Last weekend, I went to Bridal Closet, a store specializing in rental of bridal gowns as well as bridesmaid’s gowns in Singapore.

I first started noticing this shop because of the number of times they’ve been mentioned on bridal forums. I had expected a positive experience there, since forumers alluded to a wide range of selections, and competitive prices, in various forum threads. Instead, I felt highly uncomfortable in the shop.

From the moment I stepped in, till the moment I left, all I heard were the words “my dear”. The owner herself (Elsie), and her shop assistants, all had this bloody annoying habit of calling every single customer “my dear”.

Please wait, my dear, I’ll try to look for dresses in that color for you.

Sorry to keep you waiting, my dear, here are the dresses. But the dressing room is occupied, so please wait, okay, my dear?

No, my dear, we don’t sell dresses, only rental. And here are our packages, my dear.

My dear, you can go into the dressing room now. Do you need help to zip up, my dear?

I think this dress looks better on you, my dear.

Thanks for coming, my dear! Here’s my name card, my dear. Call me again!

Excuse me, are we like, best friends? I’m not sure what I’ve done to give you that impression, but I’m pretty sure that calling someone “my dear” is something not done on the first meeting.

I’ll answer to almost anything but PUHLEEZE, I beg of you!!!  — Don’t call me “Dear.” The only thing worse than “Dear” is “My Dear.” “My Dear” is like Lee Press-on Nailsscraping along the 405 at 110 MPH.

Blame Margaret Mitchell. When Rhett Butler told Scarlett O’Hara, “Frankly, My Dear, I don’t give a damn,”  he was lying. Of course Rhett gave a damn. But like everyone who calls anyone “My Dear,” Rhett was angry. “My Dear” – was code for: “Damn you, Scarlett O’Hara — you gorgeous, headstrong bitch: I can’t control you!”

Bile, hate and vitriol oozes out of “My Dear.” “My Dear” is condescending. It’s passive-aggressive. Nobody is smiling when they say, “My Dear.” When they call you, their “Dear,” they’re annoyed.  “My Dear” is hostile. There is nothing dear about “Dear” and “My” is stifling and possessive with a noxious whiff of faux-superiority.

- Lisa Medway, “Frankly, My Dear — Don’t Call Me My Dear”

The author says that calling someone “my dear” is often condescending and gives the person who uses it an air of faux-superiority. And I agree whole-heartedly. This can be easily rectified if only they had bothered to put in a little bit of effort.

So, my dear Bridal Closet: When you greet customers at the door, do try to introduce yourself like this, instead:

Hi, I’m Elsie / Felicia / whoever. Welcome to Bridal Closet! How may I address you?

Then make the effort to remember the names.

Judging from the amount of exposure you get through bridal forums, I know that you meet a lot of people everyday, but calling them “my dear” does not endear you to them, and neither does it make them feel warm and welcomed at your shop. And if you’ve heard of personalized service, you’ll know that putting in that little bit of effort will go a very long way.

Watch this video on how personalized service can lead to a happy customer who will help you sell your brand:

Do watch the rest of Joseph Michelli’s 8-part series on Customer Experience, if you’re interested to know how you can improve customers’ experience with your company.

Psst. Your website could do with some updating too.

I’ve been blocked from using Facebook, because of ‘misuse’ of features on Facebook, such as adding friends, sharing links, and sending messages.

According to Facebook,

… managing multiple accounts is a serious violation of Facebook’s Terms of Use. If we determine that an individual has more than one account, we reserve the right to terminate all of their accounts.
(source)

On the topic of business profiles on Facebook, they also say,

Maintaining multiple accounts, regardless of the purpose, is a violation of Facebook’s Terms of Use. If you already have a personal account, then we cannot allow you to create business accounts for any reason. You can manage all the Pages and Socials Ads that you create on your personal account.
(source)

Which means users are supposed to create all Facebook pages, administer them, and manage them from a single user’s individual account.

