Pek Pongpaet

I received a sneak copy of “Buying In” by Rob Walker from Random House several weeks ago. Although I am not in sales, marketing or advertising, I enjoy these kinds of books because they give me insight into how to better market products I create both to the end user and management.

Walker’s book talks about the marketing in today’s Internet age and how we as consumers have a dialogue with the products we consume and shape the brands just as much as they shape us. Traditional marketing no longer works with the new consumer and we’ve become immune to ads. We skip through commercials when we Tivo; we no longer notice banner ads on the Internet, much less click on them. Companies now resort to what Walker calls murky marketing or murketing where the line between advertising and word of mouth recommendations are blurred.

Traditional marketing campaigns make way to new strategies. The Toyota Scion campaign, for example, in trying not to be perceived as mainstream was run more like an underground rapper’s. Walker covers many interesting accounts of the rise of familiar brands such as Red Bull, Axe, and American Apparel.

For all the murketing that happens, we are also having an effect on the brands. Although originally Timberland was meant as a blue collar work boot, fashionable urban consumers, hip-hop and R&B artists were demanding pink and yellow colored boots to the tune of $1.6 billion.

To be honest, the beginning of the book was pretty dry, and I wasn’t sure if I was going to finish it. However, it does get better. What I really enjoyed were the various studies done. One that comes to mind is the SoBe Adrenaline Rush energy drink experiment. Subjects were told that scientific studies suggested that drinks like SoBe can significantly improve mental functioning. Some were told the drink cost the full retail price while others were told it cost half that. Members who drank the full price drink and told that the drink improved mental functioning performed significantly better than the other groups. So the power of suggestion can improve not only perception but also performance. Also interesting, but not surprising, when it comes to eco-friendliness, people do not do what they say.

One errata I found irritating was the claim that Red Bull was “invented” by an Austrian named Dietrich Mateschitz. Red Bull was invented in Thailand by a Thai chemist. I know that because my mom went to college with said chemist who is now quite wealthy. Krating Daeng literally translated “Red Bull” has been the tonic drink Thai truck drivers have been consuming for decades to stave off fatigue. Watering it down with carbonated water hardly constitutes inventing.

Overall, I found the book an entertaining read as far as marketing and advertising books go but definitely not one of my favorites. But if you like these kinds of books, I would recommend these:

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Or, “Don’t Let Other People Tell You Otherwise”

I’ve always dreamed of flying in the air like in the kung fu movies. As life would have it, I was 22 years old when I finally started my martial arts training. By most accounts, this is considered late in life. Most of the professional wushu team athletes have already past their prime at that age and would be looking to retire in the next couple of years. One of my earlier instructors said she didn’t even want to train me. I was too old and would never get anywhere. There was no point in investing her time with me. To say that wushu is a demanding sport would be an understatement. I suppose that is true with any high level sport. The analogy that I tell students all the time is that wushu is like rowing upstream. If you stop wushu, your skill doesn’t stay at the same level, it gets worse. If you stop rowing you actually go backwards, and so you must constantly row, but I digress. The point is, if I had been a “realist” or logical about my decision to start training at such a late age and had listened to all my detractors, I probably never would have started wushu. Sometimes you just have to ignore the noise and go with your gut.

When I watch tapes of professional wushu athletes, others would think, “I could never do that”, while I thought to myself, “Wow, I want to be just like them.” Besides the fact that most of them were hand picked by professional coaches at a young age for their genetic predisposition and started their training around 6 or 7 years old, and the fact that they train 6 days a week, I said, “Why can’t I be like them?” I guess deep down, I knew I would never be exactly like a professional martial artist in the true sense of the word. But I didn’t let that stop me from enjoying it, pursuing it, and practicing it. Not only did I go ahead and do what I wanted, I went on to win many tournaments, and my experience has led me to opportunities in the video game industry.

Dream big. Reach for the stars and maybe you’ll get to the moon.

There will be people in your life who will tell you that it’s impossible, it can’t be done or that it’s way out of your league. Listen to their reasons, but do what you feel is right for you. I was passionate about wushu and I wasn’t gonna let anyone tell me that I wasn’t good enough or that I would never get anywhere. Actually, I love it when I hear that because it just makes me want to work harder and prove them how wrong they were. Remember, there is no spoon. Only chopsticks.

Don’t ever let anyone tell you that something is too competitive. Once you subtract the people who don’t work very hard, or the people who aren’t as good as you, your competition shrinks dramatically.
- Maggie Mason, entrepreneur, author, and founder of Mighty Goods

Speaking of inspirational themes, I found these books to be really inspirational. They’re both in my library in fact, and I highly recommend them.

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My previous post about 5 essential Mac software for the recent convert proved such a hit with my friend that I decided to recommend him more stuff. Anybody who knows me knows that I like to personalize my gadgets and tech gear. A brand new Macbook or Macbook Pro feels naked. If you plan to do any moving around with it at all and not have it sit permanently at your desk you probably might be interested in some of these really cool products.

Speck SeeThru HardCase is basically a hard plastic shell that fits over your Macbook perfectly to help protect it from scratches that may come from moving it around. The 2 pieces of plastic covers snap snuggly onto your Macbook or Macbook Pro. I have the green one shown here. I like the idea of the black leather case but I was ready to write it off due to my concerns of the laptop overheating with a leather case until I read one of the Amazon reviews that said that the temperature actually dropped with the case.

