Author: Kien

Print Magazines Have a Pay Day When There’re Many Advertisers. Online Magazines, Only When They Have More Traffic

Just let that sink in for a minute.

Therein lies the fundamental difference between print and digital.

Every fall season, (fashion) glossies around the world print their extra-thick editions, as advertisers stack their budgets for the commencement of the post-summer year-end shopping season; from autumn/winter collections, to post-Thanksgiving sales, to Christmas gifting.

You hear tales of a quantum leap in advertising dollars made from a single monthly edition. September issues, as some of us are led to believe, are like the “Black Fridays” in the print magazine business. In fact, there are urban legends (more likely the truth) circulated here in Singapore about publishers banking six-figures from that one month’s run.

But you need to ask yourself, do these print magazines see a multi-fold increase in circulation for this same time period, commensurate with the multi-fold increase in ad pages? Clearly not.

And if not, what are advertisers buying into? Insertion into a thicker wad of paper, with the self-assurance that every page that is turned is given the same amount of attention?

Some people tune in to Super Bowl to watch the half-time commercials. I’ve never heard of anyone buying a magazine for the ads.

Of course, it shouldn’t surprise you that (most) print publishers will choose to get audited for that particular month. FYI: In the print industry, magazines need only be audited for one month’s run, in order to say they’re “audited,” if at all. And by audit, it means some third party verifying that you actually print x number of copies that month. So for appearance or auditing reasons, you’ll see more of these thick copies printed in September.

Did you know if one copy of a magazine is (officially provided) on a flight, every passenger on that flight is counted as readership. No? You’re welcome, there’s a fun fact to talk about on your next date.

There’ll be copies in huge stacks in bookstores, inserted into corporate goodie bags for any good reason, sent to restaurants, hotels, cafés (preferably in the same building as the client), to the clinics of doctors, dentists, ophthalmologists and most popularly, gynaecologists.

Digital platforms can’t do what print magazines do: make much more money, with more or less the same number of readership.

Websites whether they are Buzzfeed.com (ugh, I know) or theAtlantic.com, needs to have more of the same quality traffic (e.g., more people who like football reading about football seeing football ads) in order to make more revenues. Even then, they never quite have the same big “pay day” that print magazines have.

Digital publishers are also “audited” by Google Analytics and sometimes, client-designated ad serving platforms all year round, each month, all day, every hour and second, down to the very click by who, where and when. That’s the detail we have to be accountable for.

Surely, at some point in time, advertisers need to think about just what they are buying into when they all jump onto the fall season bandwagon of print advertising.

Do you think your ad on page 246 will be seen amongst the other 300 ad pages of a 388-page magazine?

[highlight]Or maybe you’re just happy you got a 30-word editorial mention under Features on page 42. Now, that’s something to write home to head office in Paris about. [/highlight]

14 November 2015
Fast Fashion Didn’t Kill Fashion, Fashion Did

There’s a lot of talk these days (here, here, and here) about the extensive damage the accessibility and affordability of fast fashion has done to the larger fashion industry.

The chaotic crowds of shoppers queuing overnight and jostling for the H&M x Balmain capsule collection, marketed cleverly with the use of IT girls of the moment including Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid, have people wondering if there is just too much fashion, no, too much cheaply and quickly-produced fashion around these days.

Do you really believe that?

Is someone buying 40 $10 T-shirts from H&M depriving a luxury label of the sale of one $400 equivalent? Maybe, if it’s clearly a rip-off and folks are thinking they are buying an exact replica (there’s ample legal recourse). More often than not, these aren’t bootlegged versions, but loosely-inspired reproductions.

For example, is a skull-head graphic print exclusive ONLY to one luxury brand?

Doesn’t fashion itself also copy, appropriate from others?

In fact, the rules of copyright apply differently for fashion, and this loose(r) enforcement has resulted in more innovation and sales. To that point, I lean towards what Tom Ford once said about Gucci counterfeits, and by that extrapolation, fast-fashion productions: That they appeal to different markets.

In other words, someone who is a TOM FORD customer isn’t going to being hijacked by a H&M/TopShop/Zara copy.

That said, the designer has recently also commented, “A lot of the things I did – it’s not going to sound anything but egotistical – if I’m lucky and I did the right thing, they will be at Zara way before I can get them in the store, and I don’t like that.”

If anything, affordable fashion has made it such that MORE people can dress more fashionably. If more luxurious fashion labels cannot make their own case with workmanship, materials and brand DNA, and thus justify a higher price tag, in light of a larger, more fashionable consumer base, then perhaps it is their own fault they aren’t doing well.

