Fooled By Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I am currently reading the first book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Fooled by Randomness.

A highly provocative book, which centered on financial businesses which are filled with overconfident brokers, displaying unscrupulous management of other people's money. He argues that the success of these people are mainly attributed by luck. They earn millions of dollars with multiplication of returns during good times, and those are not entirely due to their smart positioning and hedging of securities, they are just plain lucky.

In Russian Roulette, you have only 1 in 6 chance of getting killed by pulling the filled trigger. Imagine instead that this Russian Roulette now consist of 1000 packs with only 1 bullet. This is what happening in the financial institutions, you are successful because you just have not face the bullet yet for it is not as frequent, and when you do, there goes your career.

The success of the brokers earning millions of bucks is attributed by plain simple luck. They are just as likely to fail, when the right time comes.

This book is I think a prelude to the more successful Black Swan which I have not got my hands on. Hopefully I have time one day to dwell deeper into Mr Taleb's superb mind.

Salesperson

I've encountered a businessman who has been in his small less-than-10-people business for more than 20 years, who always hire mature salesperson (usually in their late 20's, up to early 40's with existing experience in the industry but not necessarily business-savvy).

He always faces problem with retaining these people as they always eventually decided to exit to set up their own business and half the time fail (but that's another story).

Assuming that the renumerati0n and motivation is there, how do you find ways to retain these people? Shareholding is one factor to consider with these people; provide them incentive at the end of the year in the form of shares.

Or does it make more sense to hire younger, impressionable and more energetic people? You do not need to offer share options or profit-sharing as incentives, all you need is just to provide a couple of essentials
1. Strong and clear sales directions
2. Fair and equitable motivations
3. Opportunities to grow, and upgrade their knowledge
4. Pleasant and happy working environment

Sounds easier with this setting than the complexity and possible complications from profit-sharing.

Underdogs

"When underdogs choose not to play by the Goliath's rule, they win"

".....substituting effort for ability turns out to be a winning formula for underdogs in all walks of life..."


Malcolm Gladwell

Channeling the Power of Social Network

Maybe it's already being done before but hey, many others deserve to hear it too.

What if you go to a restaurant, pitch to the owner that you have many friends in your social network, tell him that you will help him grow his business by telling your friends about his restaurant via your existing network. If he/she's not IT savvy, you might need a lot of explaining.

Ask for free lunch or any fee structure that both parties are comfortable with. It is advisable to even ask the owner to have his/her own facebook account linked to yours. The reason is that he could appreciate your campaign ad there later.

Eat there, and identify the key selling proposition of the restaurant. What's good there? Genuinely! This is very important, cause your reputation at stake here. Elaborate and articulate specifically e.g like the meat in this bak kut teh is very tender and well marinated. Soup a bit bland but the meat is always so fresh or something. Write down at least 7 key points to elaborate on. Be sure to take at least 7 clear and well-positioned pictures of the restaurant and its food. Many a time people set up restaurants believing in their recipes and cookings, unfortunately they are unable to communicate that to the customers, the key selling propositions are lost as along the treacherous route of setting up a business.

Then run a one-week campaign on the restaurant. One interesting story to tell per day. This is important cause your friends will most probably have thousands of friends who update their facebook so regularly that your stories get pushed to old pages in no time. You could even repeat the news every 6 hours or so.

Measure outcome by keeping in touch with people who patronise there after their visit. Find ways to 'catch' them if they did go there(this I have not figure out the mechanism. It's quite possible to track during the campaign week, but after the campaign, people are less inclined to leave feedback unless you set up an avenue for them to)

After all this, if sales increase by a certain percentage, why not ask for some comission from the owner? After all, you can't achieve much without asking.

Also I know many people do this in blogs with a different business model, or mainly just for leisure, I have not heard people doing it in facebook or twitter yet though.

Yet, beware something is missing here. The owner might not buy your idea cause you are not the 'maven' as described by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Tipping Point, or you don't have the critical the number of friends yet. Well the only thing to do is to learn to be one, and start making more friends. That ain't hard.

Providing Ultimate Customer Experience

With the advent of social media, coupled with the increased choice for consumers in virtually any industries, one key factor to remain ahead of the game is providing the ultimate customer experience.

I am not talking about benchmarking yourself with Ritz Carlton. Unless you're in the hospitality business and at the same time, working at a 5-star or higher hotel company, you can't benchmark this way. (besides, you are missing the point)

Customers are not only more belligerent these days, customers can determine whether you can win or lose your business. Word of mouth is found to be twice as effective as mass marketing. 91% of people buy product or services because of recommendations and good words from others.

