Even creatives grow up

How do you convince one of the creative brains behind the Gold Cannes-winning Sony Bravia ad and the person responsible for Apple’s advertising identity for the iPod to fly all the way to our island home to judge one of our biggest award shows?

No, you don’t entice them with promises of night after night of steamy, wild rendezvous with exotic Asian chicks (apparently this used to be the case!).

You lure them with the Merlion, zoo excursion packages and our proximity to Club Med – basically a holistic family getaway. Quite unlike what you would expect for the stereotypical anti-establishment, eccentric, creative type eh?

Such is one of the tasks of this year’s Creative Circle Awards (CCA) chairman Rob Gax, who has been working hard trying to secure these role models to inspire our shores. He’s also hoping to get them to speak at the event so keep your fingers crossed.

Gax has started an “unofficial” blog on the CCAs, giving us the inside story on the happenings in the lead up to the show as well as a peek at the international names coming to judge the work so if I were you, I’d add this address to my favourites list:

http://cca2006-unofficial.blogspot.com/

Hey Rob, you might have to update your blog more often now ;)

It's all about service, stupid

Don’t fret if you didn’t manage to attend the Forbes Global CEO Conference, I’ve got insights to share; well at least if you market to the rich anyway.

One of the talks I attended was a session titled Life’s Luxuries, which offered the barest of glimpses into the lives of the obscenely rich. Underscoring the seemingly light hearted session was the knowledge that the luxury sector is becoming big business these days, what with the growing number of million/billionaires in the world. China, in particular, was singled out during the session as the fastest growing ‘millionaire’ country in the world, and as incomes across Asia rise, more and more new markets are opening up for luxury marketers.

How then can luxury marketers court the rich? One of the hot topics raised was the question of service. Panellist and MD of YTL Corporation Francis Yeoh said one of his pet peeves was the fact that as a frequent first class flyer, he expects his airline to know what his favourite drink is, and what his favourite seat is, which they don’t despite there only being 12 people in first class. And right there is what differentiates luxury from normality – the service you get. What rang through the conference was that get the service right and the rich will pay, and keep coming back.

That’s why Thailand is so well-known as a country with impeccable service; one panellist described it as the silicon valley of service. Because the competition is so stiff, among hotels for example, the service each establishment offers is sometimes the only differentiating point to ensure customer loyalty.

Being innovative and creative was another point brought up. One speaker said it was imperative for those in the luxury business to challenge conventional norms of luxury in order "create individual special experiences", in short going "beyond the necessary, in defiance of the ordinary" to create intelligent luxury. Because let’s face it, the obscenely rich don’t really need a luxurious product, they need the experience that comes with having one. It’s more about emotions than about the price points. Hope these points help some.

I think we need more beer

I’d like to think I’m the most popular person in the office these days – for some bizarre reason, I’m been scoring the office quite a bit of free beer. The latest coup arrived in the form of a 30 litre keg of Stella Artois, which I won in a recent World Cup promotion.

As one of five grand prize winners, I won the keg of beer, as well as a very nice 37’’ LCD TV and a home theatre system. The beer was delivered to our office yesterday, complete with a cylinder of CO2 (thanks Pacific Beverages delivery guys for heaving the whole contraption up our creaky shophouse stairs), which means we have beer on tap, served deliciously chilled.

Here’s Marcus our new writer and very friendly bartender enjoying the experience -- at 9.30am!

A few months ago I also won a year’s supply of Tiger Beer at an APB party too.

If you’re a marketer, this is just a friendly note that we’re happy for you to send us free stuff like booze and more whenever you like. Feel free!

SPH Magazines makes bold statement with audits

I had to fight from letting my emotions show through when writing today’s story on SPH Magazines getting Her World, Citta Bella and Shape audited. It was hard because I have to maintain objectivity while being overwhelmed by the fantastic news.

Read the article ‘SPH Magazines audit Her World, Citta Bella and Shape’ here.

Great work SPH Magazines!

This move by SPH Mags is no small step. It deserves to be lauded and rewarded for taking a stance which in the long run, is great for advertisers, agencies and for the magazine publishing industry.

Marketing's views regarding circulation auditing are no secret. No other publication has been as active as Marketing has been in exposing the massive fraud in Singapore's magazine publishing industry and encouraging debate on circulation auditing.

Some articles on the topic are as follows:
Advertisers vote for Singapore publications to get audited – Poll
MDA, MICA say no to industry call to end magazine publishing rip-offs
Industry pros disagree with MICA, MDA’s audit inaction: Poll

Our at times confrontational and in-your-face approach at encouraging Singapore publishers to make their figures accountable has earned us both supporters and detractors.

We’re not going to hide our delight at this announcement and we sincerely look forward to more of such.

All but one of SPH’s newspapers are already audited – save for the newly launched My Paper. What’s left is 13 more titles in SPH Magazine’s stable and a bunch under the Blu Inc banner.

Keep it up SPH.

ACP, Eastern Publishing, MediaCorp Publishing, MediaCorp Press, Sun Business Network and the hundreds of other smaller publishers in Singapore -- it's your move.

Outdoor out of the door?

I’ve been working on an outdoor feature for the October issue and I’ve noticed that outdoor often seems to get sidelined during the marketing campaign planning process.

Sometimes it might stand a chance of getting a position in the marketing schedule, but only at the last minute, when the campaign planning process is at its tail end and the marketer discovers he has money left over for an outdoor execution.

Keeping in mind the fact that securing outdoor can be a very lengthy process in Singapore, what with all the regulation and approval, why are marketers still treating outdoor as an afterthought? If they want to do outdoor execution, they should, as with every media, allocate proper lead time to ensure their money’s being spent on getting the most out of it.

After all, when the medium’s brought in so late, with no proper planning or dedicated creatives for the outdoor execution, what kind of result is the marketer expecting anyway? At that point, all the media planer can do to ensure the campaign rolls out on time is to check availability. And when the campaign does roll out, it really doesn’t add any value to the client’s marketing mix. There are of course examples where outdoor’s been given the time and planning needed, and when that happens, it achieves its aim for securing attention and engaging with consumers, and that’s pretty darn good. And that’s not because the campaign was special in any way, it’s simply because it was thought-through more clearly and given more time to develop. So I say marketers should think about making better and smarter use of their time and marketing budgets, otherwise they should just keep whatever’s leftover.