Tag: KFC

Mars or marble

Have you submitted your name to be shuttled up to Mars?  Space and sea travel or your names on Mars and not marble. This is to show our preference for progress over permanence  – technology over religion.

While it’s good to sit on one of the benches with our parent’s names “in memory of…”, it’s better still for our grandchildren to travel in space to look for ours on Mars.

I found my parent’s graves without a hitch. Right here on spaceship Earth.

In the Far East, people want to travel back to where their ancestors were buried (as of this edit, I have just stepped on a bunch of fake dollars, burnt during an early morning funeral).

Thus, “the Last Train Home” documentary about Chinese factory laborers trying to get home for New Year via train, plane or automobile (their version of White Christmas).

Modernity forces huge displacement. South-South movement will be next, not Earth to Outer space (Indian mobile phone companies are buying up Middle Eastern phone companies to cater to fast growing African markets, while Vietel engineers are rebuilding Haitian and Myanmar telecom infrastructure).

When you are uprooted, your sense of identity suffers. One used to be known by his/her relationship in a communal network. Now, with new “ID“, he/she is known by an employee number. Welcome to KFC, how may I take your order.

With industrialization comes frustration (discontent): who is going to move in those Shanghai towers , and who will have to relocate to make room for the 5th-ring highway?

Uprooted dreamers.

No place to go back to. No bragging rights for aging parents e.g. “my son went to the city and came back a millionaire”.  Bentley in Russia, Ford in China. Wealth shift. G-20+ (make sure Brazil is included, since they know how to party).

For years, we saw a steady rise of “emerging countries”, but we still resort to yesterday’s play book. (Remember the Yugo joke?).

The poor was materially poor, but not in spirit or intelligence. From a near-zero base, the only way for emerging countries to go is to “emerge” i.e. create better-paying jobs, while union and progress in the West , once a blessing, now a hindrance in this post-Recession recovery.

Darwin was right: survival favors the most adaptive. Instead of fighting for a seat on “the Last Train”, those smart entrepreneurs already built alternate-energy bullet trains. It’s not your names on Mars, it’s the challenge to think beyond the marble which for centuries was the last stop for even the most famous of names. A Roman Emperor once hired an assistant, whose main job is to remind him every so often that: “Your Majesty, you will die soon”.  Memento mori.

This Bud’s for Saigonese

The Bud‘s Bus is here. Clumsily made its turn around tight street corners, where beer drinkers sat on baby-size stools, surrounding a hot-pot or sea food grill.

I saw the Budweiser chariot and horses at the  Super Bowl in Miami.

And now, the brand appears here on the opposite side of the world.

Still, someone in International Marketing needs to take context into their planning.

Can’t go around the tight streets of Saigon with a moving billboard which can’t turn the corner.

Things have to be nimble and the look has to “fit”, like KFC on-wheels (scooters).

Now, that takes experience (KFC happened to buy all the Chicken Town outlets for instant dominance).

I must admit, the Bud girls tried hard. They helped out the servers at their assigned restaurants, on par with Hennessy PR girls, who dressed up as if the were beauty contestants.

Bud is playing catch up, before another Japanese brand, locally brewed, begins to make its entrance.

It’ s hot here. And beers have become the liquid of choice. Either that, or you get ENSURE as hospital-visit gifts.

Vietnamese male don’t like to go anywhere near milk, except when it’s mixed in their iced coffee milk.

I notice two beverages that dominate here, and have been for a while: iced coffee milk and Heineken.

One to put you to sleep and the other to wake you up.

And the cycle has never ended, at least for the past decade or even longer. The spirits business promises higher margin than food, which in the Vietnamese slang, “moi”, i.e. appertizers add-ons, translated into higher bill, which requires drinkers to work harder, thus, more stress to be released….)

It’s the loop, very much like the loop in the States, except in the States,

people live to work  (to pay for their expenses, largely bank-own housing.) Here, at least in the South, people work to live, as observed by one Vietnamese now lives overseas. Knowing this, Budweiser should

take a page from KFC play book: beer on wheels, and not huge trucks that can barely negotiate the turn.

Vietnamize the franchise

Carl Jr, Starbucks, Hard Rock Cafe, KFC, BK, MacDonald, Circle K, Domino, Pizza Hut.

The age of franchise bull run.

When I said I had been to 40+ cities in N America, I actually meant, I have been to only one. The one with MacDonald, Starbucks, Walmart, Target etc…

You got the idea.

The funny thing was, per my  job, I had to zero in Chinese and Vietnamese niche markets in those cities.

And within these niches, I ran into Lee Sandwiches, Tung Ki noodles, Pho Hoa,  Hoa Phat Money Transfer, Le money transfer etc…

Can’t seem to find the authentically local flavor (maybe in New Orleans and Biloxi).