Word of Mouth is a powerful tool every company should tap into especially when people are getting more and more empowered and barriers to communication have been drastically broken by the innovative ways internet has evolved.

How do you ensure that you achieve ultimate experience with your customers?

SAS outlines 5 levels of customer experience(called Customer Experience Maturity Model) that company practices, of which the highest level (level 5) is titled Experiential Master. In this level, customer reaction is highly predictable, company takes proactive approach to predict customer behavior (instead of asking "why customer A buys this?" they ask "what else does customer A needs from my shop and when?"), customer experience is quantitatively measured and adapted on a regular basis, customer database and behavior analysis are automated, and employees are empowered to serve.

Level 1 is when company do not know at all about its customers, and are usually consists of startups.

Click on The State of Customer Experience, Capabilities and Competencies to download the full report to get more information.

Does Accounting Firm Needs Marketing Division?

My answer to this question is "Sure!, definitely" Simply because marketing is the key success factor to the survival of a company. Without marketing, you cannot communicate with your clients, not only existing clients but also future ones.

See, one unequivocal fact about business is that you need to grow year to year. If you don't and your market do, you know that you are losing out, and if this continues for many years, unless the world stay static as well, you will sooner than later find yourself losing out and start looking out for other retirement plans.

PricewaterhouseCoopers, one of the world's largest professional service, their audit division is among the big four in the world, provides free global survey results, holds expert conferences, comprehensive internet platform for communication among others to promote themselves. They even has a marketing position in the executive board, they call this position Brand, Communication and PwC Experience.

Without marketing, a brand or a company will the most own a generic image, undifferentiated from other competitors. And being undifferentiated means customers can move from one place to the other at their own whim, and customers love to move around.

The Death of The Rocket Car

The car brand which has its origin as an aircraft company back in the early 20th century is seeing its brand winding down by General Motor.

Saab is known for its innovation,(they are the company who invented headlight viper, split-view side mirror, direct ignition, and 16-valve turbocharged engine) but couldn't seem to find its footing in the automobile industry.

Their production as of 2008 totaled just a mere 90k units, (compare that to BMW which produces more than 1million units per year).

The thing with Saab is that it is just another car from GM, a sorta second fiddle to GM's less than remarkable legacy of churning out cars. Nevermind the innovative part of SAAB, (all those are history as GM took over in 1989), SAAB could not find its niche in te mindset of auto-driver.

The inconsistent ad campaign undertook by GM over the past couple of years did not help them either.

Unlike the strong mindset builders like Volvo, BMW, Mercedes, Toyota, Honda etc., SAAB is a brand waiting to be packed in the demolition counter.

What do you think of when you hear the name James Cameron?

Branding is rather an amazing sort of thing. A name or a word could elicit and evoke emotions like we never know.

Mention Google, people associate it with the best search engine in the world.

Mention Coke, most of us will think of fun and play. (For me I will think of thirst quencher, I love Coke)

James Cameron is a brand by itself. Place this name aside a movie, you can be sure that the movie will be no short of spectacular.

Avatar, the first movie directed by James Cameron since 1997's Titanic, the highest grossing movie of all time, is a visually spectacular movie. Not only James Cameron is known for his meticulous work, his continuous strive for perfection, sometimes to the point of offending his co-workers, his uncompromising believe of his vision is very admirable.

One still remember his acceptance speech when he won the 1998's Oscar for best director for Titanic, proclaiming "I am the king of the world", after going through a near-bankrupt state making that very movie, you can't help to give it to this person for his conviction in his believe. (He is reported to take out his own money to complete this movie reported to be the most expensive movie ever at that time)

Everyone, every name has got an emotion attached to it. What is yours? And more importantly, what emotion you would like to associate your name to?

File-sharing

Nick Mason, of Pink Floyd and Ed O' Brien, of Radiohead are perhaps wise and visionary by agreeing with music file-sharing.

File-sharing or music piracy as the music industry would like to call it, is the main reason behind the double-digit fall of CD sales over the past couple of years.

However this finding shows that this inustry otherwise is not suffering as bad as we thought. Artists are earning more than ever from concert tickets mainly, in compensation for their dwindling album sales.

Perhaps the biggest loser in this is the music industry, they are crying foul over the falling revenue and deteriorating profit margin.

One thing is for sure, there is no turning back nor there're really nothing much the music bigwits can do other than playing a new game. Music industry is seeing its organization shrinking with layoffs of top execs.

Artists will be working harder to produce better quality works rather than mediocre cookie cutter items, making them relevant beyond selling millions of album?

