The Weekly Opinion

Singapore is pushing to be a smart nation. A national effort of Singaporeans, Businesses and government to support better living using technology. (Smart Nation SG)

I think 5 years ago if I were to forget my wallet at home, I would have starved the whole day. Now, you could just pull out your phone and beep away. QR codes, Cardless ATMs & mobile wallets are available in Singapore now to make transactions easier. China is showing the rest of the World that you could live in a Cashless society. It’s a good thing that Gentlemen clubs are banned in China, otherwise that would be a very confusing transaction for a cashless society in that situation. Or interesting, I guess we’ll never know.

DBSPaylah! understands consumer’s micro moments. The app is trying to eliminate the need for cash for daily transactions. You can simply purchase anything in 7-11 using DBSPaylah! They know that mistakes such as forgetting to bring your wallet is a real first world problem and they want to be the app that Singaporeans remember by partnering up with big food chains in Singapore. They’re there when you need it, quick information at the tip of your hands and useful when you are in cashless situation. The three models for mobile app to be chosen from other competitors.

It is more than an app, it is a lifestyle. Singaporeans use it to send E-Angbao during the Chinese new year to avoid spending hours queuing at the bank for new notes and spending quite an amount for red packets. Users simply transfer the amount they want using phone number or QR code. DBSPaylah! offers Movie ticket deals as well when purchasing online.

In my opinion, Singapore is still on its way to be a completely cashless society. It is quite challenging for the elderly to rely on such technology as it is not a part of their daily lives.

Content marketing is a type of marketing that involves the creation and sharing of online material (such as videos, blogs, and social media posts) that does not explicitly promote a brand but is intended to stimulate interest in its products or services (Content Marketing Institute).

Although content marketing is a very popular marketing strategy, do not be foolish to think that it is cheap or easy. According to Zazzle media, 60% of companies struggle to produce content consistently & 65% find it a challenge to produce engaging content, which means that you are at risk of losing money. Hiring an internal content marketing expert can cost you about $48,000 to $150,000 or more per year.

The video above is an example of content marketing. I believe that this ad has the right amount of emotions and product placement. It is not cheesy or over-dramatic as Thailand’s ads, but i think that people would still be able to relate. Through this connection with the viewers, they would be enticed to try the product out especially when the video was not being pushy for you to purchase the product. There wasn’t any price stated or the advantages the product had, and yet it was able to deliver the message. That is how i believe you should sell the product in content marketing without being all ‘Buy this’ ‘It’s good for you thanks to the ZZZ ingredient in the product!’ ‘Buy it now for only $xx.xx’.

With content marketing, you’re giving valuable information away before asking people to buy anything. Even when you sell a product through content marketing, your ideal customers will be happy you did, because they feel more valued and understood.
The prospect or customer thinks, “this company really gets me.” It is not only about trying to get viewers to purchase your product, it is also about trying to connect with them and letting them know that they are valued.

We’ve all seen this photo all over the internet during the Golden Globe awards in January this year! Memes were made, and you know once you’re turned into a meme, you have gone viral. Many people were praising this girl for strutting the carpet with her elegance and photobombing celebrities by chance while handing out Fiji water to them. Well in fact, she was paid to do exactly that! This meme was part of a marketing strategy that Fiji Water had planned for over a while.

Clarence Chia, Fiji Water Vice-president of marketing and e-commerce, gave a simple, on brand comment. “For more than a decade, Fiji Water has proudly maintained a presence at high-profile events, including major award shows, international film festivals and movie premieres.” Fiji Water has always been sponsoring shows such as the Golden Globe and even New York Fashion week as far back as 2012.

