I refer to the article “It’s about Branding, Creative” by Alfred Siew (need ST subscription) published in the Straits Time on 28 July 2005.
Finally, someone has decided to write about the lack of branding in Creative. I am astonished that it took so long for someone to write about Creative’s failure to dominate the mp3 market. Far back in last Dec 2004, I was telling fellow entrepreneur friends that the CEO of Creative badly needs a course in branding 101. I have been a supporter of Sim Wong Hoo, because he is one of the only successful Singaporean entrepreneurs who is recognized globally, and quietly rooting for his success in the MP3 wars despite being a Mac user.
One of the good points that was flashed out in the article says the following:
“Few would dispute the quality of Creative’s output, but has it got the magic, that essential Ingredient X that implants a brand name in the mass consumer consciousness?”
However, he got a few things really wrong. Here are my sincere thoughts to Mr Sim.
Lesson 1: It is not about the quality of the product.
I did a comparison of the Zen micro and IPod mini and I admit that it’s far superior in terms of technical specifications. It’s about how you brand it. Perhaps, the CEO of Creative should go to www.apple.com to take a look at the annual keynote address of Steve Jobs, and how he delivers the product to the audience. I can imagine that if I am sitting in the conference area, I will definitely buy any product he sells. But even, watching it for 2 hours on a computer, I am still thinking whether I should buy the product. That’s a feat that I thought this person has gotten it right.
Apple did the right thing by selling the IPod as a lifestyle product, and not just an electronic gadget like the way Creative did. It has created the icon that it is cool to have an IPod. Creative can always come up with a gadget ten times better but if it does not listen from the signals in the market, it will continue to lose the war to Apple, and be labelled by Steve Jobs as a “IPod wannabe”. The problem at the moment which the CEO of Creative needs to grasp is that the IPod is becoming like an icon like a bottle of Coca-Cola, a Starbucks coffee or a pair of Nike shoes. The way to get more customers is to be the cultural icon.
Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple does not tell you about the product only. He tells you how Apple will support her clients with the accessories and the services that comes with the product worth buying and he usually highlights the supporters who use his products. There are Mac user groups in the Apple homepage to discuss how to fully utilize the IPod. I have been to the Creative website six months ago to check out whether there exist such user groups and not to my surprise, there aren’t any.
To take Zen to the market, Creative needs to establish a client base which it can rely on bringing the brand out to the world.
Lesson 2: You need a partner, a celebrity and not your ego to make this work
If I am Sim Wong Hoo, I should make a call to Redmond (Seattle, US) and see whether I can strike a deal with Microsoft about software support. Maybe Creative should use windows media player like what ITunes do to Apple. I recall a few days back in another ST article that Creative is doing something with Paris Hilton. Yes, that’s the way to sell your mp3 players. Even though we are sick of Paris’ attention grabbing antics, I believe that her legion of fans will rather buy the player because she is using it and not because Mr Sim’s signature is on it.
These are all my five pennies worth, I hope that Mr Sim will eventually succeed in substituting the IPod on my hands to a Creative Zen player. Perhaps, anyone of you out there will have a better idea. We need new entrepreneurial ideas to help this fellow country man brand his product.
Philips Security Pte Ltd is organising a Stocks exchange challenge to National University of Singapore (NUS) students.
This is a free course for neophyte investors with free training and real practice. The competition itself is free and they offer prizes for champion and 5 runner-ups. Game credits will be used in place of actual cash but market conditions are current. Benefits with no/little risk or cons.
Open to all NUS students. Apply now to experience the suspense and excitement of the stock market without risking any real money in our simulation game, which gives you access to SGX Live Prices, research reports and charting tools.
All participants will be invited to a tea reception where HR personnel will present to you the career opportunities with PhillipCapital and selected winners will be offered the position of Management Associate.
The Game commences on 16th August and ends on 30th September. While waiting for the game to begin, attend our FREE seminars to equip yourselves with the basic trading knowledge you need to revel in this exciting Challenge. You can receive analyst reports from Phillip securities research if you sign up.
“Democratizing Innovation” is published by Eric von Hippel, a Professor at MIT and one of the world’s foremost experts on innovation. As with Eric von Hippel’s other works, it is highly interesting and valuable. Read more
I came across this article in the section of entrepreneurship from Wikipedia. There are some interesting comments from this article which I will like to point out and perhaps, some of you might be happy to follow up with comments and thoughts.
Although Younkins pointed out in his article that the government can be perceived as an obstacle to entrepreneurship, he did not specifically talked how governments can help to facilitate entrepreneurship. He takes a point of view that it is in the human condition to succeed and fail and explained that “when the government protects some against failure, it actually increases the overall costs of failure by imposing it on others”. This is one specific example where the government is an obstacle.
However there are other roles which the government (this is not specific to any country) can be helpful to entrepreneurs:
1. Building of infrastructure: If the government devotes resources to build a good infrastructure, for example, new roads and new buildings to encourage incubation of small companies, the entrepreneur benefits from making use of the infrastructure to grow his business. For example, Silicon Valley and Barcelona, the state governments have set up a good infrastructure so that there is an atmosphere for entrepreneurial activity.
2. Regulation of bad practices in commerce: Think of the Enron scandal. The government has to act as the police to deal with entrepreneurs who might do “creative accounting” and engaged in activities that is not beneficial to the community.
