Marketing, Leadership & Malays

Numbers Junkies

2009-08-08T15:40:00.003+08:00

People love numbers, but we just don't like arithmetic. I like numbers although I got errr...C6 in my SPM add maths. But believe me, we're all surrounded by numbers everyday, in everything we do, everywhere we go. Recent studies showed that we study less and less math and science in the universities, and in Malaysia more and more students choose fields like business studies, computer related (IT, software engineering, creatives, etc), and nursing (as private hospitals' business boomed up in recent years). But we are fascinated by the mathematical underpinnings of our daily lives. We may have fewer numbers expert, but we have more Numbers Junkies.

Some of us may not like mathematics subject taught in school, Add Maths in particular. But now it seems that we use numbers most of the time to determine the direction that we'll be heading. In political polls or elections, politicians and people are using numbers to dictate the success of someone/some party, in both absolute numbers (for majority votes gap) and numbers in percentage (demographic profile and voting turn ups). In sales, whoever in this area, from top to bottom will always talk about sales numbers. Numbers and numbers, day in, day out. They will talk and argue about sales achievement versus target (normally in %), versus last year, penetration and distribution strike rate and many more.

And in an area like marketing, it's so crucial that if numbers is not present in your discussion or presentation, you will be assumed that you are just merely making motherhood statements. All the marketing strategies, plans and directions are always derived by NUMBERS. To develop a marketing strategy or plan, you need to analyze the area of your product or service from all sorts of angles. You need to analyze the internal numbers, e.g. production capacity to meet the market expected demand and sales team's target, the profit and loss management, marketing budget for both above-the-line and below-the-line and display space share tabulation among internal brands/products. These numbers can be misaligned even though it's all internally driven, normally by each respective supply chain departments.

From external perspective, you need to look into the opportunities and threats. Need to understand the industry's landscape, for example if you are in RTD (ready to drink) beverage industry, you must analyze what is the market's behavior, what is the growing categories, what is the declining categories, which category contributes most revenue, which is the biggest prospect to develop within 5 years time. These are all important to know where we are and where we will going to be. Basically these numbers can steer us to which direction of our business will be heading. We have to analyze and understand our competitors' numbers as well, their sales volume, market share, revenues and financial capabilities. Some useful resources that you can obtain these numbers from are consumers and trade research companies like TNS, Research International, AC Nielsen and company's Annual Reports.

So in short, understanding numbers are very important in our daily routines. A few popular movies and dramas are also numbers-driven, such as 1997's Good Will Hunting (Matt Damon), 2001's A Beautiful Mind (Russell Crowe) and blockbuster crime drama series like CSI and Numb3rs. Even the current horrifying pandemic that is spreading out globally is also related with numbers, H1N1 influenza. As at today, 18 death tolls have been recorded in Malaysia. Na'uzubillah. Jauhilah kami dan ahli keluarga kami dari wabak penyakit H1N1 yang tengah menggila sekarang ni. Amin.

If you had a bad results in mathematics during your school days, do not be worried. You just need to be sharp in understanding the numbers and relate it quickly to the relevant scenario. Understand and master the basic +,-,*,/ in both absolute numbers and percentage, then you can impress others in the business. For accounting parts (it involves numbers), just leave it be to your accountants. This is a marketing blog, not accounting. Smile.

Presentation Tips - Part 1

2009-08-07T22:15:00.005+08:00

I believe that we've been exposed to do presentations since our school days. And as we grow older and move into world of career or business or politics, we are always described by the way how we perform our presentations. The common errors that we normally did in our presentations notably are nervousness and not ready / well versed on the subjects of the presentation.

Delivering quality and impactful presentation is very essential in business, marketing and corporate world. Whilst for salesmen and politicians, they are naturally good presenters in their context (petah bercakap dan licik dalam 'menggoreng'). But here, I would just like to share some tips in becoming a better presenter based on my learning, experience and observations, which I hope can be applied in our professional daily routines.

1. Attire.
- always wear light color shirt during a presentation, i.e. plain white or light blue is recommended. Please try to avoid dark or dirty color shirt. Neck tie and coat / blazer is also recommended for higher level of engagements. Make it sweet and simple, and do not ever try to be flamboyant or eccentric by wearing weird stuffs. It's gonna be a turn off key.