GelaSkins Protective Skin are vinyl skins that adhere to the surface of your laptop to provide both some level of protection and personalization. Their website has a whole bunch of designs and I like the one shown here. Now I personally don’t have one of these, but that’s because I’m still debating about getting my MBP laser etched. Also, I kinda like the illuminated Apple logo, and I’m not sure I’d want to cover that up. However, some of my friends with iPhones have gotten these and are extremely happy with them.

Andrew Christian Messenger Bag You can’t have a laptop and not have a laptop bag. These bad boys provide the perfect balance between protection, price, and style. It’s really hard to find laptop bags that are affordable and not drab like those depressing black nylon corporate bags. Currently I’m using a leather messenger bag I found at Target, but I honestly can’t recommend it because it’s so thin that the laptop pretty much fills the bag and anything else in it makes it impossible to close it.

incase makes these really cool neoprene sleeves for pretty much all the mac laptops. They come in various colors and I have a green one that matches my green Speck hard shell. They sell these at the Apple store too, but don’t get them there because they charge you more for it.

More RAM I would consider this THE most important addition to your Macbook or Macbook Pro. More RAM lets you run more applications at the same time and let’s them run faster. You can be an idiot and pay Apple $200 more for essentially the same thing that Amazon sells for less than $100.

I’m always on the lookout for cool Macbook stuff. If you readers find any please do share. Thanks.

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I am not sure what it is about entrepreneurs and startup folks. They seem to be a different breed altogether in the way that high level martial artists are a different breed from regular people. They seem to be able to have a stick-to-it-ness and maintain a high energy level to always overcome whatever obstacles they face. For most people, the only time you ever hear about these people is when they’ve already made it big. You look at them, and they make it look so easy that you think you could probably do it too. I mean, if they could do it why can’t you? Heck, Tim Ferriss seems to think all you need is 4 hours a week.

What they don’t tell you and what you don’t know is that often times, going at it by yourself and starting something from the ground up with no help and infrastructure is hard grueling work. So hard that the statistics for startups and small businesses is very depressing to look at. Most rational people would look it and say, “you know what? I’m perfectly happy with my 9 to 5.” Most any person I know would rather get out of work by 5, come home and relax with a movie, tv show or a book. What compels a person to pull insane hours working for very little pay (if any) and hope that there may be a light at the end of the tunnel. Doesn’t the prospect of having squandered away precious days of your life enough to deter you to undertake such a grand endeavor? The alternative is so much more seductive. The dark side, the easy road – just veg on the couch and hold that remote. Just turn on that Xbox. Every little thing beckons you from your goal.

Take for example bloggers. The majority of bloggers earn less than $100/month. Heck, in my first month, I made the equivalent of 12 cents and hour. Yet they keep on writing. Why in God’s name why? Either they are all narcissists who want to see their own words published on the internet or they hope to eventually make a decent buck out of it. Sadly, for the majority, this will never happen. Same is probably true with most startups. They’re better off taking a second job. I know many people who do and have made decent money over the years supplementing their income with a second job. These people are yet another breed different from entrepreneurs, but I won’t get into that.

My question is, what makes them different. What compels them to propel? How do they do it? Where do they find the will and energy? Why?

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There’s been a lot of talk about mashups in corporations due to the creation of successful mashup applications in the consumer world. EveryBlock (formerly ChicagoCrime.org) comes to mind.
I have 2 thoughts on that:

1. Departments are over protective of their data and are reluctant to give up control.
2. Mashups should not require developers to make.

Let’s talk about my first thought. A department is responsible for their services and data. Making a mashup requires opening up their services to the rest of the firm. There are several reasons why departments would be resistant to that. First, there’s hording. By that I don’t mean they horde the data, but rather their sense of ownership. Creating a mashup API means relinquishing some level of control. For some people, that’s one of their biggest fears. Related to that point is transparency. Exposing services could possibly expose the fact that much of what they have running are built on sticks and stones and smoke and mirrors. Perhaps I take too grim a view on this. These reasons among others are probably why we haven’t seen that many mashups in the corporate world.

Another thought I had was that mashups, besides requiring the exposing of services (which I claimed is a roadblock), also can only be created by developers. Yet, I think the people who would benefit most from these, the types of people who are power spreadsheet users for example, are pretty much locked out of them because they lack the skill or know how to create them. What if we rethought the way mashups are? Here’s a crazy idea – RSS feeds are slowly gaining exposure. A few years ago, RSS was strictly a geek thing although now, more and more people are becoming more comfortable with the idea of blogs and news feeds. I know that RSS has permeated into non-techies when my friend in MBA school is using Google Reader. What if we exposed mashup APIs that outputted RSS? Expose corporate services as REST APIs similar to that of Flickr and output the results as RSS. I think that will lower the barrier to entry for non technical people to tinker with services and to be able to consume the results in the RSS reader of their choice.

I think by opening up mashups to everyone, we will see an explosion in its use, much like how blogs allowed the average person to have a voice on the internet.

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