Facebook – the begining of the end?

With the news that for the first time facebook’s ratings are on the slide in the North American market does this mean that this is the beginning of the end? Should they quickly get their IPO up and running before these lose their sparkle? Are they about to become another MySpace? As a client said to me the other day, “my 13 year old daughter is already passed facebook and onto the next cool thing. Once her and her friend’s mum’s are using it more than the kids you know it’s no longer the in thing”. He has a point. I am proud to say that I have never and never will have a facebook account, it’s now become a badge of honour in the face of a sheep like mentality from the rest of the world. But am I actually ahead of the game now? A friend of mine logged in to her facebook account and then Tripadvisor and suddenly all her friend’s travelling details and preferences are all over the tripadvisor site. It was completely intrusive and very annoying. She didn’t care where they’d all stayed and where they had been and certainly didn’t want to stay at the same hotel as them or let them know when and where she was going, why would she when the holiday she was planning had nothing to do with them? Not only that but her facebook updates then rolled onto the Tripadvisor site in the site itself. Why? If you’re on Tripadvisor you don’t care about your friends updates you want to look for travel information! Are people really that sad that they can’t bear to be away from their updates for a few minutes? When facebook starts irritating and not enhancing lives as many people claim and when 13 year old girls no longer think it’s cool and are using other platforms to connect with their friends can we be the first to say that this is the begining of the end for facebook?

This article first appeared on

http://community.brandrepublic.com/blogs/chrisreed/archive/2011/06/24/facebook-the-beginning-of-the-end.aspx

PARTNERSHIP MARKETING CREATES YOUNG NTUC & NEW LOOK BRAND PARTNERSHIP

Partnership Marketing, Asia’s leading partnership marketing agency, has successfully created a synergistic partnership for their client Young NTUC in Singapore with fashion retailer New Look.

This partnership aims to reach out to Young NTUC’s female members through a ‘member-bring-member’ recruitment drive.

This partnership presents itself as an exclusive private sale at New Look in Suntec City on 30 June 2011. Each member can bring a friend along to enjoy exclusive 25% off storewide on regular priced items and 5% on sale items.

Each member will also receive a stylish New Look Tote Bag (worth $39.90), $10 New Look voucher and Dr Ci:Labo travel set (worth $32).  Each invited friend is also eligible to receive these gifts as long as she/he signs up to be a NTUC member on site.

Setanta appoints Partnership Marketing

Partnership Marketing (PM), Asia’s leading partnership marketing agency, has been engaged by Setanta Sports, a leading international sports pay-tv channel.

Partnership Marketing will create brand partnerships with synergistic brands to help Setanta Sports achieve their objectives.  PM will gain positive brand endorsement; gain money can’t buy media and drive customer acquisition amongst the target audience in Australia through partnerships with synergistic lifestyle brands.

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About Setanta:

Setanta Sports are an international Sports pay-tv channel, which provides live and exclusive coverage of over 1,000 top International Soccer and Rugby matches every season. Setanta Sports is currently available on Foxtel, Austar, Transact and UBI, and online through its media player Setanta-i.

NOT APPY – the FT strikes back

The FT took a bold step this week in creating their own application for smartphones and tablets and not using the itunes store to distribute and market it. The FT is the first major news publisher to launch an app of this type but it won’t be the last. With competition for presence and cut through amongst the 350,000 iphone apps, 150,000 Android aps and 30,000 Nokia ovi store apps fierce many of the stronger brands will rely on their own communication channels which their customers trust to market their app and keep all the revenue too. The app.ft.com launch comes as Apple prepares to take 30% of revenue from subscriptions sold on iTunes and enforce a rule that subscribers must sign up through the iTunes App Store, rather than with publishers directly. So along with taking a fair amount of subscription revenue, Apple is looking to control the customer relationship, clearly looking to upsell other apps but why should the FT give that customer to Apple? I am sure that News Corporation are looking closely at these developments along with other global content providers like the BBC. FT.com managing director Rob Grimshaw said the publisher was not happy with the new terms and is currently reviewing its position within the App Store. Whether they go for it or not one thing’s for certain the app is not only here to stay but is the future of marketing especially content marketing. Grimshaw said it was possible that within three years, a great bulk – possibly half of the FT’s audience – would be consuming its content via mobile devices.”There’s a revolution going on in consumption,” Grimshaw said. “We need to bring mobile right to the core of our operation.” No pun intended.