However, if I use my personal Facebook account to administrate multiple business Facebook pages, which includes:

• Sending messages to individual members Facebook pages, to obtain feedback, answer their questions, or conduct audits for contests
• Sharing links and media content on various public pages, including my own Facebook profile, and through Facebook message (to direct Facebook page users to a source to obtain information)

Social Media World Forum Asia 2010
22-23 September 2010
Suntec City Convention Centre, Singapore

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -

I first heard about Social Media WorldForum Asia from Dorothy Poon, who attended SMWF last year and who has been, for 2 years running, one of the official media partners for this event.

I think this in itself is something exciting for me, because Dorothy is a friend and someone I continually engage with, online and offline. Earlier this year, I also attended the Mobile Marketing Association Forum Asia with Dorothy, and to say the very least, Dorothy is a very attentive conference attendee who injects very insightful updates into every conference’s social stream. Definitely looking forward to following her live updates on Twitter come 22-23 September 2010.

SMWF Asia, in its second year now, is fast gaining traction amongst social media practitioners and enthusiasts in the region, and worldwide. It should come as no surprise that social behaviour online in Asia is very much different from that in other parts of the world, so those who are looking to understand the digital space in Asia should definitely attend this event.

There’ll be several segments to the event, namely the:

• Conference
• Social TV session
• Exhibition
• Workshops
• Networking events

I’m personally looking forward to a few specific items on the agenda during the event:

• “The State Of Social Media in Asia Today – A Year On” – Keynote by Thomas Crampton, Asia-Pacific Director, 360 Digital Influence,Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, Hong Kong
• “Case- Study -Social Media Marketing @ Toys R Us” – Presentation by Argha Sen, Head of Marketing & CRM, Toys R Us
• “Increasing customer intimacy and empowerment through Social CRM” – An Interactive Panel session with Damien Cummings of Dell and Nik Ong of MRM Singapore
• “Integrating Social Media into traditional marketing strategy“ - An Interactive Panel session with Singapore marketers (Derek Yeo of Tiger Airways, Jeremy Khoo of NTUC Fairprice, Francis Wang of Singapore Turf Club, and Pooja Arora of P&G)
• “Monetizing Social Media & Social Networks” – Keynote by Laurel Papworth, Social Network Strategist
• Meeting Brian Solis
• Meeting Shalabh Pandey
• Party at Helipad!

25% discount off conference ticket price: Find out how

Social Media WorldForum Event Brochure

Twitter handle: @SocialMediaWF
Twitter hashtag: #SMWF

Recently, I’ve been roped in by my colleague Yammy, to help out with a pro-bono project that my company, The PR Element (an XPR company), has taken on.

Project Reach is a programme presented and spearheaded by Murdoch University’s Public Relations students in Singapore. The programme consists of Causathon, an online fund-raiser competition and a Conference, which is the landmark event for Project Reach.

Causathon “the race for cause” kick-starts on 7 July 2010 and involves 85 students in an online fund-raising competition. To raise funds for 14 different causes, the teams will tap on social media and the online social giving portal Give.sg, which helps connect Not-for-Profit organizations with donors.

I found out about Give.sg during the first Twestival SG event which I volunteered at. I got dunked for charity! Anyway, the people at Give.sg are a really passionate bunch, who have been working at their Give.sg portal, to improve users’ experience. Check out some of the fund-raising projects that they had a hand in recently! One of the key offerings of the Give.sg portal is its personal fundraising feature, which allows individuals to start their own campaigns and get friends and family to fund their favourite social projects by donating to a cause or Not-for-Profit / Charitable organization that they support! If you’re interested to find out more, you can always give the site a try, or Tweet them at @GIVEsingapore.

But I digress! Back to Causathon - I’m really excited to go down and meet the teams, and find out more about what each of them are planning to do to raise funds for their cause. Perhaps I can even do my part and share with them some ideas about how to further reach out to people on Social Media!

But this is not all just talk – You can follow the teams’ progress at this Causathon microsite on Give.sg, and make a donation to help them achieve their targets for their selected beneficiaries!

Wanna find out more and meet the teams in person? Come down today, to SMa Institute of Higher Learning, at 410 North Bridge Road #01-00 (It’s just opposite the National Library and Bras Basah Complex at Bugis!)

You can also get to enjoy a good cuppa coffee from Starbucks, at just SGD 2! Yes, you read that right! SGD 2! All proceeds from the coffee sales go to charity.

