Tantoco family has been through (I smell financial problems by the way). And so, without former ado, offer luxury, prestige, and whatnot to anyone who can help you out. If you can’t promise anything now, promise the future. Heck, I’ve gotten a lot of favors from people who told me that they hope they, too, can count on my help when I make it really big next time. After all, with the valor and passion I put in my work, sometimes they no longer put their money on the brand, they put their trust in me. As a marketer, you should do the same. Be the brand, people!

Yahoo!, You’re Years Too Late

Yahoo! reports that African cell phone users have invented a new way to get in touch without spending much cash. LIKE DUH! WE FILIPINOS HAVE DONE THIS EONS AGO!

Do Something Better, Yahoo!

The local dotcom industry and techies alike went abuzz after seeing this very “enticing” job ad from Internet media giant Yahoo! Now, I am not gonna play coy and say I am not interested (like some people I know) because I am interested to work for Yahoo! With all the funding and all the opportunities and all the challenges and the impact you can bring to the world, this is a true-blue marketer’s electric dream. And yeah, a multinational paycheck wouldn’t hurt.

Unfortunately, I don’t think they’d notice me right away anyway. Give or take 2 years from now, perhaps that time, they would know who I am. Hahaha. Anyway, to cut the crap, I noticed some Yahoo! POPs sprouting all-over Metro Manila. One particular material is a poster which explains their contest with cool gadgets as prize (sorry, I couldn’t see any on-line references to the ad, so no link here for now, which makes you wonder why, right?).

Wow. Talk about unique. First of all, the prizes are just so-so. Second, the mechanics are so-yesterday (especially considering that in the on-line world, turnover should be measured by the hour). This makes me wonder why, with all the greatness (to some extent), money, and newsworthy articles Yahoo! can generate, their localized marketing truly suck.

I apologize to whoever did this, but did you come from a secondary retail chain? Your contest reminds me of those Christmas Bonanza or Back-to-School promo justifiable only to the likes of SM or National Bookstore. Moreover, treasure hunting in the website for clues? Sure, doing so would generate more clicks, hence better traffic, but a lot of websites have done that already. Can’t you envision something that we could Yahoo! about?

Well, honestly, for companies such as yours, that something should really be on innovation. I’m not talking about Nobel-worthy ones, even simple changes would so just like Google’s free 1-Gig e-mail account (that gave you shivers, right?). So I doubt you marketing guys would have a direct say on that. Yes, that makes the job harder, but that’s what marketing is all about. Hehehe.

Anyway, localized marketing for a dotcom will undoubtedly work for Yahoo! This is after all, the outside-going-in approach for doctoms, which would be effective for the Filipino psyche. Going straight and direct to the local market such as exemplified by Internet disappointment such as Groovenet (this website’s management deserves a lot of spanking by the way) is the opposite of it all. The latter being very ineffective if you dream of attaining a higher ranking at Alexa or something.

If you haven’t noticed, Filipinos don’t seem to want to support locally-brewed Web 2.0 websites. It’s not because it’s not user-friendly or ineffective, it’s just that it is never perceived as cool or as trustworthy as those coming from someone’s garage in Silicon Valley. I’ve read in Personal Fortune magazine that the hotshot who owns Groovenet (whatsisname?) chose the Philippines as its petri dish because of our countrymen’s undying support of Friendster. Wrong move, pal. What you didn’t realize is that Pinoys loved Friendster because it isn’t a Pinoy website.

Off topic, have you guy tried There! Philippines? Well, the question is somewhat an oxymoron, because their software is as buggy as hell and your could never install as much as try it! Hahaha!

Anyway, I sure do hope that having an actual On-Line Community Manager for the Philippines would do more good than harm for this dwindling website. The dotcom race is still alive and kickin’, especially in this goddamn country where everyone I know seems to have a YM id.

So Here’s the Big Idea

If you’ve noticed Auction.PH’s MRT train wrap nowadays (which I bet you didn’t because honestly yet another train wrap nowadays is no longer an effective wow-medium), you would have noticed their pathetic ploy to entice people to go on-line with the use of a local celebrity . With too much clutter in MRT, people are actually going to take more notice if they stepped into a clean train car than whatever bruhaha some so-called marketing slash advertising genius has to offer.

