Tag: San Diego

Marconi and Marcom

In the late 80’s, PacTel Cellular boasted seamless connection from San Francisco to San Diego. That is, if you had a battery pack to power the wireless devices (MicroTac? Motorola).

Remember this was pre-Twitter days.

Now it’s 12/12/12 and the Mayan’s calendar is soon running out.

Back when Marconi was experimenting with sending signals across the Atlantic, skeptics had a field day (light and signals traverse in a straight line, and thanks to Columbus, we know the Earth is round. Good luck Marconi!).

Those guys obviously did not play pool (angling and bouncing).

Putting all these elements together. We got Marcom.

The art of positioning your company, your brand and image for the longer term.

Many-step flow. Diffusion of innovation. Crowd-source and users’ Likes.

It takes time for people to adopt.  When MCI tried to attach a piece of equipment to the ATT network, it got stalled and deterred.  Jack Goeken did not give up.

He was trying to help truck-to-truck short-way communicate from St Louis to Chicago.  And in Marconi’s case,   ships-to-shores communication. Both faced hard resistance (today’s equivalence of “Who killed the EV?”).

That was before peering, inter-operability and other engineering agreements.

Currently, we still have to “unlock” an I-phone.  People were put in “voicemail jail” etc… Technology and man’s freedom.

IP issues and the trajectory of human achievement and advancement.

Think back to the age of gramaphones. And fast forward to the i-pod Shuffle.

Then you can see the full sweep of tech (just in sound recording and reproduction).

Marconi sent signals across the pond. Bell asked “Mr Watson, come here“.

Now we got Youtube and “Concert for Sandy Relief“.

Put together a Marcom plan for yourself, your family and your company.

It’s our modern-day equivalend of yesterday’s black/white photo albums. Our heritage in the making.

Enjoy your Christmas wireless experience. Don’t forget those trailblazers. It’s heart-throbbing to finance those expeditions, today’s equivalence of Tesla and Virgin’s space tourism.

But then, without the likes, we would still be listening to each other from those gramaphones.

Movements

In the latest  issue of the New Yorker we find a cartoon, showing two women with huge brand-name shopping bags, blurting out “I am going to start my own Occupy movement on 57th St”.

Scott Peck, on Organization, observes that organisations go through phases: honeymoon , chaos then, compromise before reaching full functioning.

Movements however are little bit different (spontaneous and horizontal spread) e.g. Ms movement.

Wonder Woman, shopping for Wonder Bread and raising wonderful children, although a few grew up to be “flower-children”.

If you want to understand the human potential movement, you need to see that “naked gestalt circle” in TIME. We were into breathing, feeling and (organic) gardening.

The thing about movements is that they morph and move on.

In their wake, Ms movement for instance, we have a whole generation of children grow up without close supervision from either parent (pre-Mr Mom era).

I was both fortunate and unfortunate to grow up with two sets of parents: one biological, and the other, already-grown-up siblings (who to this day can’t grow out of their surrogate role). With two women of the house being out of the house, I learned to grow up quick on my own.

While sorting through various upheavals, from the British Invasion (Beatles) to “the Invasion of the Body Snatchers“, I was mindful of movements, but always missed out on them by a few years (sexual revolution, de-apartheid movement, organic movement and computer revolution).

There is nothing inherently evil or good about movements. It’s an exploitable situation when people are seeking and open to change e.g. Jim Jones and San Diego suicide pact. One can easily be swept away in clashes and chants, in mobs and marches.

The very leaderless nature of a movement gives it both authenticity and vulnerability. By the time it fizzles out, we have no central figure to blame (or send city-sanitation bills to).

In Egypt, they had arrested a Google executive, but a few days later, he was surprised that the Arab Spring had taken hold during his detention.

Right now, the movement to go online (shop until you drop) has surely advanced way pass its honeymoon phase (dot.com) and chaotic phase (dot.com burst).

Web 2.0 is here to stay (Groupon was so confident that it had refused Google’s best offer) and to push to the Cloud (Facebook has just picked Sweden to anchor its large server farm). A digital joke: can your parent tell a server from a waiter? Or as in our New Yorker’s cartoon, Occupy Wall Street vs Occupy Fifty-Seventh St?

When it comes to movements, you need to zoom out and take a balcony view. While having less fun, detachment helps you see the DNA strand that runs through all : dis-contentment. History is made up of movements, large and small. In my short time, it just happens to be full of both. Now, where should we Occupy next?

Selling rain gears on sunny day

I still remember watching “Les Parapluies de Cherbourg“, a French musical film.

Of course, more umbrellas are sold when it rains. But when it “never rains in Southern California“, how would marketers manage?

The answer: rain making. And yes they did!

I was sitting on the top bleacher of Sea World, San Diego. And there they were, selling rain gears on a bright sunny day.

Those merchandise sold like popcorn. Even had the Sea World logo on them.

