Mr Sim S. Lim, Singapore country manager at DBS bank, was quoted by Straits Times as saying, “Half a million (dollars) against a company that makes about $7 billion in revenue? I think we can survive.” It is precisely statements like this that provoke fraudsters to launch even more daring attacks on large institutions to take them down a peg or two. Besides, half a million dollars means a lot to many Singaporeans – let’s not trivialise their losses.
I feel a headache coming on whenever there’s a disruption to public services. DBS, PUB, SMRT… I hope they don’t call for comments because then I would feel obliged to say something. My worst experience occurred two weeks ago when I had to trudge up the slippery slope to MediaCorp because I couldn’t get a taxi. All for 30 seconds’ worth of comments on national TV. It’s easy for me to recommend what people should do in a crisis, but until we are confronted with a genuine crisis, we wouldn’t know if our strategies work. We try to avoid other people’s mistakes and use our accrued knowledge as a strategy. In 2011, Singapore offered rich pickings. In reducing the margin of error, we are also reducing public relations to a hard science. Whatever happened to the wicked delight we used to take in spinning? How can you call us the dark side where there’s no darkness but sterile SOPs (Twitter/Facebook/SMS notifications) published in black-and-white for all to see, and a fastidious attention to “covering all grounds”. PR is really all about common sense; that is, if we had any to know how to use it in the first place. Go figure.
It’s been months, well…just 1.5 months, since I last updated this site. I’ve committed the sin I’ve always warned my clients about – if you’re setting up a website, make sure you update it regularly, otherwise, your readers will lose interest in what you’re doing. I could give the excuse that I got married and I was too caught up with work to update this site, but I’m not going to do that although I really got married, and I even developed a throat infection a day before the ceremony. I’m still recovering from it.
In life we make excuses for things we don’t want to do because we simply don’t want to do them. And I realise I’m that sort of person – I will write when I feel like writing, when I feel I’ve got something meaningful to say, like today. So many things have happened in the last 1.5 months since I last blogged here. I got married (you already know that), Steve Jobs passed away, European expats based in Singapore are being deployed back to their home countries by the thousands (this will impact adversely on the rental market I’m sure), the pharma industry is redistributing marketing money to their legal departments (whatever legal tussles they are embroiled in over in the US has a trickle-down effect worldwide including in Asia, I heard)…
There were many topics I could have blogged about, but I chose not to because I was not on fire. When I’m not on fire you won’t want to read my posts. This is not good PR. I’m not making much sense. Which is good. There’s too much control in PR today. Sometimes, all we need to do is to be real.
I’m sure all of us have been at the receiving end of cold callers offering us instant credit facilities and membership privileges. All this may come to an end soon if you decide to delist from the Do-Not-Call (what about Do-Not-Harrass?) registry set up by the new Data Protection Commission. While some long-suffering consumers may rejoice, some service providers are not so happy, especially those who foresee their operating costs surging. In an interview with Straits Times today, “business owner Ho Teng Chee says a significant portion of his sales comes from customers who are contacted via unsolicited SMSes.” With the new registry, his costs will be jacked up as he has to hire additional manpower to screen calls, not to mention the reduced pool of potential customers he can reach out to.
Does cold calling or sms blasting contribute significantly to your bottomline?
How do you feel about the new regulations?
Having watched Ides of March today, I’m more convinced than ever before that PR is a complicated game. Some of us are “lucky” enough to handle projects that involve machiavellian machinations, while others thrive on the desert calm of marketing communications. Regardless, we need to be tough bitches to stay in the game. It certainly helps to be slightly wicked too. Not too much. Just a little on the side would be nice.
It is not often that I comment on a fellow PR practitioner’s work; after all, we are imperfect creatures facing untold peer and work pressures. However, the People’s Association made such a mess of its reply in yesterday’s forum page that one simply has to critique the letter here.
Here’s the the full response from PA published in yesterday’s Straits Times.
Why opposition MPs can’t be advisers to grassroots bodies
WE REFER to Mr Muhammad Yusuf Osman’s letter yesterday (‘Advisers to grassroots bodies should be elected MPs’).
The mission of the People’s Association (PA) and its grassroots organisations (GROs) is to bond the community and connect people with the Government. PA and its GROs serve all residents regardless of their political affiliations in fulfilling their role.
Grassroots advisers are appointed by PA, a statutory board. Besides connecting people to people, grassroots advisers are required to help the Government connect with people and help promote government policies and programmes such as anti-dengue and active ageing.
Hence, the Government has to appoint grassroots advisers who support its programmes and can play this role well. Opposition MPs cannot be expected to do this and thus cannot become advisers to GROs.
Ooi Hui Mei (Ms)
Director
Corporate and Marketing Communications
For Chief Executive Director
People’s Association
My critique
The first paragraph lays out the Association and its grassroots organisations’ (GROs) mission to “serve all residents regardless of their political affiliations in fulfilling their role.” In addition, PA’s grassroots advisers are also “required to help the Government connect with people and help promote government policies and programmes such as anti-dengue and active ageing.” In PR speak, these are what we term motherhood statements. Wiktionary defines a motherhood statement as a “‘feel good’ platitude, usually by a politician, about a worthy concept that few people would disagree.”