This campaign has struck over 1 billion social media impressions. Why do i think it has gone viral? Lets take a look back at the 6 principle of contagiousness and see which one of the principle the campaign has adapted. The 6 principle of contagiousness are social currency, triggers, emotion, public, practical values and stories. In this campaign i believe they adapted the emotion and public principle of contagiousness. Emotion is the level of physiological arousal or activation that a message triggers also affects sharing. Which in this case are positive emotions, which users then have a high arousal caused by excitement and amusement from the photo-bomb. The campaign was under a public view as it was taken set at the Golden Globe Awards which millions of people world-wide view. Products that are observable there are more likely to be imitated. The products sponsored at such awards give ‘social currency’ to the owner and ‘trigger’ them to take action.

Fiji Water hired a photographer from Getty to take photos of the Water Girl, Kelleth Cuthbert who is a model. The photographer were to take photos of either the ambassador near celebrities with the product or celebrities holding the bottle with or without the straws. So this mystery, was no mystery at all, this viral moment was planned, not a coincidence.

A lot of you would argue with me that bad publicity is still publicity, and i do agree with that statement. However, not all publicity is good publicity. Why? Well lets first take a look on how bad publicity has helped this person with his career.

Who else if its not Mr Kanye West, the controversy King. From crashing Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the 2009 MTV VMA to supporting President Donald Trump in 2018 and the shocking comment he made at the TMZ newsroom, “Slavery is a choice”. This man has received so many backlash and getting negative media coverage and yet he has 8 no. 1 albums on billboard 200 chart. With all the hate that he has received, it actually opened up a lot of business opportunities such as his famous Yeezy collaboration with Adidas is so successful that the shoes are being resold 1.5-2 times more than it’s retail price. Some are even being sold at over USD$1.5k. However Kanye is an exception, not the rule.

Lets now take a look at Tiger Woods. After the scandalous affair he had back in 2009, Woods lost numerous sponsors and the public has not looked at him the same way ever since then. Not only did he lose sponsors, he lost the respect he had from his fans. Did the negative media attention helped his career? No, it took years before he recovered his image from the public.

What about Malaysia Airlines? They mishandled situations such as the MH370 crisis and communications were inconsistent that led to speculations. They badly handled the crisis by hiring the self proclaimed VIP shaman to perform spells with bamboo binoculars and coconuts which caused a media frenzy. Talk about the epitome of bad publicity. The airline experienced a dramatic drop in sales In China by 60% in month. Passengers felt that the airlines could not be trusted due to how they handled they situations and what a mockery the whole performance was to the victim’s family.

There are so many more cases that i could list down to show that bad publicity has hurt brands of all sizes. The truth is there is such thing as bad publicity and some brands may recover from it and others will take a much longer time to recover.

Long gone the days where you would have to pick up a yellow book to search for the company or heading down to the website for the address and copying it to google map. This was all done thanks to Google. If you are an owner of a small or medium sized business with a physical store, you should already have put up your store on the map. What do i mean by that? This feature of course.

This feature is called “Google My Business” an internet based service for business owners. About 46% searches have local intent (Source : Seround Table). By having this service for your company, you would have already ticked off one of the important first step in a local Search Engine Optimization(SEO) strategy. Having this feature whenever a customer is googling your store is crucial. It benefits the customer as they would not have to search for your company in the results feed and they could even be directed to your store through google maps.

If you have tried many SEO tricks to increase traffic and engagement such as having reviews, making your website more user friendly and more accessible even on mobile devices, your business might appear in the local 3-pack. The benefit of being in the local 3 pack is your company would appear before the organic results AND 700% boost in clicks compared to companies that aren’t in the pack (Thrive Hive)

From your google my business page you could even analyse your potential customers and see how they’re engaging with your business. Reviewing customers activity insights from the dashboard gives valuable analytics such as who your target customers are.

If you own a restaurant or any sort of establishments that require reservations to be made over the phone could be quite tedious from both ends. What if you could ease the process by having integrated scheduling software? Too much work? Think again. Google’s booking button feature could do exactly that! You could select from the many booking providers that are listed for you.

There are so many methods that you could work for to get a better SEO strategy, but why work for it when you have Google to help it work for you.