Please feel free to comment your views and thoughts on the article.
Best regards.
sgentrepreneurs Editorial Board
Contributed by BL
Whenever I chat with fellow business plan competition organizers from other parts of the world, the success of the teams after our business plan competitions is one of our favourite topics. After all, most organizers put forth the view that the success of the team is whether they translate themselves into better businesses. It is an essential pre-requisite for business plan organizers to consolidate a list of the teams and maintain relationships with these teams after the competition. Usually, the team involved in this aspect of a business plan competition is called the alumni team.
By comparing a couple of anecdotes over a pint of beer in the bar among ourselves, we came to a shocking revelation that the winner of our business plan competition rarely made it into becoming a heavy hitter. Over the discussion, we began to search through our list of past teams in the back of our mind. We came to a shocking revelation that it is usually not the winners but runner-ups, or entries which did not made into semi-finals tend to do better. The criterion which we adopt, is whether the team has turned itself into a business. At the same time, we also look into how much funds it has raised and whether the company formed by the team has started to surpass the valley of death (i.e. the turnover point when the company start earning revenues).
We all came up with two examples of non-winners of the competition becoming the heavy hitters. One of the top companies which emerged out of MIT-$50K, is Akamai which specializes in internet content delivery. It was a semi-finalist in the competition and it was listed in the NASDAQ and has a market capitalization of US$3.6B. We contrast this with one of the winners of the competition, Webline, which was only acquired by CISCO for US$325M. In the CU Entrepreneurs £50K competition, one of the runners up, Novexin has successfully raised £600K and is currently ready to jumpstart their product into the industries, comparing to the winner in the same year, which has not raised enough money to start a company.
I will give two reasons why this is the case. First and foremost, it is the criteria which the team and the business is judged. The team has to present the business plan in a very short time frame without thinking through most of the issues. They usually end up writing a quick businss plan and doing a presentation about the business plan to the judging panel. That is very different from the real world where the entrepreneurs have to pitch their ideas continuously to different investors. They will go through the whole process of pitching and fundraising many times before they can start their business. In such a short timeframe restricted by the business plan competition, there exists the possibility that the team might have a brilliant business idea but lack the correct pitch that will convince the assessors to crown them the winners. To put it simply, everyone has their bad days. So, there exists a chance that the team might encounter situations which are not in their favour. In a competition unlike the real world, you only have one chance to convince the judges who are assessing you and this brings us to the next point.
Judging is one of the most difficult aspects in any business plan competition. The judges consist of a group of successful entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and professionals. They are usually experts in their area of focus. Sometimes, it is difficult for them to judge an idea if they have no idea how the field is like. If the whole panel of judges have no expertise in the industry which the entrepreneurs are talking about, the team will have a hard time in convincing them that the idea is worthwhile. The organizers will hope that the judges should be open-minded. However, it is impossible and unrealistic to expect that they will always be objective. If it is a problem of a biotech entrepreneur judging a nanotech team, the solution is just getting a biotech professional to remedy the situation. However, the problem is more complicated. The whole biotech industry is so diverse that you can still get a biotech entrepreneur specializing in healthcare and medical devices, and not able to assess a team specializing in genomic technologies. The point simply is that any team who engages in a business plan competition are always at the mercy of the judges.
It is interesting that we are observing that the real winners are not the winners in the competition. In the context of Singapore, at least in my generation, most people are not very tolerant of failure. I grew up with my elders telling me to be a lawyer or engineer and not go and be an entrepreneur. If this mentality is still prevailing today, the worry is that the entrepreneurs will equate winning a competition to the be-all and end-all situation. I will hope that being a successful entrepreneur is just like winning a scholarship with good academic results, but in reality, it is not the case.
The moral of the story is that it is a good experience to take part in a business plan competition. If you are seriously a beginner, the whole process will help to speed your learning curve on how to develop a business plan for your idea. Well, you can start the process by taking part in local competitions, for example, http://www.startup.org.sg. However, if you want to make the company happen, the success of winning a competition will not help because it is the team which drives the process. There is still a lot to learn, for example, you have to go to talk to suppliers, find a management team and check out how to get the supply chain working. These skills are such that you cannot read from a textbook. Sometimes, to be an entrepreneur, it is not just about writing a business plan but you have to go out and get your hands dirty.
In retrospect, who are the real winners in business plan competitions? The real winners are teams which possess two important traits: passion and perseverance. They have the passion and perseverance to pursue their idea and not letting a business plan competition deter them from doing so. It is an essential trait for an entrepreneur to accept failure and start over again. If you sincerely believe in the idea and the implementation, you should continue to try. Of course, you have to go back to the drawing board, if the investors think that your method might not work. The real difference between a business plan competition and the real world, is that your business plan changes all the time.
So, go out and make a difference. That’s how you can be a real winner.
Here are a list of interesting transcripts of speeches which I found recently:
1. Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005. One of the themes which I liked about the speech is illustrated by this brilliant paragraph:
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
It is important that young people who aspire to be entrepreneurs, should define what kind of life which they want to live. To be entrepreneurial is to carve the path out yourself sometimes.
2. I found an archive in ACE website, where the transcripts of the speeches by the Ministers in Singapore. Perhaps, you can get a better idea of some of the successful entrepreneurs in Singapore here and what they have achieved.
Have a good day
sgentrepreneurs Editorial Board