Amancio Ortega, the multi-billionaire founder of European clothes retailer Zara recently became the wealthiest person in the world, attesting to burgeoning growth of the fashion industry. Has his wealth really come at the expense of other fashion labels?

Doesn’t this just mean the pie has become bigger for everyone?

My view is, if you’re in fashion or any other business, you need to clearly articulate your value proposition. Face it, there is always going to be cheaper competition.

[highlight]ANYBODY can try to put red soles on their stiletto pumps (not that you won’t get sued), but there is ONLY ONE Christian Louboutin. [/highlight]

14 November 2015
The Toruk Never Looks Up; Neither Does Your Biggest Competitor

So many of us are working on our own startup and fledging businesses, cognizant of who the biggest players are in our market.

For quite a number of you, the approach has been to take small steps to establish a foothold and expand carefully and meaningfully without stirring the attention of the big giant on the block, lest it comes knocking on your door and squeezing you out of the business, whether it’s through predatory pricing or offering the same promotions.

In the movie “Avatar”, if you recall, Jake Sulley (played by Aussie actor Sam Worthington) decides to capture the Toruk with cunning simplicity. Acknowledging that the Toruk — the big red bird of prey feared by all the Na’Vi (natives) of the planet Pandora — which sits at the top of the “fear chain”, so to speak, Jake Sulley attacks it from above, knowing that the Toruk would never expect anyone else to threaten it from that direction.

I recommend this bold strategy for all those who have been initially conservative.

Go after your competitor from where he expects it least.

It is the only way for you to succeed, and perhaps your best chance of survival too.

[highlight]The author of this note realizes not all have watched the movie Avatar and advises friends not to literally jump on your competitor’s back at the next conference.[/highlight]

8 January 2014
Artisanship — A Pursuit of Excellence — Should Become the Goal for Singaporeans

Following the grand plan that the Prime Minister laid out in the 2013th edition of the National Day Rally, from the new Changi Airport “Jewel” project, to new housing and industry initiatives, one thing that Singaporeans are most concerned about is how they will play a part in this progress.

The Pursuit of Excellence is the Key to Our Relevance and Survival

My vision for how Singapore can march into the next few decades can be summarized into 1 word, “Artisanship“, which denotes a dedication to becoming the best and most skilled in something.

1. To have the best skills – from chefs, programmers, seamstresses, mixologists, scientists, architects, engineers, builders, performance artists, animators, illustrators, photographers, singers, writers, dancers. doctors, armed forces…
2. To have the highest service standards and pride in service (Read Post)
3. To develop social grace

The government, its agencies, and our booming tourist economy can only provide the infrastructure. We have the schools, we have the global companies setting up their Asian headquarters here. We have an unprecedented influx of tourists visiting our country.

But if we as a people do not guide our young to be the best in what they do, we will end up needing to import resources, becoming a population that can only consume but not produce.

Right now, we have a whole generation of Singaporeans angry at feeling “left behind”, but the biggest worry is that the generation-to-follow is one that believes in “working smart, not hard” without being particularly very skilled in a chosen field. There is also no substitute for diligence, for “blood and sweat”, to achieve what we want, to become a viable work force, to partake in the success of the nation.

So many of our young want to be a founder of a tech startup without being a good programmer or having ample business experience. So many want to be a restauranteur without being a good chef. So many want to be a designer without knowing how to sew. So many want to be a boss before they know how to be a good employee.

That shortfall of excellence is the crux of our problem.

We cannot pursue the goal of being a global hub but not have our own citizenry participate in, and enjoin in that progress. That gap in skillset and the inability to meet expectation with reality is the cause of disenfranchisement in this country.

We cannot wait for leadership to guide us along. We alone must teach and mentor our young to first achieve excellence in what they do. Or we can sit and be paralyzed, pour our grievances online about injustices while the world moves along without us.

To become Artisans, the people alone must work hard to achieve the skills.

[highlight]My next post is on Authenticity. Watch out for it. [/highlight]

24 August 2013
What Singapore Inc. Can Learn from Manchester United

In May 2013, Sir Alex Ferguson announced his retirement after almost 27 years in charge at Manchester United, with the most successful tenure for a football manager in modern football, winning 49 trophies and amongst them 13 Premier League titles.

The most highly decorated manager of 71 years of age is likely to be succeeded by fellow Scotsman David Moyes, 50, who had managed Everton Football Club on meagre resources by English Premier League standards and his appointment comes as a shock compared to the big money moves of recent times.