So come on down if you’re free this afternoon, come and meet us, and have a cuppa joe with us, for a good cause! Some bloggers will be joining us too, to learn more about this project, and share the word with their readers! Interested? Join us!

Among the bloggers attending will be:

Sham of mhisham.org

Robert of robertsky.com

Catherine of camemberu.com

Aaron of aaronpeng.org

Nikita of iHengbok.blogspot.com

We’ll be having rounds at 3pm, 4pm, and 5pm! If you plan to come, just Tweet me at @daphnemaia or call me at 91685900 so I can personally meet you there!

Official Twitter hashtag: #projectreachsg

It’s been a while since I watched a locally produced reality show, because many of them simply do not appeal to me, what with the more prominent reality shows in recent years being that of scantily-clad bimbos, and of a seductress getting hunky men to fight over her, etc. It may be good entertainment, but it definitely holds no value if you are looking for real content.

Then came along ‘The Rookie’. This internet-popularized reality show shown online is actually a Nokia campaign aimed at promoting the Nokia E72 executive phone. This handset is definitely a sleek-looking, high performance mobile phone, that will appeal to a range of audience, from business owners, to yuppies, to social-networking fans, to gadget-loving youths! The Nokia E72 comes in 4 classy colours: Zodium black, Metal grey, Topaz brown, and White.

Fashioned in a similar way to Donald Trump’s ‘The Apprentice’,  this show, hosted by Bobby Tonelli, caught my eye because of the set of challenges that the Rookies had to complete. The challenges put to test their business acumen, strategic planning skills, creative talents, interpersonal relationships and team play. The 12 contestants, grouped into Team Alpha and Team Bravo, had to work together to complete the challenges, while also trying to shine as individuals. Perfect setting for organizational politics? YES!

While I’m not saying that  ‘The Rookie’ or Nokia promoted politics within work teams, I thought that this was a pretty good portrayal of what real work life is all about. The contestants, some of whom were undergraduates or even fresh grads (and the show’s viewers alike) were spared no disillusionments, nor were they dished sugar-coated scenarios of what working in an organization might be like.

Many-a-time while watching the show, I found myself agreeing or disagreeing with what contestants did, and thinking about what could’ve been done better, or what I would do instead – now did someone say engaging and intellectual? One thing that I’m surprised with, however, is that none of these contestants were actively participating in online conversations, despite the many who were talking about them on Twitter, using the #rookiesg hashtag. But that’s probably just the social media consultant in me speaking.

With tight budgets, looming deadlines, difficult ‘client’ demands, and clashing ambitions, the contestants each tried to impress the judges, and also garner votes of confidence from the audience, who had chances to interact with the show by predicting the eventual winner of this reality show. Audiences who predicted the right winner would stand to win themselves a set of the drool-worthy Nokia E72, which was also used by all the contestants in their communications during the show.

Now tell me you don’t already feel empowered by just looking at this phone! With the Nokia Messaging instant messaging feature and its business communications solutions, it takes only 3 simple steps to sync up as many as 10 email accounts (it supports Google Mail, Windows Live Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, MS Exchange mail servers and even Lotus Notes!) so that you can always be connected via email. A dream come true for all workaholics who like to travel light without notebooks! Also awesome for social networking lovers like me, cos the Nokia E72 allows you to download apps that support your social needs, such as Skype, Snaptu, Gravity, Facebook, and many many more!

Voted Editor’s Choice for Best Lifestyle Mobile Phone by HWM and HardwareZone.com, and also CNET Asia’s Reader’s Choice, the  Nokia E72 is definitely a strong contestant in the arena of business mobile phones.

Oops, pardon my inner geek for gushing about this phone - ‘The Rookie’ has concluded its final episode, and has crowned the winner at the finale held at Zouk last Saturday. 6 finalists appeared at the finale, with 4 eventual winners crowned and awarded highly-coveted internships at major brands and companies like Nokia, Microsoft, Standard Chartered and Zouk.

Find out who the four are, and follow the drama, the adrenaline highs, the challenges, the business ideas, the politics, and the kanchiong-ness at ‘The Rookie’ . There are also clips from ‘Behind the scenes’ online, at the website, so don’t miss out on what everyone’s been talking about!