HCMC and Hanoi will soon be filled with similar landmarks, once the invasion of franchise outlets saturated those two engines of growth.

For now, it’s novelty to sit in a new establishment, place your order and self-serve your drinks (the age of prosumerism).

I ordered an iced coffee milk this morning at a local MacDonald. What I got was iced milk. And the cookie I ordered, I had to pay three times for it

(because the system doesn’t allow for customer to buy just one).

So, welcome to supply chain, branding and upselling.

And good luck with getting customer service at those places.

Indeed, one can go through life, at least here in the States, for a month without ever getting any help at all, over the phone or the counter.

See my other blog on “machine and me”.

It gets to be lonely. Hence the blog.

I hope Vietnam doesn’t get that way, at least, not yet until I can find a Carl Jr at every corner, right next to the Starbucks.

Internet intersects culture

In China,, teacher Ma was on trial for using the internet to recruit partner-swapping.

In Pakistan, they banned Facebook and then YouTube.

And in Iran, right after the election, they did not like Twitter.

Fast-pace technology collides slow-changing tradition.

As of this edit, Kenneth Cole (shoes-man) tweeted about “boots on the ground” as referring to to Syria’s dilemma.

No joking matter! But he did it on purpose to profit from planned controversy.

The gods must be crazy!

People feel invaded, and threatened (that life as they know it will forever be altered.)

Travelers kept saying that every time they are back to Beijing or Shanghai, they couldn’t find the same noodle shop.

It’s gone, and in its place, huge towers had been erected,in those spots.

If you looked at Miami in the old days, and Miami today, you couldn’t help but feeling the same.

Nobody seems to take full credit for the rise and roar of the internet .

Among the tech camp itself, mothers are eating their young.

Wiki displaced Britannica, Firefox took shares from IE.

Nokia got absorbed into the Office suites.

What we wear, eat and play might never be the same. They might not even be real (Samsung Swatch and Google Glass).

Back to teacher Ma. It’s not the internet. It’s his predisposition to activities that are shunned by most, with or without the internet.

Erecting urban towers, and putting some locks on the door doesn’t shut him

off from the larger Village of 1.5 billion or for that matter, 7 billion. Or let’s just for argument ‘s sakes, let Teacher Ma be the new Timothy Leary, then China will definitely need a lot of computing power for all those swapping and scheduling e.g. concubine.com recommends this xxx-pound lady, to schedule a meet at a local KFC, click here.

It’s exhaustive for them just to find one another in the big city (which noodle shop to meet at) to begin with. It’s open source on the internet, but still very much a closed society on the ground. Remember, Moore’s law only applies to chip processing speed, not to collective culture like in China, Pakistan, and Iran.

People there are still very much defined by a web of relationships i.e. son of so and so, daughter-in-law of Mr X etc… Change should start slow, let’s say to introduce Square Dancing, which allows for some partner swapping and swinging, then move on to Halloween Costume Ball . Then maybe, Farewell my concubines or Raise the Red Lantern, part II. Finally, comes consumer spending then Credit swapping, and Partner swapping (Ponzi).  The best case for Teacher Ma is to share a bunk bed with other inmates whose only wish is to someday have internet access.

 

Luxury brands beach-heading VN

It started with Gucci and LV. More will be coming to test the warers, from McDonald to KFC , from Starbucks to Burger King.   Everybody is into location, location, location. I look at the city as if it were a big fairground, where interested parties are staking out their prime real estate. Flag and flip.

Both AE and Abercrombie are selling well among the youth segment (XS size).

And Hollister also (if they only knew what cow country the place was in No Cal).

Floating dinners on the Saigon River facing an Japanese alley.

In the backpacker’s section,  Lonely Planet guides are sold and read like bibles: “don’t drink from tab water”, “make sure you visit the Cu Chi Tunnel” etc..

And “The Sorrow of War” by Bao Ninh, available as cigarettes sold in open boxes.

Westerners love Vietnam. It presents a challenge to their categorical living: Vietnam doesn’t fit neatly into their frame of reference. Now with Gucci and LV facing Hotel Caravelle, and Sheraton/Hyatt, with beggars and lottery peddlers lounging out front, the scene begs for an asterisk (*) in an otherwise neatly classified tour. I saw a tourist almost tripped over an uneven pavement.

You want to tour Vietnam, you ‘d better drop your preconception and expectation. Tourists can ride cyclo tour or Cu Chi tour, peddling and crawling around, but  you will come away never forgetting those indelible smiles:, crooked teeth but definitely no Mona Lisa‘s . Post-war hardship has given birth to an insatiable demands for goods.  Luxury brands are welcome! And coming they are.