Pundits had predicted Jose Mourinho, Jürgen Klopp, Jupp Heynckes as probable big name signings but they were proven wrong by the British club’s decision to go for a homegrown talent in the form of Moyes.

From a business perspective, what’s more important is the larger lesson we can gleam from Manchester United’s impending managerial announcement

What Would Singapore Have Done?

For a small country looking to continue to reap growth and success, the default strategy by entities in Singapore (both government and private, which I shall collectively group as “Singapore Inc.”) has been to import talent, especially at the highest management levels.

In 2009, when Temasek CEO Ho Ching was (apparently, albeit briefly) stepping down, the then-successor was Chip Goodyear, former CEO of BHP Billiton Ltd. Another example would be Magnus Bocker heading up the SGX. A look around the largest Singapore companies will reveal various foreign CEOs in charge.

I’m not saying hiring foreign talent is not good. In fact, Manchester United does it themselves in the form of player signings. Not to dig Liverpool Football Club in the same post, but they went “local” with multiple British signings when Kenny Dalglish took over and look where that took them. Getting the correct mix is still important.

Manchester United is one of the richest clubs in the world, and it has much to lose by making a wrong appointment as well but what it has done in this situation, is recognize the tenacious management record of a homegrown talent, and to give him a bigger stage to bloom.

Trust Our Own Talent

Singapore has the talent, and executives with the experience and track records to take on leadership roles at the highest levels. In some cases, these talents might not have shone as brightly given their limited context and resources, a la Moyes at Everton.

But that didn’t stop Manchester United.

Singapore should look to do more of the same. Obviously, it’s easier and safer to go for the big name hires, even better if its verified by a big name consulting company and headhunter, but the braver, more long-term strategy is to try and improve upon the quality of our own human resources by giving our own talent an opportunity to shine.

Give Singaporean A Chance

[highlight]Another route would be to aggressively pour resources into developing local talent, just like the German teams in Bundesliga, with Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund success stories from the national effort to revitalize their talent pool[/highlight]

9 May 2013
Take Pride In What You Do & Maintain High Standards

I was at the press conference of the World Gourmet Summit today and the key stakeholders were talking about the difficulty in hiring service staff in Singapore and also the inability to meet (high) service standards.

Reasons given included the low unemployment rate amongst Singaporeans, resulting in us not willing to do service level jobs, another was the perception that a service job in F&B business was just not prestigious.

Of course, Singaporeans defending themselves will immediately say the jobs in themselves don’t pay well enough otherwise we would all want to be restaurant managers. This seems to be the de-facto no-brainer response to this kind of topic these days.

I surmise somebody out there is going to say they pay restaurant managers $10,000/month in some Scandinavian country. Good for them.

So it shouldn’t be surprising that…

Nobody Wants To Be A Waiter

… And then we came to the punchline of the discussion, that the F&B industry does need foreign labour (waiters, cooks, managers) and foreign talent (Michelin-star quality chefs) to fill this void that Singaporeans cannot fulfil.

Low cost for lower skilled but integral labour. High cost to buy prestige factor and expertise.

Now I don’t have a solution for labour shortage, nor do I know how to deal with foreign labour restrictions and I definitely don’t have any idea how you can make your restaurant business viable.

I also don’t know how you can make a waitering job more attractive. Perhaps restaurant owners can actually split the service charge they impose on customers.

Screw The Service, The Food Is Awful!

But what I want to say is, in spite of this need (from whom I don’t know) to boost the F&B industry in Singapore, with new eateries sprouting up everywhere, that the quality of food is actually dropping regardless of the service standards, which I didn’t expect to be high in the first place.

Those pictures of food on Instagram hashtagged #foodporn in Singapore might look good, but in general, the food is crap. French, American, Moroccan, Indian, Chinese, local hawker fare, you name it.

American Diner-inspired cafes offer up cute-looking pancakes costing $30 that taste nothing like iHop. Laksa served in food courts looks like noodles swimming in orange/red water. Steak-frites is not really just a piece of beef and french fries, you know? Mushroom soup shouldn’t taste worse than if I just microwaved a can of Campbell’s. You really don’t have any business starting a sushi joint if you didn’t know Salmon Don came with vinegared rice. And don’t get me started on the coconut rice plus everything that you call “nasi lemak”.

What the F&B industry faces is really a larger problem across Singapore society: A dilution of quality.

What’s funny is the foreign talent coming to Singapore end up assimilating our worst trait — Complaining.

Complain about government. Complain about people. Complain about staff. Complain about customers. Complain about suppliers.

You think a French or English chef is sexy with his accent? Hear him complain and he’ll sound just like a Singaporean. Singapore has become a melting pot afterall.