Now, I have nothing against Allesandra de Rossi. She’s pretty. She’s sexy. She’s hot. Now, is Auction.PH pretty, sexy, or hot? I don’t think so. If you’ve been reading my blog a long time now you would have been familiar about how I think lowly of Auction.PH’s marketing strategies. Now, if Auction.PH (paired with AdAuction) is the future of e-commerce in the Philippines, well, e-commerce might as well be dead right now. Stop the presses, and save some money! Haha! (P.S. Abe, are those really your statements?)

Anyway, I do understand where they are coming from. Pinoys are celeb-hungry so what better idea is there than to use a celeb to entice people to go on-line? It’s not pure genius, if you ask me, however, it is somewhat effective if you are talking to the market. The question is, which market!?

Going back to the train wrap, and Allesandra in particular, makes me wonder why they ever thought about doing such promo. Let’s see, who uses the Internet? Nowadays, it’s almost everybody. Now, who uses the Internet to sell on-line through e-commerce systems, auction sites, and the likes? Hmmm, A/B? Upper C? I’d be darned if Inday of the SMS-jokes fame really sells her stuff on eBay.

And so, given that, would you use a local celeb to entice the Atenistas, the Lasallistas, or the more discriminating folks from UA&P, IS, etc., to visit your website? The answer is no. How much more do you expect the older types who earn gadzillions of dough monthly. They don’t care who and what Allesandra is all about. Sure she’s hot, but she’s not the kind of person the people from this particular community would like to embody. The body, yes, the culture, hell no!

You are talking to the wrong people. And if ever you are talking to the right people, you are using the wrong message. Arghhh! How bad can you get!

If you take a look at their recent Alexa traffic, you would notice that their traffic growth has been dismal, if not horribly performing even with the extravagant expense on utilizing an MRT train wrap. If I were a part of their management team, I would have been shaking in my seat right now. That’s one good thing about the technologysphere. There are no doubts or second guesses whether your strategy works or what market share you have. In a matter of minutes, if not seconds, you would certainly know if what you have spent on is good for nothing.

You guys should have spent your money on a medium that is more targeted. The MRT is not for you! The MRT is for biscuits or for paracetamol or for condoms. Not for you stupid website! If you have limited resources, use it wisely people. The only excuse I can fathom why anyone would still want to use the MRT is if it is your brand in that spot or that of your competitors. Trust me. MyAyala.com or IslandRose.net won’t be spending their dough on that crap. If there’s anyone in this picture who really understands marketing, it would be the AE (read as salesman) who sold you the idea of an MRT train wrap. I know how much it costs. It is not spare change. Can you please spare the world your faux pass and make some real change?

Killing Your Kapamilya

Say, you are dying of lung cancer, will you still continue smoking? I don’t know. Sounds risky, but a lot of people do. Take the same logic and put that into the context of business and you get ABS-CBN. This TV channel is terribly performing and has been generally taken over by the deserving GMA. Now that your viewers are slowly being lured into the other channel, who thought it was the best time to act aggressive and take out the legal beagles?

Recently, ABS-CBN has started unleashing its raw legal power over YouTube viewers citing the usual copyright infringements and all. I dunno, maybe the legal honcho wanted to make yet-another Philippines’ first and so he had this brilliant idea to go chase after the so-called YouTube pirates with the use of IP addresses and whatnot. Dude, honestly, talk about wrong fucking timing. If you are going to set a record of yet another Philippines’ first. It would probably the first among the dumbest legal actions taken by a Philippine corporation against netizens. You are scaring your remaining loyal Kapamilyas away!

Do you even understand what YouTube is all about? Do you even understand what the World Wide Web is all about? YouTube, by all honesty, is bigger than ABS-CBN. Yes, you are age old like wine, but you will never be a part of Google. And Google is, well, Google. How dare you!

Now, how dare you sue the people who watch your shows just because it is in Google? Oh yeah, here’s a good explanation. Just as pathetic as Clipcast, dear ol’ ABS-CBN is aiming to take a small chunk out of the YouTube money (are there any? yet?) and made their own much more inferior version. Just a few words, YOU’RE A LITTLE TOO LATE!

First of all, who wants to pay to watch your videos? You’re already on TV, you’re already on cable, on TFC? How much more greedier greedy can you get? Rather than seeing on-line videos as a threat to the dollars you won’t even probably get, you should have seen this avenue as a way to tap untouched viewers. On-line videos should’ve been a teaser to the real deal on air. After all, on-line viewing will never be cinematic or satisfying as watching it on Plasma TV. Gimme a break.