This article first appeared on

http://community.brandrepublic.com/blogs/chrisreed/archive/2011/06/16/not-appy-the-ft-strikes-back.aspx

F1 and Bahrain: a brand partnership on the racing track to hell

The new Syrian Grand Prix is apparently being planned imbetween the Libyan and Yemen one next year, just after the Bahrain one…..no, but what’s the difference? Countries, effectively brands in this context, pay US$40m to F1 to hold a Grand Prix and demonstrate to the world what a shining light they are in the world. An F1 event promotes all their wonderfulness and glitter of a country on the world stage in front of hundreds of millions of TV viewers who may become future tourists and business investors. F1 effectively sells itself to the highest bidder, regardless of who the bidder actually is, to create a profitable, glamorous global circuit that can then be sold to TV companies and brands to sponsor. One of the main reasons that there are grand prix in places like China and Malaysia is due to the pull of cigarette advertising dollars and countries with less restrictions on cigarette advertising. So the row over whether the F1 should or should not be held in Bahrain centred on the perception that the country was still suitable despite their part in surpressing the Arab Spring and questioning whether the race would tarnish the F1 brand. The drivers had no problem with it on the whole, why would they, they’re like rock stars, every country is the same to them and they get paid millions of dollars to go where they’re told. In the end, after much tooing and froing they chose not to race this year but you can bet it will be back on the racing schedule next year, money talks in F1 above everything else…the new Iranian and North Korean Grand Prix are not far away……

This article first appeared on

http://community.brandrepublic.com/blogs/chrisreed/archive/2011/06/17/f1-and-bahrain-a-brand-partnership-on-the-racing-track-to-hell.aspx

Groupon’s deal seekers have no loyalty

Is Groupon real or is it Boo.com all over again? It’s grown faster than Google, Facebook, Twitter and is going to be worth more than all of them put together if you believe the hype around their planned IPO. But is it real? Everyone who becomes addicted to Groupon’s daily alerts is either a deal seeker or just looking for something unexpected to do. In many respects it taps into a say yes mentality to the offer of the day no matter how bizarre. Kite flying lessons anyone?  Deal seekers wait for the daily offer linked to food and drink usually and plan their attack, take advantage of the partner and never come back. Groupon makes 50% of the voucher and the partner brand hopes to create and retain a customer. In practice how many of these people actually ever come back? How long will it be before partners get tired of this experience and stick to more traditional offers through banks and loyalty schemes? Well on the basis that Groupon now only accepts 1 out of every 8 offers proposed to them there is clearly a significant number of brands willing to brave this new world and suffer the consequences or reap the benefits depending upon your point of view. One things for sure, offer websites like Groupon are not going away….

This article first appeared on

http://community.brandrepublic.com/blogs/chrisreed/archive/2011/06/15/groupon-s-deal-seekers-have-no-loyalty.aspx

IQPC appoints Partnership Marketing

Partnership Marketing (PM), Asia’s leading partnership marketing agency, has been engaged by IQPC, one of the world’s leading conference organizers.

Partnership Marketing will create brand partnerships with synergistic brands to help IQPC achieve their objectives.  PM will gain positive brand endorsement; gain money can’t buy media and drive customer acquisition amongst the target audience in Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong through partnerships with synergistic business brands.

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About IQPC:

IQPC provides business leaders with the world’s leading conferences.  With offices in major cities across 6 continents including: Berlin, Dubai, London, New York, Sao Paulo, Singapore and Sydney, IQPC leverages a global research base of best practices to produce an unrivalled portfolio of problem-solving conferences.

www.iqpc.com

CIMB Junior Savers Account Program 2011

CLIENT:

CIMB Group is ASEAN’s leading universal banking franchise which reaches 81% of the ASEAN population, representing 89% of the region’s gross domestic product. Its retail network of over 1,000 branches is the widest in the region. Headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, CIMB Group’s main markets are Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and Cambodia.  It has been in Singapore since 2005 and its two main businesses here are CIMB Bank (retail banking) and CIMB Securities (capital markets).