Honestly, we should have a national campaign to have PRIDE in what we do, whatever job we do.

Don’t do it well for someone else, do it well for your own goodness sake.

STANDARDS. There you have it.

[highlight]Have you ever eaten in Chinatown in New York City? Boy, those waiters are grouchy. But nobody cares because the food is cheap and good. [/highlight]

7 March 2013
When Liking A Facebook Page Means More Than Just That

I’ll admit it, to me, the act of “liking” a Facebook page is never just what it is at face-value — it is neither trivial nor flippant, especially given FB wants pages to advertise to get fans.

In fact, FB no longer allows fans to “invite” their friends to like a page — they can only “share” a link — and only administrators are left with the friend invitation tool. By doing so, FB has killed/crippled the innate “virality” of FB pages, thus driving page admins to pay into the system to grow their fanbase.

Like Or Not Like?

Believe it or not, I’ve received requests from folks asking me to share their page to our fans — to help them grow — only to realize that these goodwill requestors did not even like our page in the first place. In my humble opinion, such behaviour lacks good faith and doesn’t exactly inspire reciprocality.

Of course, there are those (myself included) who deliberately do not like a page or choose to un-fan ourselves out of objection, disinterest, competition, protest or a myriad of other motivations.

To me, liking an FB page that you’ve been invited to by a friend or associate shows whether you support what that person is doing, and whether that person supports what you are doing.

Have Your Missed An Invitation?

When a friend invites you to like a page he/she has set up, you receive a notification and the way FB has set it up, it is all too easy to miss them.

To that end, I realized I hadn’t been able to previously track invitations to become a fan until I stumbled upon this URL where you can find a listing of previous requests from friends: https://m.facebook.com/pages?source=mobile_page_suggestions_on_liking&__user=[your_username OR user_id_number] OR on the right hand column on https://www.facebook.com/pages

If it seemed like I previously didn’t support your project, I apologize. Now I am able to finally do so at that link.

[highlight]Then again, we shouldn’t take things too seriously. Well, at least I shouldn’t. Look at the friends who send you Candy Crush requests, their feelings don’t get hurt easily. They die only to live again. [/highlight]

6 March 2013
Pivot Your Impending Failure Into “Accidental Genius”

There’s a little known fact outside the medical world: Viagra, Pfizer’s game-changing solution to erectile dysfunction, was originally conceived as sildenafil, aimed at treating chest pain caused by heart disease.

Administered 3 times a day during a trial, the drug had a side effect, causing erections in the male subjects.

With that and in not so many words, Viagra was born.

How This Applies to the Entrepreneur

Are you working on something that hasn’t seen the success you’d like it to have? Are you focused on the platform while missing the potential of one of your features?

Oftentimes, as founders of startups, we are so fixated on the vision of what we want to achieve, as we should, that we fail to realize when we have accidentally stumbled upon “genius”.

There are many of such “accidental genius” creations in human history, ranging from the mechanical clock, which was initially intended to regulate monastic prayers to the phonograph, originally meant to be record phone conversations.

How It Happened to Me

When I initially rolled out SENATUS.NET, my vision was to create a gated online community, with authenticated login required to access private information.

I launched it here in Singapore during 2008/2009, just when the popularity of Facebook finally hit the populace. The comparisons between SENATUS and Facebook were inevitable, even though the business models and the intended use cases were starkly different.

[box]In fact, Facebook was itself also launched as a private network at first, with invitations given only to students of Harvard, then Ivy League schools, and colleges nationwide, before being open to public users. The rest is history[/box]

Some of the members who registered on my network were expecting the experience to be the same on Facebook, the number of users to be in the millions, the interactivity including the presence of third party apps (games) to provide similar R&R time.

The reality is that the average user is not going to take the time to understand why your product is different — user behavior is primitive and instinctive — Just look at the number of times people pick something up and start using it without looking at the instruction manual. Or simply just watch an iPhone user try out an Android smartphone.

Not everybody gets a chance to demonstrate their innovation at CES (the famed consumer electronics tradeshow in Las Vegas), nor has the budget to do a press junket for media and tech bloggers (and for them to subsequently explain to readers what you do).

During that particularly “dark” year in 2009, I literally role-played the restaurant owner sitting in my empty eatery, waiting for customers to come through the door, i.e. waiting for members to register on my network. Few did, and on hindsight I knew why: They couldn’t see inside the website (which was the point) and their curiosity wasn’t piqued enough for them to make the effort to register.

From Wilderness to Openness

SENATUS was built on Python/Django, an incredibly powerful content management system, and I had used it to not only add social networking features but also a rather simplistic magazine at the time.