If I were head of your marketing, I would have welcomed YouTube with open arms. I would have helped upload ABS-CBN shows on-line with the invitation onwards to watch more episodes on TV. Heck, ABS-CBN Now would have been great if it were only free. But hey, it’s just me! I’m just a lousy self-proclaimed evil marketing genius. I just control a lousy blog, not a major TV station. Only time will tell if I am right or if I am right. Jeez, I sure do hope you don’t sue me! I surely would hate receiving free PR!

Top 1000 Jobs’ Mistake

The sole reason why Top1000Jobs will never lift of is because it failed to assess all possible barriers. Honestly the concept is nice and in some ways, noble. However, they failed to check all doors when they set out to conquer the world.

I remember them giving away fliers at the MRT station last December. That was so stupid if you ask me. Promoting off-line is already a stupid move. If you have to, don’t congest your market with too much info. Just make the URL stand out and that’s it the way Tradeport should have done as well. That’s the reason why URLS or domain names are supposed to be catchy yet descriptive. Yes, there exists a website called Google, but hey, is your technology a Google?

Anyway, Top1000Jobs will never work because employment will always be at the mercy of the corporations. It can never be the other way around. You don’t expect the HR Manager to sift through your database, and if he would, it wouldn’t be for so long. It isn’t self-sustaining, it is doomed to fail. If it’s possible to reverse the hiring process wherein all the demands can come future employees, then this country of ours will never experience unemployment. But sad thing is,  if you want to get a job, then apply. You don’t see those HR people from P&G and Unilever give out iced tea to applicants, right? It’s because at that point in time, YOU NEED THEM! Unfortunately, unless you are a Summa Awardee or something, you are dispensable so better work your butt off to get employed.

For Many Are Called

Nothing’s final right now, but if you dream of launching a local dotcom startup that can challenge the likes of Google, Amazon, or eBay, perhaps it would be a great idea for us to meet up and have a cup of coffee. I’m from the marketing field so pairing up with a talented PHP/MySQL programmer may be ideal, but heck, beggars can’t be choosers.

So whether you are another self-proclaimed marketing guru, a PR guy, or simply someone who can give us some funding (hehehe),  just drop me a note or something.

I’d like to work on this project informally first. Guerilla-type. Set-up a website, then get initial reaction. No response? Alexa wonderchild? Whether it’s the former or the latter, I’d be quitting my wonderful job to focus on this after 6 months of initial operations. After all, setting up a dotcom is not a get-rich-quick scheme. It is a legitimate business like any other. So, it needs passion and dedication.

So if you’re hungry just like me. Let’s unite here, let’s unite now.

Thoughts on Cambio

When I first heard the so-called “Call Center Song” from Cambio, I thought it was another stupid radio ad from Nescafe, or historically speaking, Maxwell Coffee. If you haven’t heard it yet, here’s the lyrics:

Now let’s get one thing straight
I don’t really want to work this way
But I get paid for my American accent
I have money to pay the rent

This is only temporary
I’m not really in a hurry
I’ll party all morning
Work all night
Meet my honey in the broad daylight

Now let’s get one thing clear
I don’t really want to be here
But they pay me for my perfect diction
I have money for my addiction

I’ll be at the call center
Until something better
Comes along my way
It’s been a long, long day

The future is alright
The future is so bright

Now, I bet those American expats, their Pinoy counterparts, especially the HR guys, are just fuming in their seats right now. This song is downright mean and nasty, but let’s face the truth. This is the truth.

One of the many unique things about the call center slash BPO industry (aside from the fact that it is earning so much money unlike most) is that the marketing bit these companies are doing here will never contribute directly to revenues. In fact, it directly contributes to more expense: salaries. We all know, what they say that call centers pay higher (what they don’t know is how stiff they are with taxes and so your take-home pay ends up much less than expected), and so you can just imagine that the more effective they are in getting more people, the higher their Salaries Expenses would be come the end of fiscal year.

We also know that there’s this HR phenomenon called the Call Center Turnover Rate, wherein the employment duration of most call center agents are so short that counting one’s tenure in manner of days would not be an exaggeration in the future. This makes me ponder on the thought why this is happening. A lot of things comes to mind such as the ghastly schedule, the pressure (yeah, there are!), too much caffeine, or even that little bit of inkling some call centers have everytime they say “hello”.

IS THERE SOMETHING BETTER ELSE I COULD DO?