It kind of makes me wonder whether could this thing happen in other industry as well due to the fickleness of intellectual properties? Intangible asset does not seem viable for valuation by financiers when they value a company.

How would society evolve in this egalitarian needs of intellectual properties?

Online vs Off-line

It is important to realise the basic logic or fact; that people do the exact same thing off line or online. This will guide towards making decisions on how you want to market your ideas online, which you of course find hard, off line( or at least harder)

Perception vs Facts

What determine the success a product or a service? Is it the right marketing strategy or the best product.

A product can be very good and very cheap and exciting but with the wrong marketing strategy, it could just tank. Example: like Yahoo! internet platform and email is the best in the world, but they are still struggling to grow their wares.

A product can be just alright, sometimes downright silly, and inferior than alternatives availab.e with the right marketing strategy, it could achieve wonders. Like the diabetes product Daonil.

I am not saying marketing is the solution to this, but it does seem like if you have the best marketing strategy in the world, chances are more likely than not for you to make it in the world.

Perfect Homepage

I always admire digi.com website. It's easy to give vanilla comments like it's colorful and attractive, it has good clicks and all, but at the end of the day, every webmaster must ask themselves "If I were a virgin internet surfer, how would I want to make sure the site go my way?"

And DIGI.com does that superbly. Not perfect (I don't think there's a perfect homepage yet) but you get the sense that it's got YOU at the top of their mind.

That's business in this world now.

Susan Boyle

How do you explain this Susan Boyle phenomenon?

Many months ago I still remember Billboard.com did a survey, which ask whether Susan Boyle will achieve commercial success after Britain Got Talent? I immediately went out in search for information about her. I must admit I did not watch Britain Got Talent, and did not know the extent of the attention she's getting at that time, via Youtube.com et al. The video of her inaugural performance at Britain's Got Talent has already been viewed up to 100 million times! (One of the many videos of her performance was actually viewed as of today 79,875,807 times, the one with Simon Cowell frustrate look screenshot, which of course eventually turns into pleasure).

She was the success story human being loves to devour on. People loves a rags to riches story, a go-for-your-destiny story, and Susan Boyle has the top recipe for the media. Go to Wikipedia.org if you will to find out more about her, if you do not know much yet by now of course.

Early this year, in May, DailyRecord.co.uk got hold of Susan's video recording of her performance in 1984 for a competition at Fir Park Social Club at Motherwell. That's the third exclusive video posted by DailyRecord.co.uk after one of which is the first, her 1995 performance at Micheal Barrymore's My Kind of Show.

Around the same time, her name, look and the element she represents(frizzled middle age went makeover) went parody in Southpark, The Simpsons, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, and even in video games, The Sims 3. Her 'element' is so distinctive that on November episode of 30 Rock, the character Kathy Geiss sang in the characteristics of Susan Boyle, people instantly recognised the parody, as Liz Lemon and Jack Donaghy (the main characters in the show) teared up.

That's her brand. Her representation, and it endears the public. And her publicist does know how to capitalize on it to reap this tasty fruit of record sales.

PR done wrong?

Tiger Woods in a one-car accident at his neighbor's lawn on friday (US time) 2.25am with his 2009 Cadillac Escalade. He was found to be unconscious for 5 minute after his wife came out of the house with a golf club braking the rear window to extricate him. No alcohol was involved. He was sent to the nearby hospital.

It's been more than 36 hours already since this happened and Tiger Woods has not come out with a press conference to address the media. The media needs explanation, for the sake of its obvious interested readers; people want to know of a no.1 gold whiz in the world's twist of life.

If you take more than 36 hours to come out to explain this potentially damaging scene to your reputation, your reputation might have been damaged already. Cause it shows you are hesitating to explain what happen to the curious people. If you're hesitating, you have something to hide. If you have something to hide, it's most likely a bad thing.

After 36 hours people would want to know what bad thing that Tiger Woods has? Very tempting ...

Handphone Pet-Peeve

Iphone 3GS was launched about 3 months ago, and the anticipation was huge, pre-orders totally outpaced the availabilities. People who pre-ordered a couple of month before launch, the lucky few who got the info, unlike others who depends on mass marketing, will almost secretly make their booking like a child waiting for their chocolate ice-cream being scooped from the isle slooooowly.

Then on the launch day, people who book on that day itself will have to make RM200 deposit and wait for 1 month for the small campact box of Iphone.