2. Preparation.
- you may be the SME (subject matter expert) of the presentation's topics but never take it lightly by not preparing the details. Always anticipate questions or queries from the floor, especially if you are to present to big bosses or clients. Prepare some notes as a back up if you cannot remember all the facts (numbers in particular). Rehearse a night before the session and you may need your spouse or friend to be the dummy audience. Practice in front of the mirror is also a rewarding effort, I must say. I know one senior manager in Shell who I had worked with before, who is a very excellent presenter. At his level, he still does practice giving speech in front of his wife at 2am, a night before the presentation itself. Even in Dale Carnegie's book entitled "How to develop self confidence & influence people by Public Speaking", he has always been emphasizing on the crucial and importance of PREPARATION. Good preparation will indeed grow the seeds of confidence level in you while delivering the presentation.

3. Eye contact with the audience.
- Nowadays, most of the time we are equipped with laptop or notebook while doing the presentation. It's a good tool if you know how to capitalize on it. You see, one of the most common fatal mistake presenters always do, is presenting while reading to the screen behind him/her, which the output on the screen is projected from the projector in front. By doing so, you are unable to engage eye contact with the floor and the audience will look at your back while you're presenting. Worse is, if you're talking without using microphone. But, if you're using laptop, you can perform your presentation more smoothly, and able to peep to the laptop screen and have a glance on presentation materials without turning your back to read on the projected screen behind you. Remember, always face the presentation's listeners, look into their eyes and do not turn your back on them.

4. Confidence.
- Be assertive and firm on everything about you. Your presence, your materials and your thinking. High confidence level can assure you to get a good success rating. Do not make yourself look fickle and indecisive. If you feel so, try to hide it as deep as you can and do not show it to the people. That's why a well prepared presentation can boost up your confidence level as I mentioned earlier. And here's a big tip... If you cannot answer any of the audience's question or queries, do not ever say "I DON'T KNOW or I AM NOT SURE". The better approach to tackle this is by saying "Let me check first and will come back to you" or "Let us take this offline and discuss it further". If the more say you don't know or not sure, the crowd will lose their confidence in you. So you have to have your own self-confidence, so that they will have their confidence in you.

Those are some of the external or outer portion of the presentations. I will share some more of it and some inner part in my next posts insyaallah, i.e. the layout and design of the presentation materials (especially Power Point) and creative approaches.

Till then, pen off.
Assalamualaikum.

Brand Marketing in Malay Organizations

2009-06-14T00:19:00.004+08:00

Excellent brand management is important to drive the organization's success and profitable business. How to create and build brands? It certainly requires creativity, passion and ability to capitalize on the opportunities. I would just want to share my opinions on three of the biggest and well respected local organizations in Malaysia, Petronas, TV3 and Proton. No doubt they are backed up by the government, but let us look into some of their brand marketing stories.

Petronas is a very well known National Oil Company and it's competing hard with another established oil and gas company, i.e. Shell. Petronas’s strength is its brand building was often associated with the late allahyarham Yasmin Ahmad’s masterpieces in short stories or tv commercial. There were handful of high quality emotional stories behind most of Petronas ads especially during major occasions like festivities (Hari Raya Aidilfitri, Chinese New Year and Deepavali) and National Day. The connectedness of the messages really affected the people’s feelings, even though the ads did not even say anything about their core products, which is oil and gas. It has just created the emotional connectedness among the people, and hence built the Petronas brand as an emotional brand.

Besides all those story telling and commercials, Petronas also managed to promote the brand via consumer promotions, building impactful stations and loyalty programs. Their consumer promotions attracted consumers to spend and participate in the programs, like buy their lubricants and get special limited edition goods for free, or purchase their petrol and get the chance to win something. The good part is Petronas can leverage on details which are aligned with the Malaysia’s consumers mind. The purchase dropsize is minimal to cater smaller income group and the prizes are relevant. Third data point is their image in building big and impactful service stations and multiply their offerings that other competitors were not into, and look at how aggressive they is when they place all the Maybank ATM machines at their sites and also the selling services of top-up for Touch N Go prepaid. Petronas knows what consumers need and they fulfill it before the competitors chip in and therefore, people can relate these services with Petronas brand. Some had followed Petronas but I believe that they are nowhere near as yet in this area.