BRIEF:

• To provide customers privileges suitable for children below 12 years old and family
• To recruit and manage partners who ideally belong to categories such as retail and activities/sports
• To run a year-long partnership with offers refreshed every 6 months if required by partners
• To provide offers in the form of vouchers that can be redeemed by flashing the CIMB Junior Savers Account card

OBJECTIVES:

1. Introduce a rewards solution to support the launch of the new Junior Savers Account in Singapore and provide and end-end fulfillment solution enabling customers to redeem for Retail, Entertainment and F&B.
2. Drive signups for the new Junior Savers Account

SOLUTION:

• Partnership Program: CIMB Junior Savers Account Program 2011
• Program Theme: Retail, Entertainment and F&B
• Location: Singapore
• Program Window: 11 June 2011 to 30 June 2012
• Communication: Through co-branded eDMs, welcome kit, dedicated website and brochures.

PARTNERS:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PRINTED COMMUNICATION:

 

VOUCHERS

Partner 1: Frolick

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Partner 2: Go Go Bambini

 

Partner 3: Gymboree

 

Partner 4: JWT Kids Gym

 

Partner 5: KinderGolf

 

Partner 6: LilliPutt

 

Partner 7: MPH

Partner 8: Piccolo

Partner 9: Rochester Playhouse

Partner 10: Wild Wild Wet

 

BROCHURE

 

 

 

RESULTS:

• This program is just launched at time of publishing.
• Final response of redemption rate will be shared at later stage.

Coffee retailers have more kick than bars in Asia

In Singapore it’s not unusual to see coffee shops packed at 11pm/12 midnight every night of the week including weekends. This experience is replicated across many countries in the region from India to Malaysia, Vietnam to Indonesia. The culture of drinking in Asia is not about alcohol it’s about coffee and tea. It’s still about friends but it’s sober conversation as oppose to drunken ones. There are no coffee related fights about spilling a Venti Cappuccino! There are more coffee shops in Singapore than bars. Coffee shops are growing at a faster rate in India than any other form of F&B outlet. This appears to be down to more affluence, a desire to eat and drink out and a predominantly non-drinking culture. Of course there are a mass of bars in Singapore and across Asia but these tend to be filled with expats and Chinese and focused on certain areas and linked to Karaoke (that’s another blog!). Religiously Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists – the main religions across the region – actively prescribe non-drinking of alcohol to their followers. Singaporean’s are just not brought up to get drunk in the way their English and American counterpart’s inparticular are. This in turn leads to a more civilized society, there are no drink related injuries for hospitals to deal with and society to pay for. There is not the violence that happens every weekend in most towns in the UK, no alcohol means that it just doesn’t happen, it’s just not accepted and not desired. From a marketing point of view it means that if you want to target these people you have to think in a more sophisticated and creative way. Starbucks may be much maligned but they, Costa and other Western brands are growing in Asia at a rate of knots and along with the monster Asia coffee brands like Gloria Jean’s,Café Coffee Day and Coffee Bean are more effective at reaching many Asians than marketing through bars and alcohol.

This article first appeared on

http://community.brandrepublic.com/blogs/chrisreed/archive/2011/06/10/coffee-retailers-have-more-kick-than-bars-in-asia.aspx

PARTNERSHIP MARKETING LAUNCHES CIMB LOYALTY SCHEME WITH BRAND PARTNERS

Partnership Marketing, Asia’s leading partnership marketing agency, has created a brand centric loyalty scheme for CIMB.

CIMB Junior Savers Account program is targeted at kids less than 12 years. PM have sourced 10 partners from the retail and kids entertainment categories for this program. They include:

MPH, Frolick, Gymboree, JWT Kids Gym, Go Go Bambini, KinderGolf, Lilliput, Rochester Playhouse, Piccolo and Wild Wild Wet.

All partners provide exclusive offers to the kids who open an account with CIMB. Redemption will be in the simple form of flashing the Junior Savers Account card by the kids.

The partners’ offers will be communicated to the card members via a co-branded eDM, welcome kit, dedicated website and brochures.

The partnership will kick off in June 2011.