• One Degree: Interview with Thomas Purves, Futurist, at the Canada 3.0 Forum
  Salesforce.com with their Dreamforce Conference, Apple and the Worldwide Developers Conference, Berkshire-Hathaway’s annual general meeting, and even Budweisers’ Bud Camp have all achieved rock-star status in creating branding and marketing opportunities out of events designed to interact with their supporters face-to-face.
  (tags: Event trade marketing)
• 6 stupid media planning mistakes
  You have to articulate what each medium is supposed to do, and for whom it is supposed to do it
  Don't ignore your audience, and don't heavily rely on technology
  Social networking is a tactic and a strategy, and you need to know the difference
  Don't get unduly focused on the CPMs of your plan
  (tags: media plan strategy social)

• Market for ‘pre-loved’ luxury goods booming in Philippines
  The recession has forced the top 1 percent of our population to rethink their extravagant ways and become more entrepreneurial to sustain their lifestyle. So they trade in their old handbags and jewelry in order to afford new things. Everybody comes out happy.
  (tags: Philippines crisis secondhand)

• Chief Marketing Officers Must Have a P&L Mind-set – Advertising Age …
  Data without insights is a waste of research dollars and efforts. Similarly, having insights without an understanding of economic impact ultimately shortchanges the organization. That's why a P&L mind-set is no longer optional, at a time when marketing must continue to drive both near-term and long-term results.
  (tags: CMO strategy)

• Malcolm Gladwell Talks Yellow Pages
  1- Don’t exaggerate the challenges. Sometimes a series of thoughtful, little steps can change the course of events. Everyone said New York City would require a Manhattan Project to recover from its desolate state in the early 1990s. But it only took three years and relatively small initiatives such as community policing, he noted.
  2- Reframe the issue. Yellow Pages can’t be seen as an obsolete big fat book. Look at how the iPod won by being turned into a fashion statement instead of a complex technological advance.
  3- Leverage “social connectors.” A small percentage of people who review products, check prices and stimulate interest in a product are always a major key to success.
  “If you are willing to challenge convention and work harder, you can win,”
  (tags: Gladwell yellowpages)

Just found this app for the iPhone: Speak4it. I don’t actually have an iPhone but looking at the screencast I think it is brilliant. Have a look here.

From the site of the yellow pages: “ How it works: launch the app, push, speak and voila! Results around you will appear, and you can view them as a list or on a map. You can even see where you are relative to the results. If you want to search in a different location, you can do that too. For example, you can say “Pizza in New York.” Try it out. We’re using the AT&T Watson speech recognition engine, and the more you use it, the better it gets. So keep using it, and send us feedback, LOTS of feedback. In fact, you can send us feedback right from the phone. We want to hear about what you like, what you don’t like, and also where you would like to see us take this next.”

• Seven tips before you take a job overseas
  If you are considering a job abroad, here are a few tips that will help to enable you to go away — and come back — with a minimum of angst.
  (tags: Expat international HR)

• Digital is not a platform – part 2
  The biggest problem with “digital marketing” seems to be the term itself: “digital marketing”. What we need to do is stop talking about the features and start talking about the abilities: messages, connect or creating deliberate value.
  (tags: Digital marketing advertising)

As you might have seen on this blog, Linkedin or Twitter I’m looking for new opportunities. While it is to soon to share how things are going (but I will very soon) I’d like to make a request to Linkedin, I hope you guys are listening

The first thing I did when I started looking for new opportunities is to reach out to a few headhunters. They were interested in my profile and started sending my resume to several companies. Problem is that some of them try to send out the resume to as many companies as possible to be the first to get into that company and in doing so making sure they get the commission for finding me. The result is of course that my resume arrived on the desk of the recruiter or hiring manager through several headhunters, who all claimed they were the first. This doesn’t put me in a good position because if they want to hire me they have to fight with 2 headhunters to decide who was the first…you get the drift, right?

So my suggestion to Linkedin is to make a dashboard for candidates who are actively looking for a new job with the following components:

• it puts the candidate in charge of the whole process
• it shows which headhunters have your cv or are linked to you
• it shows which headhunters have shared your details with which companies because they had to ask you permission in the dashboard to do so.
• it shows the jobs you have applied for and gives you the possibility to follow up. A bit like a personal CRM system but then from a candidate perspective.

Let me be clear, I love Linkedin, I use it regularly and for me it has become an indispensable tool. I just wanted to share these thoughts.

• Tips on self publishing in Singapore
  Janet and I had received quite a few emails asking for advice on self-publishing and taking the book to market. I have summarized the key points here, but bear in mind that this is only but our first publication. It’s not our core business, we are a social media solutions company, then again, with the success of the book, I would certainly like to see Janet grow that part of our expertise. Having said that, there are a few pointers, feel free to add any to this if you have experience in publishing
  (tags: Publishing book Singapore)

• How the Mighty Fall: A Primer on the Warning Signs – BusinessWeek
  The path out of darkness begins with those exasperatingly persistent individuals who are constitutionally incapable of capitulation. It's one thing to suffer a staggering defeat—as will likely happen to every enduring business and social enterprise at some point in its history—and entirely another to give up on the values and aspirations that make the protracted struggle worthwhile. Failure is not so much a physical state as a state of mind; success is falling down—and getting up one more time—without end.
  (tags: Businessweek strategy)