TV3 is needless to say on their tremendous brand building for the last 10 or so years. Under Datuk Seri Farid Ridzuan’s leadership, the organization has leaped many steps ahead of others in the sense of expanding the brand equity. There’re many platforms that they’ve been using, such as leveraging on internet madness, putting up creative reality shows and projecting up clean and clear display layouts on the screen. But the biggest success of theirs I can say is the Karnival Jom Heboh that has become one the most anticipated event of the year by many. It is a very big event with no less than 15 corporate companies join in as sponsors every year and they toured in all major cities across the nation, including East Malaysia. The Karnival Jom Heboh is a clear cut classic brand building activity for TV3 as the primary and the sponsoring companies as the secondary to the consumers and public. Impactful! That is the key words about this event. You know, I know, and most of the people around us know.

Okay, Proton’s credibility is not as high as the above two companies. Maybe it’s a result of some political games up there, I do not know. The board directors should have done something to regain their top spot for the brand once their pole position has been replaced by Perodua. Why is this happening to the national car company? I do not want to discuss about the hard components, which are the products’ material quality, after sales services and the innovative specification itself. The brand integrity is declining, preference is declining, and sales volume is dropping as a consequence. Above the line marketing ads? No other is worse than Proton Savvy tv commercial during the launch. It’s a good product but the ads sucks. Other than that, I do not think there’s any other significant marketing campaign to re-boost up their brand confidence among consumers. Only some normal price off promotions, that I have seen lately. Let us pray for this brand not to die eventually. It’s actually something that us, Malaysian should be proud of, agreed?

If we should learn whether the brand is good and accepted by the communities, you should see and listen to the kids, I mean school kids. If they keep mentioning the brands or ads which they usually came across, it means the brand has a positive impact. Some of us may know on the brands’ KPIs such as Brand Awareness, Brand Health and Preference. Traditionally, you can follow the former that I mentioned above in this same paragraph. It is just simple, building the brand is essential to build up the organizations’ business in the future, if not now.

Malay Entrepreneur Dilemma - Part 2

2009-06-14T00:18:00.002+08:00

Time Management & Sense of Urgency

Assalamualaikum wbt is a very beautiful mukadimah which can be used everywhere and in every occasion. Islam has taught us well in managing our day to day life. And one key component is the time management. We have to manage our time smartly and not to let time manage us unnecessarily. For example, the praying time for all five prayers in a day has been set upon: what time is to start and what time does it end. The same goes for the fasting timing, when is the time to have our sahur, and when is to breaking fast. It's said and defined up front, that's the beauty part of Islam teaching.

What is sad to hear and learn is, Malays are always associated with late, slow, no sense of urgency, not keeping to promises. All because of poor time management, and it has contributed to this famous saying of "Janji Melayu". Why? Is it because we are accustomed to be always late? Tun Dr. Mahathir also did mentioned about our Malays' attitude of this slow and steady pace in his Malay Dilemma. This has to changed. We have to change ourselves. We have to manage the time efficiency and apply the high sense of urgency habit. We make the habit. Habit makes the culture.

I've read many books on stressing the importance of sense of urgency, proactiveness, positive time management and speed. Jack Welch once quoted: 'If we don't have the speed, we are dead!'. I'll review some of the good reading materials on this issue in another separate topic later, and I hope that we can take away something out of there.

It's very frustrating to hear that Malays are slow and inefficient. Indeed, I had some bad experiences too on this weakness of our culture. So sad to hear that we are still complacent, and yes we are! Complacency is the worst enemy of a society and many old civilizations destroyed because of complacency.

If we want to compete with the non-Bumis, let's face it. Change our habit of being too relaxing or too reactive attitude. Should you have a classic work of Stephen Covey's book called 7 Habits, then you will find the 1st habit of becoming an effective person is to Be Proactive!

In this world of globalization, no one is indispensable. Let us charge forward!

Wassalam.

SWOT for Malays' Leadership and Business

2009-06-13T23:18:00.003+08:00

SWOT is a very common acronym and it's widely used across the globe by professionals. What is SWOT? It stands for Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threats. Professionals apply this method normally when it comes to decision making or direction establishment. Strength and Weakness reflect internal factors, whether it's within the organization or community or any space within the same area/department/unit. While on the other hand, Opportunity and Threats representing external factors, e.g. market, consumers, competitors or macroeconomic influences.

So, what are the frequent debates that surrounds Malay leadership? We are a significant force that is governing this beloved country but the question is how strong and how good are we? Can anyone answer this question? I think we are good but we are not strong enough, don't you think? Malays are capable to manage and lead the country or even business organizations, but the latter part is vastly led by non-Bumi. Where are the Malay business leaders? I do not have the statistical facts but am strongly believe that we are no near to match the non-Bumis representation.

