Monday, February 25, 2019

We treat our staff like family around here!


By. Mr. Peter Coleman 
Director at Aegis Interaktif Asia Pte Ltd



How many times have you started a job, or even been for an interview and the CEO or someone of a similar level says "We treat our staff like family around here". It is of course a stupid statement to make for a whole host of reasons. You might hear other trite phrases like "My door is always open" or "We want our staff to cherish the leadership". None of this is backed up by any description as to how it is going to be achieved.
But it's the first statement that should make those little alarm bells ring in the back of your head. On the one hand it may feel to you that you are going to be welcomed into the family, sharing holidays, birthdays, anecdotes about the children or grandchildren, swapping photos from holidays and of your dogs and cats. However you may want to take a reality check and try and find out if their family actually like them.
Depending on the age of the boss or bosses and their children you might try and do some amateur detective work looking for Facebook and other social media sites to see if your potential new boss does actually have any sort of social media presence and if so how much his or her family appears in his or her feed. Now not everyone has Facebook and other social media accounts so you need to become an amateur sleuth and do your own investigations. You may find out that the children don't even like or live with the parents. You may find out there are some dark secrets lurking in the depths of the familial relationships. 
Certainly for me the next time someone tells me they treat their staff like family I shall probably feel very sorry for the staff and wonder what they did to deserve such bad luck.
The point of this story? Listen to the subtext of what is being said. Why would it be necessary for someone to make these kind of statements if it were in fact true and being practiced by the people making the statements. So if you hear these phrases "We treat our staff like family", "my door is always open" or other strange and inane utterances you should probably listen to that little bell ringing and make for the door and the next interview.

Friday, February 15, 2019

5 Anticipated Topics for the dreaded General Paper in 2019



Neena Godhia-Gunter 


Full-time Private Tutor Subjects: General Paper (A levels), English (Primary to Secondary)


Very often when it comes to the General Paper (GP) examination the focus is on Paper 1 and little is said about the comprehension passage or what to possibly anticipate.
From my experience teaching A level students, being more aware of current affairs and reading up on what is going on in the news is the first step in scoring for GP.
Here are some hot topics that have never been tested on in the comprehension section and are worth your attention.
1.      Climate change
Global warming and climate change are problems we face today. Even though there are sceptics like Trump, we do witness massive changes in the climate globally which raises many concerns and queries. Who is responsible and what can we do? Are we doing enough, and can the damage be reversed as suggested by Trump?
2.      Education and empowerment
Malala Yousafzai, is one prominent advocate of education. Through education many problems can be mitigated, and boys and girls can be empowered, yet twenty percent of young people in developing countries fail to complete even primary school education. Why is this the case? How can education bring people out of poverty?
3.      World Hunger
With the developed world getting richer and many developing nations growing, many are still left behind in the world. Some 795 million people in the world do not have enough food to lead a healthy active life, which is about one in every nine people on earth. Can this problem be solved? What are some solutions to bring about a fairer distribution of the necessary resource?
4.      Globalization
With globalization comes not only economic growth but challenges. Today there is an unprecedented movement of people that many nations are not equipped to handle. What policy changes are needed for smoother integration of immigrants? What consequences will there be on people, families and world economies if more nations adopt protectionist policies?

Instead of just reading the news wholesale challenge yourself by thinking out of the box and questioning whether any facts presented in the article sit well with you. Remember there are always two sides of the coin and the more compelling arguments you can present in your general paper, the more likely you can score.
Keep reading and good luck!

Friday, February 08, 2019

You don’t need a fashion model to sell your clothing brand…

credit to cartoonstock.com
Since I started my own agency I’ve had the opportunity to meet countless talented business owners who know their brands inside out. Whether its in F&B, tech or an area as niche as semiconductors, you would expect that the experts in these respective fields would choose to work with an agency that knows their industry inside out correct? Not quite.
While it does stand to reason that a marketing expert hailing from the same industry as the client or one who has serviced the majority of clients from a similar industry it would be a right fit, understanding does not always translate to selling a product or service.
This is where I find that many clients can to lose the plot when selecting agencies for their brand. They usually tend to focus on agencies that are ‘industry’ experts in fields like F&B or Tech by default while losing sight of the big picture on the objective of their campaign and who exactly they need to sell their product or service to.
The whole purpose of selecting an agency is not about whether they are experts in your industry, but if they are experts in marketing products/services similar to yours. Take for instance a car brand like Volkswagen, would they hire an engineer to market and sell their cars? Yes and no. They would be consulted of course on which USPs to highlight, but the marketing team needs to come up with a strategy that would appeal to consumers in terms of designing the brochures or types of consumer events. So, in other words an agency needs to be somewhere in the middle - to have some knowledge of your industry, but first and foremost how to formulate a marketing strategy that reaches the right target audience.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating to hire a tech agency to publicise your new restaurant menu (unless it’s an AI restaurant 😉), but maybe what clients need to do before they make a decision is take note on these few things:
1.     Don’t just look at the list of clients are under the agency’s portfolio. Find out how they have serviced them
Depending on what your objective is for your product/service finding out how an agency executes a campaign will give you an idea of how creative they are. At first glance big known brands in a portfolio may seem impressive until you find out how they were serviced. For example did they just draft a press release and send it out via a newswire or was there a creative campaign done over a few months? If you are looking for an agency to just write press releases and send them to a bunch of media to ‘get the word out there’ then there’s no point in paying for an expensive one. Ask for case studies that show how certain issues were resolved and the strategy used to achieve their PR goals instead of just looking for brand names.
2.     Don’t get fooled by ‘celebrity PR’
Everyone falls for a pretty face and thinks it ‘can launch a thousand ships’ but once those ships are launched what’s the next step? There are some agencies that ride on a representative that’s always featured in the media, has a million followers on Instagram or was an ex recording artist that’s been on the Billboard countdown. But really if that is all it takes, why doesn’t Beyoncé have her own PR agency or be her own publicist? What you need to know is that this ‘superstar’ is probably not going to be servicing your account or might not even be seen at meetings. Now if he/she manages to get a few big features in the press for you because of contacts, that’s swell if you have short term goals. But ultimately the success of your PR campaign depends on a team running it over a period of time and the experience they bring to your account. 
3.     Realise that you will never find a PR expert that understands your industry 100%
Unless you clone yourself and get him/her to work in an agency for 5 to 8 years, you will never find anyone else with the same knowledge of your industry in the PR field as you. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to do PR for Swiss watch brands that have mechanical complications as complex as an Einstein equation but I’m no rocket scientist. The role of the PR expert is to extract the important bits from all the industry jargon and tell stories that appeal to consumers and the press to push your brand forward. 
4.     Know your objectives
Many clients seem to know what they like, but have no idea what they want. Having this approach with any agency is the beginning of a tumultuous relationship with no happy ending. Before you meet an agency its good to have a rough brief on what you want to achieve and who you would like to reach out to. The role of the agency is not to tell youwhat to do but to advise you. You don’t go to a banking consultant with 10 million dollars and ask him/her if you should invest it in their bank do you? Having a brief with clear objectives in mind will also help you to decipher on the type of agency you might be looking for. This exercise also helps in managing your budget and not paying for services you don’t actually need.
The bottomline is to remember that you need an agency that is good in what THEY do and not necessarily what YOU do. Ultimately that’s the whole point in hiring experts which is to do necessarily something outside of your skillset. Otherwise what are you paying them for?

© BeautifullyIncoherent
Maira Gall