Singapore Entrepreneurs

Recently, I attended a gathering hosted by SG-Startups. Paddy Tan, CEO of Bak2u has started this group to facilitate meet-ups between entrepreneurs such that everyone can share their best practices and their thoughts on various challenges and obstacles confronting their start-ups. The last meeting was held in a meeting room in the iShop, Cineleisure and the whole discussion was about start-ups and public relations (PR) strategies. For example, we talked about how marketing is different from PR and looked at a few incidents where PR disasters can be averted. I have distilled most of the discussion and summarized some of the thoughts shared by various entrepreneurs in the meeting. [ Read More ]

Yesterday during the BlogOut 2007! event, I chaired a discussion with various bloggers on the topic of corporate blogging from the small medium enterprises to the big corporations. Corporate blogging is a new phenomenon in which the employees of the company blogged about different aspects of their company. The results can go in two extreme directions, either very negative or very positive. I will summarize the best practices discussed from the conversations I have with several bloggers and perhaps, in the hope to generate more interest in corporate blogging. [ Read More ]

How are our best local companies doing in the area of branding and design? What are the best practices and strategies that they can adopt to take them to the next level? Our resident contributor, Brian Ling, aka Design Translator together with his colleague, PY from IDasia.org, offer a design and branding case study on two of the more prominent Singaporean consumer brands Creative and OSIM. In this article, they track their successes, as well as comment on what they can do to overcome their current struggles in this very fast pace and fickle consumer market. [ Read More ]

Happy Valentine’s Day to all, from the SG Entrepreneurs team. In this special day, we present some interesting news from abroad and home. Of course, for the entrepreneurs working in the retail sector, it is a good business day for them as they will be making a killing with both guys and gals buying gifts for their loved ones on this special occasion. [ Read More ]

Of course, if you look at the top 100 brands last year in Business Week, none of the Asian ones was on the list. Branding has only just begun in Asian business culture. Our resident contributor, Der Shing, one of the winners in the Spirit of Enterprise 2006, will discuss the importance of branding for startups and how to sustain the kind of branding not just by setting up a portal alone. [ Read More ]

Recently, BL was invited by our partners High Browse Online from the National Library Board to conduct an interview with Peter Fisk, author of Marketing Genius. We share some interesting excerpts on why Asia does not have a top-100 brand and some thoughts from Peter on rebranding Singapore. We refer you to the full interview in the High Browse Online blog. [ Read More ]

The Beijing Olympics 2008 is coming and it presents a lot of marketing opportunities for the Chinese entrepreneurs. Kenneth Wong, our resident contributor in Shanghai, shares on the general traits of the marketing strategies for Chinese companies on this upcoming event. He will relate how Singaporeans should attempt to create business opportunities such as the coming of the Integrated Resorts in Singapore. [ Read More ]

Marketing has a strong propensity to lead any entrepreneur to the dark side. Brian Norris, defined marketing to be an “ongoing process of moving people closer to making a decision to purchase, use, follow, refer, upload, download, obey, reject, conform, become complacent to someone else’s products, services or values. Simply, if it doesn’t facilitate a “sale” then it’s not marketing.” Of course, like any other processes in entrepreneurship, there is also a dark side to marketing. We will outline some of those abuses of marketing which you should try to avoid. [ Read More ]

You have heard of a quick and dirty way of branding yourself from our resident contributor, Brian Ling aka Design Translator. In the first article, he first discussed the necessity and the know-hows to brand yourself in our competitive world. In this sequel, he proposes a quickier and dirtier strategy to brand yourself with a web 2.0 feel on your company logos. [ Read More ]

When the word “brand” is mentioned, companies or objects usually feature as key examples. Easy ones like Apple, Coca-Cola, Audi spring easily to mind. But how about personalities? Yes, an individual is a brand too. Our resident contributor, Brian Ling aka Design Translator here brings us through his process of creating his very own logo and how we might be able to do the same. [ Read More ]