Let's take a peek at the SWOT specifically for Malay leaders. These are the writer's own judgment. It can be right or wrong. But it's honest.

Strength:
- Can talk, and some even are capable of talking for hours.
- Very good at politicking.
- Very specialized.
- Business minded. At least has the 'minded' part. That's why Mat Jenin was created.
- Family-oriented. Most of us.

Weakness:
- Backstabbing. A common big problem among Malay community.
- Big-headed mentality. Already involved in extra-marital activities, buy a Merc, spend time in karaoke/night clubs, sourcing another 'mistresses'...while on the way to success (and not even succeeded yet!). Sounds familiar eh?
- 'Tak Apa' attitude. No sense of urgency.
- Unable to multitask. Effect from excessive specialization?
- Day dreaming.

Opportunity:
- Malay are still the majority race in this country. As long as it is, there is always opportunities.
- We are living in an Information Age. Yes, we can export our kain batik to a French businessman in San Fransisco. Japanese can watch our highly-rated Upin dan Ipin in the Youtube.
- Malaysia is a developing and safe country and the GDP growth year-on-year is always motivating. Insyaallah selamat.

Threat:
- Our economy is still controlled by Chinese, and no one shall not agree with it. They are just too powerful since decades ago.
- In some areas, the speed of rapid development is unmatched with the consumer buying power and market capabilities. For instance, the property business in Kuantan is too fast until the consumer/market is unable to cope with the speed. As a result, it made many shoplots left unsold and many new outlets only managed to operate only for 6-12 months before they have to close shop.
- Persistent unsolved common social problems, particularly with youths.
- Protocols and bureaucracy really kills time.

Still a lot to mention though, but it's my 2 cents worth. We all are still learning.

Wassalam.

Malay Entrepreneur Dilemma - Part 1

2009-05-16T23:05:00.003+08:00

Goreng Pisang and Burger Syndrome

Has anyone of you read a book called Blue Ocean Strategy? Well, the reason I want to incorporate the learning from this book into the subject here is that, there are too many malays that are operating the same old style of business today. Let’s call it goreng pisang and burger syndrome. These businesses require very minimal capital and simple stall set up, hence making these simple foods popular among local communities. Another type of business that quite similar, is tomyam restaurants.

There’s nothing wrong to get involved in these businesses. But if there’re too many entrepreneur share the pie, the goods are becoming commodities, and the profit will become thinner as far as the competition is concerned. As Jack Welch (ex-CEO of GE) recommended, if we want to success in business, try to avoid going into commodities products. Find a differentiation, to make you stand out from the rest. A Chinese friend of mine also shared the same view of which her father was doing a differentiated business and he was very successful indeed. Just look at our own Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary. He became successful because he ventured into non-commodities businesses.

We can apply Blue Ocean Strategy into these businesses, no harm. For instance, we can sell goreng pisang in a different platform or approach. BOS says we can increase our profit significantly by studying our competitors’ strength and weaknesses, and the market itself (current and potential). Small differences in the business approach can make a big impact, seriously. We are yet to hear of any goreng pisang franchising, haven’t we? Why not you do it? Or the frozen goreng pisang which can be sold in the supermarkets. We have a few local burgers that are quite good, i.e. Ramly burger (manufacturer) and Otai Burger (kiosk operator franchise). Why can’t any malay success in the burger business just like Mc Donald’s or Burger King? Or to be as successful as the 1901 Hot Dog? Now Blue Ocean Strategy is applied here by YM Tengku Rozidar TZ Abidin, the lady who founded the company and made her hot dogs something different and it worked, even with the premium price.

The point here is there’re too few of malay entrepreneurs that have bold to swim in the blue ocean. We seemed to take easy way out by getting ourselves trapped in the goreng pisang and burger syndrome. Easy business set up right? Low capital, sometimes no need to apply business licenses, but have limited potential revenue and market expansion. Let’s face it…do things differently, think things differently. This is our dilemma. Move on folks! This is just the beginning.