[This advertorial entry was written in support of Nokia's The Rookie Campaign, and may contain statements that are of the author's own opinions, which neither reflect that of Nokia and its partner companies for this show, nor that of her own employer or its clients.]

Last weekend, Standard Chartered (SCB) held a bloggers’ breakfast event to introduce to a bunch of Singapore bloggers SCB’s newly-launched iPhone app for mobile banking, Breeze.

Disclosure: SCB is a client of my company, XPR Pte Ltd, and this social media outreach was organized by my team at XPR.

The event was held at British gourmet bar and restaurant, “The Queen and Mangosteen“, at VivoCity.

Entrance to The Queen and Mangosteen, Vivocity, Singapore

Breeze is not your regular iPhone mobile banking application that is simply a revamp of what one typically sees on an internet banking site. It actually gives you a whole new rich banking experience, with features that are unique only to Standard Chartered, like:

Breeze e-Cheque: No more paper and pen! Just add me as a payee (using my name and address), and write as many cheques as you want to me! You know you want to!

Breeze's Calendar View : Just click on any day to view the day's transactions!

Breeze's location-aware ATM and branch locator, which actually gives you useful information like address, opening hours

View Standard Chartered promotions from a range of merchants, be it dining, R&R, health, fitness, beauty, education, shopping, or even sports! Pretty nifty for those of us who love getting good deals.

There are also some fun ‘hacks’ on the app, which are basically just fun things that show the fun side of the app developers:

• Shake your iPhone to ‘move’ your money
• Personalization of your Breeze account using different colours, avatars, etc.
• Dynamic backgrounds that change according to Day or Night

Breeze seems like a really fun way to manage your money. In addition, the Standard Chartered executives have also shared with us that in the upcoming version of the app, SCB customers can look forward to:

• adding payees from within the application itself
• more location-based features
• foreign remittance
• add bill payments from within the application itself
• getting apps on other platforms as well, like Android!

Now I really want to get my own Standard Chartered Bank account, and of course, my very own soon-to-be-launched iPhone 4! Here are some pictures from the event:

Jason and Nizam with SCB staff Selina, who showed them some unique features of the Breeze app

Aman Narain, Standard Chartered's Global Head for Remote Banking

Yummy Food! (which I unfortunately did not eat much of, cos I was having too much fun chatting with friends and playing with the Breeze app)

Shin Wee, Product Marketing Manager, (seated at the head of the table), interacting with the bloggers

One lucky blogger walked away with an iPad courtesy of Standard Chartered!

The lucky blogger, Justin Ng, of http://justinng.sg (He's also one of the members at our favourite local technology podcast, Tech65)!

I really had fun organizing the event, and I hope that all those who had attended did have fun too! Looking forward to reading more blogposts and hearing your thoughts about the app and the event.

I ordered pizza from Domino’s Singapore yesterday for lunch, and had really great experience every step of the way – from the phone operator who took my order, to the delivery man, to the manager who followed up with me because they forgot to pack one of the items in my order (they had it re-delivered within 30 minutes).

Today, I received a phone call from a customer service person, who wanted me to do a “2-minute survey” on my experience with Domino’s yesterday. Great! I’m happy to oblige, because I had a great experience.

She started off well, informing me of the purpose of her call. Then we delved right into the survey. The first question was something like:

“Which of the following 2 would you consider to be of greatest importance to you when choosing a pizza delivery service?”

1. Delivery within 30-minutes
2. Quality of pizza
3. … *I tuned out* (There were a total of 5 or 6 on her list)

Companies who want to get feedback on users’ experience ought to do it online! Please consider that by the time the tele-surveyor gets to the 3rd or 4th item on the list, your target respondent might have forgotten what the first 2 items were.

Here’s some free (and easy to implement) advice:

When your rider delivers the pizza, pass the customer a brochure that tells them that if they participate in an online a customer service survey (using a code on the receipt), they stand to win a value meal for 3 pax worth $30 (1 winner daily)!

That way, you save on headcount (telephone surveyors), and you get all the data compiled for you automatically. Plus, you get more people visiting your website, and then you can work on your conversion from those visits.