And in that wilderness, I had what I call my ‘Hansel & Gretel’ moment.

The breadcrumbs of content I had left public were in fact what readers were responding to. It was as though through it, they finally understood the premium positioning that I wanted my network to have.

With that moment of Eureka, I poured my resources into fleshing out the magazine component of our website. Our luxury and lifestyle magazine went ‘live’ in 2010, and we quickly went on to win Gold Award in Best Online Magazine at the Asian Digital Media Award, emerging best against entries from media conglomerates from Asia Pacific to the Middle East. In 2012, after a further upgrading effort, we won the Silver Award.

The networking components of my website continue to exist, deployed for registered members but also intelligently used to make our editorial content “come alive”, allowing interactions with our team of editors, writers and photographers, facilitating discussions that can incorporate multi-media visual resources from across the Internet to create an all-encompassing experience.

[box]That is what I consider the Future of Magazines. You are welcome to take a look here: http://senatus.net/community and request an account if you’d like access. Yahoo, through Melissa Mayer, becomes only the second portal after us, to adopt an in-house newsfeed for its content.[/box]

I still believe in my core product — the network — but I have evolved my platform in order to continue doing what I do.

[highlight]Are you sitting on an “Accidental Genius”? Perhaps it’s time to take stock of the treasures you’ve already unearthed.[/highlight]

22 February 2013
Lessons from FC Barcelona for the Entrepreneur: Do the Dirty Work
Everyone who plays soccer knows this: FC Barcelona led by World Player of the Year Lionel Messi, is one of the most followed and idolized teams in the modern era.

Yet almost all the recreational players who celebrate the successes of the team and watch their games week in and week out, don’t play anywhere like them, don’t apply any of the tiki-taka philosophy to their teamplay, don’t overwhelm their opposition, no matter how individually talented each player is.

Why?

I surmise it’s because fans just focus on the glamorous bits of the game, the masterful dribbling, the scoring highlights and the spectacular video bites that engage the short attention span of the viewer.

In many ways, it’s the same malaise that bugs entrepreneurs who decide to start a new venture. They pour through magazine coverage, blog posts, and autobiographies of successful businessmen, unconsciously culling out what the appealing parts are, adopting marketing cliches and punchlines as mottos, and in doing so, inevitably miss the woods for the trees.

In reality, there’s a whole lot of dirty work that FCB players do that brings them success. These critical components of their games aren’t sexy, don’t make the news, and certainly don’t sell football shoes. High court pressing, passing, self-sacrificing cover runs, supporting teammates and providing a passing option – these are the most boring yet quintessential parts of FCB’s game.

How This Applies to the Entrepreneur

The equivalent lessons for the founder of a startup are pretty straightforward and I shall limit my discourse on digital platforms, where my experience lies — focus on unit testing, user experience and site layout, growth, distribution, hiring, branding, marketing, profitability and most important of all, efficiency of effort.

I’ve observed many founders spending an inordinate amount of time networking, believing that rubbing shoulders with peers in the business, can somehow bring them success but those who oftentimes don’t make (enough) traction are the ones who aren’t efficient about their networking efforts.

Networking isn’t about having a beer with fellow founders, developers, venture capitalists and chit-chatting about why your own startup is great (or going to be) — that’s the kind of conversation you have with a client you want to win business from.

No one’s really listening when you talk about how you just hired 10 into your staff, that you’re getting $5 million funding, when your TV commercial is going to run, or the number of downloads your app has on iTunes.

Let’s face it: Unless you’re selling life insurance policies specifically for entreprenuers, fellow founders aren’t your target market either. Read: The 20 folks you met aren’t going to be the ones who provide that magical catalyst for you. The reality is they’re busy with their own business.

My advice is to leave the seemingly-glamorous parts aside and focus.

Efficient Networking

A founder needs to be pragmatic about how she spends her time, especially if that’s time spent away from developing the product — Know who your counterpart is, understand what value that person can bring to what you do, explore and hopefully strike up key partnerships that make sense, invest in shared intelligence that can reap you insights into what you’re doing.

[unordered_list style=”arrow”]
- What have you done with that stack of business cards?
- Does that Venture Capital firm even invest in your industry?
- Is that developer someone you can hire, poach, or propose to become your partner?
[/unordered_list]

The point is simple: Focus on the dirty work | Be efficient with your play.

Good luck.

[highlight]The author in no way suggests you should be anti-social and calculative with the time you spend with friends and family. But if it’s work, then make sure it pays off .[/highlight]
1 February 2013