Having stated PA’s noble intentions, Ms Ooi then proceeds to contradict the Association’s nonpartisan mission by concluding that Opposition MPs cannot be expected to fulfil the role of grassroots adviser well “and thus cannot become advisers to GROs.”
Surely Ms Ooi must be aware that the Government is composed of both Opposition parties and the PAP? PAP is not the Government. Further, why shouldn’t Opposition party MPs be capable of promoting programmes such as anti-dengue and active ageing? The Workers’ Party’s Chen Show Mao was a former corporate lawyer who advised the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) on its US$21 billion IPO, surely he could be trusted to deliver on anti-dengue and active aging programmes? If he can’t, then neither can the army of Brigadier Generals who people PAP’s rank and file. If Ms Ooi wanted to pursue such a line of argument, she should have chosen more compelling examples of why Opposition MPs would fail to deliver.
Perhaps she’s defending the indefensible, in which case we should be more sympathetic. In any case, her letter will further entrench public distrust of PA. It remains to be seen whether Yam Ah Mee and his sleep-inducing voice can save the day.
Since we last posted on QR or Quick Response codes, we have had some feedback that the barcodes were adopted in Japan a few years back. In the US, they have just begun to adopt the system and a few self storage industry players are already on board. In Singapore, I’ve noticed that QR codes are displayed on each Groupon voucher, but it seems not every merchant has adopted the system. Some either are too lazy or don’t have the system in place to scan the codes. As a result, customers can use the same voucher over and over again. I may not be interpreting Groupon’s use of QR codes correctly, if so, please feel free to enlighten me.
I did a quick google search and found a reader-friendly quick primer on QR codes by Dataplex that serves as a basic introduction to the technology for interested SMEs. Here’s the link.
In March this year, HP called Oracle’s move to drop support for a server chip made by Intel Corp a “shameless gambit” that jeopardized customers and would cost hundreds of millions of dollars in lost productivity. So can HP’s announcement of a temporary reversal of its decision to can the TouchPad after being ”pleasantly surprised” by the pent-up demand generated by a weekend fire-sale, also be labelled a shameless marketing gambit, with the intention of building up a critical mass for the product? Some commentators do not believe it is a marketing ploy; instead, they label it an insane decision so typical of the HP today.
Corporate suicide or shrewd marketing, HP will sell the TouchPad at hugely-discounted prices of S$118 (16GB version) and S$188 (32GB version) at Comex, Singapore’s premier IT fair which kicks off tomorrow. More details from their Facebook page here. The last I read, there’s going to be a stampede tomorrow. Some Singaporeans are even queuing overnight.
It would be interesting to see how the story unfolds from here.
Yesterday’s Straits Times reported on how the strong Singapore dollar is affecting the bottomline of many Singapore- based businesses with overseas dealings. Some companies which are paid in US$ have experienced a significant reduction in their net profit. When interviewed, CEO of manufacturer PT Technologies Albert Loh said “his net profit would be $350,000 to $400,000 higher now if he used last year’s exchange rate to convert his earnings from US dollar to Singdollar.
He added that the exchange rate is ‘causing a lot of grief – for every $100,000 we earn, we lose about $5,000′.
He noted that although his customer in Britain has agreed to pay PTS Technologies in the Singapore currency, ‘on the US side they’re quite reluctant, because they know that if they switch to paying us in Singdollar, straightaway they will ‘die’.”
Others like Mr Jeremy Fong, managing director of Fong’s Engineering and Manufacturing (a medical device company), said, “‘Since suppliers are paid in Singdollar, on conversion, we’re losing on average close to 10 per cent (of the original sum),’ Mr Fong said, adding that the company had begun cutting costs.
It has been ‘saving electricity, looking for customers in other countries, and looking for business in other sectors with more high-end projects. In the long term, we want to set up our own research and development centre to develop our own products’.”
Yet other companies are considering slashing their Singapore staff strength as Singaporeans have become too expensive to hire.
Hedging against currency appreciation
CIMB economist Song Seng Wun was quoted as saying that “‘Manufacturing and shipping are vulnerable when reporting everything in Singdollar, because we’re talking about foreign income and not local spending.’
He added: ‘But this is not a recent phenomenon. The Singdollar has been slowly gaining, so most companies would have put in place some form of protection like hedging or switching to other currencies, especially the large international players.’”
Hedging against currency risks is one strategy to manage your business costs, but not many companies are willing to embrace such a strategy as they do not fully understand the inherent risks. Some of the smaller players are truly pessimistic about the future, and foresee their companies would not survive if the Singapore dollar continues to strengthen significantly against the US$.
Is your company affected by the strong Singapore dollar?
Is your company affected by the strong Singapore dollar? What are you doing to hedge against currency risks? Feel free to comment here.