In case you’re wondering how the survey went, I asked her if she had the survey online, cos I can’t focus on the long list she was reading out to me. She apologized, thanked me politely, and we ended the call. Perhaps someone from Domino’s will contact me by email / Twitter to do the survey online instead.

Recently a tiny fraction (a very vocal fraction, I must say) of the online community worldwide has been getting itself all upset and feeling indignant about the privacy issue on Facebook.

Funny how people don’t realize that privacy has long been dead.

I, for one, will not leave Facebook, come 31st May, when 3377 (at press time) Facebook users severe ties with Facebook, one of the most visited websites on the internet (at present, the most visited website in the United States, and the world’s top social networking site and most visited mobile social network).

I am not leaving, because despite having 3377 people pledging to quit Facebook, there are still over 400 million people on Facebook I can interact with, and Facebook still remains a very effective way to reach the masses in Asia Pacific. (Well, social media is my job.)

But I digress. The truth is this: Facebook, now branded as the evil privacy thief (and Mark Zuckerberg the king of the thieves), is no different from a blog. Except now you have fixed pages for you to post stories on, fixed albums for you to organize your photos in, a proper ‘biodata’ page to plonk in all the information you might ever want people to know about you, and a section to list all your likes and dislikes. Plus, you get to play games, shop online, get news, get updated with your friends’ lives, conduct business, make announcements, and a whole lot more you never thought it would be possible to do on a single site.

Facebook is a blog. A structured blog. Within a big big community.

So what makes it so “private”? Because in the first place, they give you the option of restricting access of content to people you want to give access to. And suddenly, you discover maybe things are not so private anymore because now you realize that Facebook mines data from your profiles, and your contacts’ profiles, if you don’t fix your privacy settings. [cue slight uproar]

Then came Open Graph, a whole new way of looking at ‘social sharing’. [cue major uproar] And this just tipped the bucket, I suppose. Websites like Gizmodo started making Top Ten lists of reasons of why people should quit Facebook. Two really passionate (and I always say this, passionate people are biased – I know I am) Canadian men started a website to get people to pledge to quit Facebook come 31 May.

Okay, so the reasons and arguments presented on websites like Gizmodo sound logical and are compelling. But that’s just good writing. The way Steve Jobs (or his PR people) wrote the article that convinced many that the iPhone really doesn’t need Flash. And as the old adage goes: the pen is mightier than the sword. If you write well (if you have a way with words), you will win the battle.

And as another old saying goes: There are two sides to every coin.

So don’t be caught up by the arguments presented in the lists you see on the internet that are written by brilliant writers who make a living of writing articles to convince people to buy products and services. Have you heard Facebook’s side of the story?

But again, I digress. My point is this:

If each Facebook user had the gumption to put on Facebook only what they are comfortable in revealing on the internet, we wouldn’t have this problem and this whole unnecessary uproar over a privacy issue that never existed (because privacy simply doesn’t exist in this information age). What makes the content you publish on Facebook so differentiated (in terms of privacy) from the content you would put on your blog?

Do you publish notes, random thoughts, photos, email addresses, names of friends on your blog? Chances are, you do.

So why this uproar over Facebook using these data to make your user experience better? Why the uproar over how they use this data to customize what kind of advertisements appear on your Facebook sidebar? Why the uproar over how Facebook makes everything super social, when you accept, from the start, the fact that Facebook is a social networking tool?

In my opinion, there really is no case at all.

If anything, Facebook users need to learn how to: exercise gumption and exercise discretion. And if you don’t know how to do that, perhaps the rest of us on Facebook won’t miss you being on it anyway.

And for the record: Privacy? That’s long gone. If you can’t live with it, you might want to completely stop using the internet completely (and that includes your email).

Last week, I had a blog contest to give away the Fame Original Soundtrack CD to one lucky blog reader, and a mystery prize to another blog reader!

Here are the results:

Winner of Fame OST CD:

Justin Lee of justinlee.sg

Winner of Fame mystery prize:

Sharon Chow of Hougang Ave 4!

All winners will be contacted via email, and I will arrange for posting of prizes! Thanks to all who participated! Keep watching this blog for more giveaways!

Enjoy your prizes, and if you have not managed to watch the Fame movie, please do go and watch the movie at Cathay this weekend!

For more information on the soundtrack, please visit Universal Music.