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Today I heard rumor that one of my competitor, a local branding company; it’s owner is selling out … it’s not a happy news for me because for 3 reasons:

1. Unlike the so many so called Brand Consultants that has their experience based on advertising, direct marketing, PR and event management, this company like mine has their experience grounded on operations, process and strategy - the real consulting substance.

2. It signifies that the Malaysian market primary many business owners still lack the depth and foresight to see branding as a strategic activity where brand should be planned to succeed and not invest as if its a 4D gamble - let’s tyr this, let’s try that, let’s advertise this, let’s change the story like that, lets … whatever …. I always called that Samsara - in Buddhist text its called the never ending cycle of sufferings.

3. It again re-affirms many of local consultants’ fear that Malaysian companies, even the Malaysian government lacks trust in the ability of local professional companies to deliver results. They prefer to pay a high price for a caucasian face or a company that is affliated with an international caucasian network.

Just last week, some one close to me told me that one of the local branded jewellery company invited a foreign consultant and writer to talk about building brands. I guess he must be paid at least RM30,000 for one or two hour of his professional time to talk about - why it is important to brand the company from the inside out - come on …. that is common knowledge even for local experts to know that. A local expert will probably be paid less than RM5,000 for the same amount of knowledge or even better - knowledge that is more relevant to local scene.

So I asked that all you foreign consultants to do us Malaysian consultants a favor, come to my country and charge hefty until these local Malaysian companies realise their own stupidity.

In the mean time, firm like ours prefer to work with companies outside the Malaysian shores i.e Singapore; at least these companies are mature enough to evaluate substance instead of the color of the skin of its CEO to justify fee or for ego boosting.

Found this one at Seth’s blog - www.brandtags.net - you guys should really check it out.

Also Seth has listed things that every good marketers should know. Below 10 of my personal favourites:

1. Good marketers tells a story.
2. Low prices is a great way to sell commodity. That is not marketing, its efficiency.
3. Marketing begins before the product is created.
4. Making promises and keeping them is a great way to build a brand.
5. Products that are remarkable get talked about.
6. You’re not in-charge and your prospect don’t care about you.
7. People are selfish, lazy, uninformed and impatient. Start with that and you will be surprised by what you find.
8. Choose your customer. Fire the ones that hurt your ability to deliver the right storyto the others.
9. Good marketers measure.
10. Marketing is not an emergency. It’s a planned, thoughtful exercise that started a long time ago and doesn’t end until you’re done.

Do check out his blog - http://sethgodin.typepad.com, I do regard him as one of the most authentic marketer; not the text book type.

If you are like me, people who reads the business section of the daily paper everyday, one the most used word is - MILLION. All the time you find news articles about companies winning M-contract, government awarding the M-contract and also occassionally companies or governments losing Ms.

If any news that don’t get covered by at least M-level, its probably not ‘news worthy’ enough to be covered. News space is so precious and also expensive. I don’t know much about the degree which dailies in other countries covered but I like to share my point of view on our Malaysian local dailies especially sections pertaining to the business.

The government of Malaysia has spend millions of ringgits in subsidies, grants, incentives and promotional support for Small and Medium size companies in this country. Take for example the Branding Grant which pays up to RM2 million for companies to promote their brand.

We all know that although advertising and press releases are no longer much of an effective tool to build brand but mass media exposure remains important if you want to inform the public about your business, products and services. In any given day, take out the business section of our local daily, break them down into 3 categories - Local PLC news, international/foreign company news and local SME news. You will hardly see the third section gets any form of coverage at all.

I think our local press has a duty to help promote local SMEs although their news are not about winning Ms of contract. Local SMEs need strong mass media exposure about the business, new products and new services that they are offering.

In this country, majority of how the overall system works comes in 5 letters - SUCKS. On one hand the government spend Ms of public fund to help SMEs and down the road you find simple and basic mass media exposure being almost totally denied and as we all know many of these dailies are so called ‘government owned/controlled’.

I think Malaysian dailies should relook at their policies and how to help local SMEs gain better milleage in media exposure. Give them the space they need to get their presence known. Big MNCs can pay for the advertisements but SMEs need your media space more.