People may hate me for this, but yeah, I personally don’t see any career in call centers, unless, of course, you end up in top management. But with the thousands and thousands of new call center people, the chances are pretty slim. You can bet your beanie that by the time you’re on your 5th year, you might still be just any other agent. This is the same logic as just another factory worker, or just another rank-and-file employee. Call centerites, please don’t take it personally.

However, this song from Cambio might just become an eye-opener for HR hotshots of these call centers. Rather than fooling ourselves, or at least, the potential workforce that there is life in call centers, why not adjust and adapt to the truth and offer these guys a break. A segue from the usual your-future-is-bright-here approach might come in handy. As the song goes, a lot of people in call centers are just waiting for something better. If that’s the case, why not offer something short-term employment for people who’s not really bound to stay put. You might end up saving money on a lot of things which you may legally strip-off because of the fact that you do know that your new hire has an expiration date. You wouldn’t have to spend on team building activities, a new ID, all those stuff. You can just cut to the chase and just get what you paid for.

Here are some ideas:

Call Center 30 - Just want to pay some short-term bills? Work for us for 30 days and get paid P12,000 - no questions asked!

Hour Agent - Transcribe customer complaints and get paid by the hour, no fractions accepted!

Of course, these are all just rough ideas and still need to undergo refining. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if this ends up as the unavoidable future of call centers.

Trouble at Mandom

If you’re still not pretty familiar with Mandom, they are the Japanese MNC who owns the Gatsby brand. As a marketer, I know Gatsby and Mandom the same way I know even the lousiest gel brand there is in the market. Unfortunately, not all would-be gel users are brand-conscious brand-aware like me. And so, if you do a quick UAI regarding hair gels, creams, and waxes, you’d undoubtedly get a Top-of-Mind reply of Bench Fix hair products followed by Master’s of Sara Lee.

So as you can see, Gatsby already has 3 strikes: 1.) LOW AWARENESS; 2.) LOW SALES; and thus, 3.) LOW MARKET SHARE. Given these concerns, you might expect the top management to do something drastic to make the necessary turnaround changes to save the day. First things first, you have to have the best people. Insider sources informed me that Mandom recently had a hiring spree to replace unloyal employees who sought the grass at the other side of the field called Ayala Avenue. Hehehe.

And so, given the chance to reorganize this small company (just somewhere near 20 employees), you would have expected that they get the best brains in the business, right? Hey, they have Jap support and so money should be no object (like duh!). Unfortunately, I don’t think they got it right. For some reason, they hired someone from the darned automobile industry to lead the marketing department. Yeah, yeah the Jap guy still calls the shots, but at the end of the day, it’s still the local with the hands-on experience of the local flavor who can ultimately lead the group.

This makes you wonder why they got someone from an alien industry to act as a Messiah. Honestly, will you hire a plumber to do your paint job? Sure, it’s almost the same banana (marketing is still marketing). However, in this crazy modern world we live in right now, specialization is king.

Only time will tell if this company got it right. But based on what I know, it’s a far cry for help. In fact, some distributors and retails are so pissed off with the new guy because he is using the same techniques learned from selling cars into selling hair products. Dude, does that follow that, say, if I come from the ice cream business and ultimately shifted to computers, I should sell my Dell or Lenovo with a buy-1-take-1 strategy during off-season? You can do better that that!

Clear Ads Away

You have to give it to these guys from Unilever. They do know how to waste money and irritate consumers among others. We are all aware of the saying that too much or too less can kill you. Coming as a consumer who is already 101% fed up with traditional advertising, seeing yet another Clear shampoo ad anywhere I go nowadays simply upsets my stomach.

I know it’s all about reach and repetition. I sense you’d like people to be shocked and amazed and reminded a hundred million times that Clear is so much better than P&G’s Head & Shoulders. However, if you keep on popping out of nowhere (escalator, elevator, floors) I must say it’s getting pretty ugly (nice oxymoron, huh?)  for my eyes. What’s next? Clear ads at the toilet seat? Clear ads on tissue paper?

I admit, the guy from your ad agency who churned out the actual media buy is quite good with his software. But please, please, stop all these excessive ads now. It’s too loud and too irritating. And oh, there’s too much trash soon enough I guess. Be sensitive to the environment.

P&G Guys, if you are reading this, kindly send me some data regarding the on-going war between Clear and Head & Shoulders. Did their noise make any dent to your sales. Or is it just that, simply noise?