The catch: so you don’t get wet when Shamu splashes water all over you (supposedly a VIP treatment).

American capitalism at its best:  selling ice-cream to Eskimo.

Value-creating.

Young people finally say something: they are “Occupying Wall Street.”

Never too late (if there were to be a double-dip Recession).

The floor has been primarily occupied by the likes of Mr Buffett, who deserves and got a tax-hero medal.

But UBS?

Today’s culture of Wall Street makes yesterday’s Gordon Gekko look like an altar boy.

Greed is good. More greed is better.

At least, Mark Zuckerberg is still seen in his signature T-shirt (the only time he was seen in suit and tie was on Facebook town hall with President Obama).

Now, it’s LinkedIn’s turn to hold a virtual town hall (The Age of Participatory).

Hint: you can send in a lengthier question, at least, longer than 140 characters.

And maybe, promote yourself into a job.

After all, it’s LinkedIn.

I sold school magazines, defunct currency and fax machines when I first started out.

I can always tell when customers are satisfied (after-sales gratitude, or landing my first date after pitching our school magazine).

The decoupling of bankers-borrowers, buyers and sellers have led to current debacle. We need rain makers, not rogue traders. But most of all, we need satisfied customers who will act as evangelists.

The culture of commerce had existed long before technology or currency came along (Silk Road).

Technology only facilitates and accelerates the exchange. By no means it should replace the handshake or  trust-building.

I saw the joy of those people who put on Sea-World ponchos that day. They still had them on when the show was over.

They inadvertently acted as Sea World’s walking bill boards. Now, that’s capitalism at its best: a win-win proposition that is sustainable.

When you are happy, it’s a musical, like “Singing in the Rain” or as I can still recall Les Parapluies de Cherbourg or Sea World. In the Last Lecture, Randy recalled his childhood trip to Disney World that had turned career-forming for him. Help people experience, and they in turn,  help you with yours.

The Vietnam that could and will

You can feel it. The energy, aspiration and action.

I haven’t seen an idle person here in Saigon. Even people with great disabilities crawl on their hands and knees, through rough and uneven gutters to sell lottery tickets or variety of snacks.

Everybody is proud of their native son: Ngo Bao Chau, math genius.

The country is rooted firmly in the past, yet yearning to be integrated and connected to rest of world (hip hop, fashion).

Garment has been upgraded and sold at Macy’s. Now, it is its turn for playing the “bad guy” (after Bangladesh and S American countries, whose “low labor” have supplied over-weight Western clothing excess before Vietnam even got there).

But here in Vietnam, it’s all small businesses, low-skill : coffee shops, then pure-bean coffee shops. I sat at Rain, and saw tables turn over quickly. High Margin.

Just pour your heart into it.

The music is ear-deafening. Louder than the disco near by where servers would come, one by one, to cheer you up and to toast.

Before the night is out, you are so beat, so broke (since there were so many people pouring your drinks, all deserved a tip). Not unlike Vegas, you admitted to having a good time.: what happened here stayed here.

I am not the only Viet Kieu often discovered this secret irony: the very place that we ran away from, is the scene we yearn to come back to.

Like Jewel, who was once sleeping in car in San Diego, now wants to set up residence near the Mexico border.

We are creatures of habits who tend to follow the path of least resistance (the only way to test this out is for me to travel to Havana some day, and see if I like it there more than Saigon).

Cuban Americans in Miami are probably going home en mass these days.

I have seen them shop at Outlets such as Sawgrass Mills and Dolphin Mall.

Back to RAIN. The owner or manager was young, hip and alert. He made sure guests got situated, servers take orders and tables cleaned very quickly. Every one dressed up as hip as could be. Just to sit at a trendy cafe. Reminded me so much of my high-school days, when we tried various clothing styles and any cool English phrases.

The high school I went to, once renamed something else, now has got its original name back. The round-about near my school never got repainted as neatly the Catholic church nearby. But I understood for the first time the significance of statues and memorials: they stood the test of time. Bookends in the sand of time.

I took that path home for four years. Sometimes just walking, biking or hitching ride. We lived life selflessly. Listened to Steely Dan‘s Do It Again or Carly SImon’s You’re So Vain.

Now we are scattered to the seven seas. Many went abroad on labor contracts, Others scholarships. But when they do come back, unlike my visitor’s status, they will stay to build a Vietnam we have yet to experience. (As of this edit, I look forward to our min-reunion this afternoon at of all places, another cafe).

Best days are ahead.

Imagine the possibilities. Imagine solving the kind of math Ngo Bao Chau did. The ingenuity is there. Just give it time.

Just harness the energy, and focus on the goal of not falling off the competitiveness chart. Carl Jr, Starbucks and soon MacDonald are all here. And according to Friedman of The World is Flat, once two nations are fully MacDonalized, they are unlikely to be at war.  The last chopper left Saigon 38 years ago. Still, everyone rushes about as if it were their last scooter that is leaving Vietnam.