21 Tuesday Dec 2010
Posted in brands, communications, Indonesia, Marketing, Public Relations
Received this in the mail some time ago. Did not and still do not know what to make of it.
If they can’t get their English right, should they use Indonesian instead? And what sort of marketing messages about themselves is this email invite supposed to send anyway?
27 Tuesday Jul 2010
Tags
Must be a particularly bad month for Tempo’s English Edition. Unspun came back to the office to be greeted as a “values customer” receiving a later than usual copy of Tempo which features as cover story “forner” Tax Chief Hadi Purnomo under scrutiny. Wonder what sort of scrutiny the check sub gave to that edition.
03 Monday May 2010
Posted in blogging, brands, communications, Indonesia, Marketing, Media, Social Media, Twitter
How can clients, consultants and social media users themselves keep the social media experience real for themselves and others? Hanny discusses the issues in Talking Points below.
|
25 Thursday Mar 2010
In Talking Points Unspun’s alter ego makes the observation that Indonesian has entered into an interesting phase where marketers have suddenly woken up to the potential of New Media. They are enlisting the help of Digital Influencers but are they all going about it in a way that would benefit the brands, their customers and, most of all, the Digital Influencers themselves?
Are digital influencers selling out to Mammon?
March 25th, 2010 | No Comments »
Posted in Brands & Marketing, English, Ideas, PR & Communications, Social Media, Trends |
I checked my Facebook account today and found that I had some invites from several prominent online presences (read: Twitterers and bloggers who are quite well known and therefore potentially influential).
Many of them are good friends or at least acquaintances with established Net identities/personas. So it was a bit surprising to see what they were inviting me to join. The invites were actually for products or brands that were irrelevant to what they themselves usually blogged or Twitted about.
It was as if I woke up to read in the papers that a sports editor in an influential newspaper had written a review on the Cobra Starship concert for the newspaper’s music column.
Something wasn’t right.
The reasonable inference from this spate of invites is that the Indonesian marketing communications community has come to the conclusion that new media–Facebook, Twitter, blogs and other social network platforms–matters. And that they need to get in there to secure their share of voice.
25 Thursday Mar 2010
Posted in blogging, brands, communications, Indonesia, Marketing
In Talking Points Unspun’s alter ego makes the observation that Indonesian has entered into an interesting phase where marketers have suddenly woken up to the potential of New Media. They are enlisting the help of Digital Influencers but are they all going about it in a way that would benefit the brands, their customers and, most of all, the Digital Influencers themselves?
Are digital influencers selling out to Mammon?
March 25th, 2010 | No Comments »
Posted in Brands & Marketing, English, Ideas, PR & Communications, Social Media, Trends |
I checked my Facebook account today and found that I had some invites from several prominent online presences (read: Twitterers and bloggers who are quite well known and therefore potentially influential).
Many of them are good friends or at least acquaintances with established Net identities/personas. So it was a bit surprising to see what they were inviting me to join. The invites were actually for products or brands that were irrelevant to what they themselves usually blogged or Twitted about.
It was as if I woke up to read in the papers that a sports editor in an influential newspaper had written a review on the Cobra Starship concert for the newspaper’s music column.
Something wasn’t right.
The reasonable inference from this spate of invites is that the Indonesian marketing communications community has come to the conclusion that new media–Facebook, Twitter, blogs and other social network platforms–matters. And that they need to get in there to secure their share of voice.
10 Wednesday Feb 2010
Posted in communications, Indonesia, Marketing, Public Relations
Know Ye O Mortals, especially in Indonesia, that there is one who walks among you with the gift of the silver tongue, whose words of wisdom buoy you to the highest levels of commitment and devotion.
Such a man is not easily understood and is quite reviled at home among the Chattering Classes but actually appreciated aboard, especially by the High Priests of the arcane arts of Public Affairs, who recently voted him COMMUNICATOR OF THE YEAR.
Now gaze on his wondrous video-taped acceptance speech to Public Affairs Asia and learn the many skills he employs to become a revered communicator.
For an earlier posting of how SBY beat out Pretty Boy Abhisit for the title, and to vote on your choice of Communicator of the Year go here.
10 Monday Aug 2009
Posted in blogging, communications, Indonesia, Malaysia, Marketing, Pesta Blogger, Public Relations
Tags
Enda and Unspun trying to look cool among a bevy of hot Air Asia stewedesses while other guys try to muscle in on our act
Improbable as it sounds Unspun was actually invited by Air Asia to spend ASEAN’s 42nd Anniversary in Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok – all within a day.
Indonesian blogger Ollie poses with the AirAsia girls.
Here’s his report on Maverick Network.
|
15 Friday May 2009
The story from CNN below should give them some ammo to tell their bosses that , in spite of Indonesia’s low penetration rate, there is enough numbers and fast growth in social networks, to merit them seriously considering New Media as a channel of communicating with their audiences/markets.
alerted to the news from Dhitri‘s Tweet
|
15 Friday May 2009
Posted in blogging, Marketing, Media, Public Relations, Twitter
Something interesting happened in the Indonesian Twittersphere recently.
Shortly after Unspun and the Indonesian Tweeps gave their thumbs down to Vivanews’ Twitter Blasts (see previous post here), and Unspun as well as Mavericknetwork blogged about it, Vivanews went off air in the Twittersphere.