Small vs Big Guns, Local vs MNC

2009-05-12T08:43:00.005+08:00

Alhamdulillah, saya rasa agak bertuah kerana berpeluang bekerja di dua syarikat multinasional yang besar setakat ini, iaitu F&N Coca-Cola dan Shell Malaysia Trading. Pengembaraan kerjaya saya bermula di F&NCC pada tahun 1998 sebagai merchandiser sebelum naik pangkat sebagai Market Rep pada tahun yang sama, di mana kedua-duanya adalah dalam lapangan sales di KL. Seterusnya, saya berkhidmat di wilayah pantai timur dalam bidang marketing selama 5 tahun. Banyak pengalaman yang saya belajar selama 8 tahun ini dan juga pencapaian yang memberangsangkan sebagai Merchandiser, Market Rep, Region Marketing Services Exec sebelum memegang jawatan Pengurus Khidmat Pemasaran Wilayah.

Seterusnya, saya bertukar kerja ke Shell di utara semenanjung sebagai Retail Territory Manager yang banyak berkisar tentang pengurusan operasi dan jualan di stesen-stesen minyak. Namun minat saya di dalam bidang pemasaran membuatkan saya kembali ke ibu pejabat F&NCC di Shah Alam, dan berkhidmat sebagai Field Marketing Manager sehingga kini.

Ingin saya berkongsi di sini, bahawa bidang Marketing adalah sangat penting bagi semua jenis perniagaan, mahupun peribadi diri. Bagi peribadi diri, ia penting bagaimana kita hendak market-kan diri kita untuk berjaya (tapi bukan politik ok!). Tidak kira besar manapun perniagaan kita, syarikat tempatan atau multinasional, pemasaran adalah satu komponen yang sangat asas.

Pasukan jualan biasanya lebih tumpukan bagaimana hendak mencapai target jualan, tetapi jika tiada strategi pemasaran yang bagus, produk / servis yang kita tawarkan tidak akan sampai ke pengguna akhir (consumer). Ada seorang bekas rakan sekerja saya pernah mengatakan bahawa "Marketing is perception", iaitu bagaimana kita nak pengguna membuat andaian tentang produk kita itu. Seorang lagi rakan sekerja saya berkata "Marketing is created because of issues", iaitu pemasaran ialah satu cara untuk menyelesaikan isu-isu yang berkaitan dengan trade & consumers.

Haruslah diakui bahawa kebanyakan marketeers yang bekerja di syarikat-syarikat korporat yang besar adalah berbangsa bukan bumiputera. Sebenarnya, kaum melayu boleh menjadi marketeer yang cemerlang, tidak kira dalam organisasi SME atau multinasional. Dari pemerhatian saya, kaum melayu ramai yang memiliki skil jualan (salesmanship), tetapi agak kurang yang berfikiran strategik dan kreatif dalam bidang pemasaran. Persoalan ini akan dikupas dengan lebih mendalam dalam blog-blog saya yang mendatang. Objektif saya yang paling utama ialah untuk melahirkan lebih ramai marketeers melayu yang berkaliber, dan boleh memberi sumbangan yang besar kepada bangsa dan negara. Insyaallah.

Introduction

2009-05-10T10:55:00.001+08:00

Assalamualaikum and good day to all. Today is a lovely day, in fact everyday is supposed to be lovely days for us. Today is Mother's Day and I would like to wish Happy Mother's Day to my beloved mom (a mother of four), my charming wife (also a mother of four) and for all moms out there. Yesterday marked a month old for my fourth baby, my fourth boy ;-). Insyaallah he will bring more rezeki in into our family, amin.

This blog that I created is specially tailored to improve two crucial elements among Malays, which are Marketing and Leadership. I would like to share my experiences, observations, learning and readings for us to move steps forward and keep up with other races, be it domestic or international level. Of course, I welcome feedback and sharings too. Please feel free.

I'd always love these two elements that I mentioned earlier, and believe that it can be applied anywhere, whether at work, in business or in day-to-day life. I found that Malays in Malaysia is still lack behind in these areas and in my blogs to come, I hope those sharings and learning will provide a significant turnaround in our culture. Well, it can be thought-provoking, depends on how you perceive the contents. My dad is a Malay, my mom is a Chinese (brought up by a Malay family since she was a baby). I grew up in Malay communities with all Malay customs and surroundings. Learned to mix and befriend with Chinese only in my mid-twenties at work. Better late than never. And I seriously feel grateful and alhamdulillah, most of my Chinese friends at work are great colleagues, lovely and we support each other.

I feel more comfortable to write in English, but nevertheless I will also mix and match with Bahasa here and there in this blog of mine, later part.

This is just a beginning...till then. Salam.