3months later, you asked the same question to the sales assistants they gave you the same off-repeated line and muted stare that 1 month waiting period is required. I must admit I have a pathological problem, I am compulsive and making me wait just kills my interest. I left the store saying "too bad Apple!". (they would of course reply with "well majority still love me" :( )

Then I went to the Celcom store and wanted a Blackberry Curve. Loved it, all features are cool, just that the screen is much smaller than the Iphone of even the Nokia smartphone I friend has at RM1200. I wanted it. Then came the bombshell; I have to wait and come back again in 5 days. Because I am using Maxis, they will have to change my telco to Celcom and it would take up to 5 days!!!

Imagine how many business opportunities lost from these peeving issues.

Yes, many do not mind, how many do you think like me would mind? HOw big do you think this group is? Opportunities for someone?

SWOT Yourself

SWOT is the common marketing tools used by every marketer and small business owners. Many a times we see businesses never do SWOT analysis let alone analyze themselves.

SWOT is such a powerful tool that when you use it on your business, you know just what to do next, how to position yourself, how to attack and how to defend, and most important of all in this entrepreneurial world we live in, how to develop a market.

Likewise, when you look at yourself in SWOT term, you know who you are, and could easily determine what's your life's destiny. Like Sun Tzu said "know yourself, know your enemy, 1000 battles, 1000 victories"

Responsible Recall of Toyota Cars, But...

Toyota on Wednesday, Nov 25, said it will recall about 3.8million cars in America, to replace the accelerator pedals because it was found to have cause a slew of fatal accidents due to the pedals being stuck in the floor mats. The models affected are Camry, Avalon sedans, Prius hybrid, Tacoma, Tundra pickup trucks, Lexus (IS250, IS350 and ES350).

They might even recall cars back in Japan.

This is the hallmark of a good brand, a company who place customer first, in both satisfaction and their ultimate safety. Toyota has always been the case study of trusted global brand.

Question: Does this floor mat flaw also occur in Toyota cars in Malaysia? Motor Trader only post an article on Yaris, which it said does not need to be recalled as it was in Thailand instead of Japan or France. Toyota Malaysia homepage does not highlight anything of the recall.

Is UMWT doing anything to alleviate this obvious concern? Wouldn't it make sense to take steps in advance to address this obvious queries from Toyota users? Why is it there's no global coordination to cascade the communication?

Mercedez Vito

Everyone knows the marque with the 3-point star in a circle denotes class and luxury. Rarely do we realize that this company with this marque makes commercial vehicles as well, like this Mercedez Vito which I saw last night.

It made me wonder, if a C-200 cost RM238,888, wouldn't the bigger vehicle like the van above cost even more. After all, the bigger they are the more raw materials needed, moreover we do not see many of such vehicle, making harder economy of scale.

But it's not the case, according to motortrader.com.my a standard Vito only cost RM217,888 for normal spec(exclu road tax, insurance and registration fee), more premium spec with would fetch up to RM348,888 (exclu road tax, insurance and registration fee).

How is it possible? Is the pricing by Mercedez rely on margin or price positioning? Could it be that Mercedez gain a huge profit from its luxury car by positioning the C-class at the RM200k range assuming they earn a decent margin for the Vito?

Gearing or Listing?

If you need 1million dollars to expand your business, do you get it listed? or do you borrow money from bank?

Financial and Management Accounting seems to suggest the latter as compared to one company which gets as much share in the loan amount, you will have bigger earning per share in good times and average times. In bad times, the company without the loan will trump the company who pays annual interest rate.

I think as a stakeholder I prefer the company with low gearing. It such a waste that money has to paid on such unnecessary manner like interest rate when you can transfer the earning to share capital or pass on the earnings as dividend. I might have diluted share, but I am willing to pay extra to buy extra share of a company I believe in.

Interbrand Best Global Brand

Annual offering of brand ranking by brand consultancy Interbrand has reached its 8th year. Coca Cola stands at the top and Public Bank takes the helm for Malaysia for the first time.

According to the methodology, brand value is calculated by looking 1. sales revenue generated minue taxes, capital costs and operating costs, 2. exclusive revenue earned by the brand, and 3. qualitative brands strength score looking at several subjective measures like market leadership, trend, diversification, stability and protection, Coca Cola worth USD68bil, while Public Bank worth USD1.9bil.

If you compare this to the revenue generated in the year 2008, Coca Cola earned USD32 bil, while Public Bank earns USD3bil. For every dollar value of Coca Cola's brand it earn USD0.5, while for Public every dollar earn them USD1.6.

It does look like Public Bank make the most out of their brand than Coca Cola.

My Mart View Point

Welcome to my first business blog. Here I will share with you my view point on marketing and possibly other business-related matter from my humble opinion. Do leave comments for me to improve myself, and hopefully all of us benefit from this blog. :) Enjoy