Why? Ju
dging from the comment left by an anonymous visitor in Mavericknetwork, it could be that Vivanews was actually listening and, as he said, learning (which is a very good approach – promote the guy if any of you at Vivanews is listening to this). Of it could be that my pal with the good looks, Mirwan Suwarso sent Unspun‘s post to Vivanews marketing Director.
Whatever, it is some measure of indication that Vivanews, as opposed to so many other businesses, is at least is aware of the chatter about it on the Net by removing their Twitter account.
But is pulling out a good idea? Thomas at Orangescale.net questions the tactic with this posting:
VIVAnews Deleted Its Twitter Account. A Smart Move?
Not following VIVAnews doesn’t make me stop reading people’s comments about it. There are some blogs brought this Twitter account into discussion. Today, I noticed that @vivanews_com account had been deleted by the account holder. Maybe, it’s because the Twitter users’ (especially in Indonesia and its followers) responses.
Now, the question: Is it — deleting its Twitter — a smart move? Is it the best option? I think, it’s not. Let’s figure out why the account was closed.
I think, rather than closing/deactivated its account, the account holder should stop the auto-update and show that they’re listening. They can do it by removing its feed(s) from Twitterfeed. Then, they give respond also via Twitter. Why? Because it’s the medium. They can ask for feedback, and how they can make it better next time.
It can be a better counter for the negative comments on Twitter. If they think that closing account will remove the negative comments, they’re wrong. It’s still accessible in Twitter database, unless people who wrote tweets delete them. See these screenshots: one and two. Those screenshots were taken, even the referenced account has been deleted.
Now, will they join Twitter again? I’m curious.
Unspun agrees. If Vivanews wants to make an impact in Web2.0 they must realize that they are either part of the Conversation or they can be toast. Clamming up and putting their head in the sand is Neolithic by today’s standards and is no longer an option. A good example of why this is so lies with examples discussed in the excellent book The Truth about SEO by Rebecca Lieb.
Lieb gave the example of the bicycle lock maker Kryptonite and Dell in Chapter 4 of the book, Your Reputation is On the Line. Somewhere around 2004-5 both companies got into trouble, Kryptonite for selling an expensive bicycle lock that could be opened by a cheap ball point pen and Dell for incurring the wrath of uberblogger Jeff Jarvis.
Both companies were trashed on the blogosphere. Yet if you Google them (at least until twhen the book was written) you see two different results. The negative stories from those days still haunt Kryptonite in the first two pages of Google. (This is no longer the case today – I just checked – perhaps Kryptonite learned as well). Google results for Dell were different – searches for “Dell Hell” were relegated to the umpteenth page of Google search results.
The lesson here? When confronted by a PR fallout on the Net, don’t put your head in the sand and hope the bad things said about you will go away. On the contrary, these bad things will stay around forever in the Net unless you do something about it. What companies in trouble should do is to be part of the Conversation and help shape or steer it so that the chatter is about things positive and meaningful to you and your Net stakeholders.
Now, if Vivanews was really smart, they should revive their Twitter account, apologize for the slip up, maybe even ask the audience what news they would like to receive in Twitter and be part of the Conversation. Unspun would think that this is crucial for Vivanews since it, presumably, at some time wants to be seen as a purveyor of information in the Web 2.0 (and beyond) era.
Hmmmm…maybe they should send their marketing/PR person to (get ready for shameless plug of an event Unspun‘s office is organizing) the PR and New Media Workshop being organized by Maverick’s New Media Division?
Also read: Toni’s news at navinot: Kita adalah Anak Manja Dunia Digital
13 Wednesday May 2009
Twitter is the flavor of the day and everyone, it seems, is getting into it.
Indonesian companies and individuals are no exception. Even the traditional media has entered into the Twitterverse and it is interesting to see the strategies, or lack of, they adopt in this very 2,0 or the Web 2.0 medium of micro-blogging.
The Jakarta Globe seems to do it well, with periodic Tweets alerting the Indonesian Twitterverse to important developing stories and links to them. Unspun remembers them experimenting with live Tweets from football matches but that seems to have disappeared into the ether.
The emincence primus of Indonesian Twitterverse, Aulia, also thinks that Breaking News does it well. Unspun‘s begun subscribing to them and too early to tell, but so far so good.
Not every media house does it well, however, and in a recent act of charity Unspun reciprocated Viva News‘ follow on Twitter. Big Mistake! In the tradition of no good deed ever going unpinished, Unspun was beseiged with spates of Tweet Blasts several times a day from Viva.
Irked by the Twittering diahhrea, Unspun‘s asked in Twitter, with trademark typos, if other Tweeps thought Viva News’s Tweets were useful and informative or annoying. Almost all who responded werte unanimous: “annoying.”
There is a lesson to be learned here and that is that Old Media habits of marketing a product or service doesn’t work in New Media. The last thing anyone wants is some impersonal RSS feed crowding your Twitterzone with irelevant information that you can’t respond to. (Technically, Viva News can response to all the adverse comments but let’s see how long it will take before they realise that they were not part of this Conversation).
So what should one do? The ever popular and omnipresent Enda Nasution (the Dr Manhattan of Indonesia’s Twitter and Blogging Universes?) poffered this link as advice. Perhaps Viva News, which is ironically an online news portal, should bo back to school and learn the new rules of marketing?
