shall name most reliable memory card

Can memory card survive the weight of 1.6 ton SUV?

Check it out the video...

Premium Memory Card with Style from Samsung

Many people did not like memory cards out there now. It looks so boaring and not design oriented at all. But now the King of Memory Semicon, Samsung, introduces new kind of memory card. It is most reliable card in the market now with Water, Shock and Magnet Proof.

And most of all, It is beautifully designed which fits with your premium device and your stylish lifestyle. Now people can find premium memory card that befits MacBook Pro and Leica Camera...with stylish metallic look...

The hottest dotcom company

Here's short quiz about the hottest dotcom company:

Q) The dotcom company once featured the cover of Time Magazine in 2000 and called as "A Company To Watch" by Time?

Q) The dotcom company introduced by Harvard as its case study "What's in a name?"
and executed the famous strategy taught in "marketing myopia" at least a year before Daum communication (formerly Hanmail in Korea) adopted the startegy?

Q) The dotcom company that said No to Intel when intel tried to invest more money into the company?

Is it google? Yahoo or that sort of dotcom company?
No. The company is Helloasia.com (formely "Asiamail.com").

If you are interested in learning once the hottest dotcom company, internet biz model and how some of the hottest company in the world disappear, pls look into helloasia.com. You can learn a lot from the company and those who involved in the company.

Why we do advertising?

In time of economic crisis, many companies cut the marketing money, especially advertising dollar. But that's the action taken by those who not knowing the marketing well. Advertising's effect is more visible and effective when others are not advertising.

Advertising does a lot to people including awareness building, preference/liking creation, etc.
I just encountered one case in point (why we have to do advertising).

Do you know Yu-Na Kim? She is the world figure skating champion from Korea. She is very famous for her outstanding skill and art in figure skating (she has charming face as well).

Yuna Kim is the spokesperson/model for Samsung's airconditioner in Korea. In air conditioner category, LG is the No.1 in the world in terms of Market share. Of course, in Korea market LG is the dominant No.1 in Air conditioner. But thanks to the Yn-Na Kim's recent championship and advertising featuring her, Samsung's Air Conditioner grabs No.1 spot already in some of big department stores. LG is losing share and Samsung with Yuna Kim's advertising gains big momentum in sales.

How this happen? Samsung did not improve its air conditioner recently. The product is the same , but the only difference is advertising featuring Yuna Kim. Thanks to Yuna Kim, Samsung can deliver very positive Aad (Attitude toward Advertising). And this very positive attitude toward advertising is now translated into the attitude toward Samsung Product.

When people likes some ad, its liking/preference can spillover to the product thus creating liking/preference for product. This is why we have to develop very good advertising that can create liking/preference for both advertising and product. And this liking or preference in deed affect our purchase decision unconsciously as evidence by this case of Samsung Air conditioner taking over LG recently in Korea market.

If you think of purchase of Canon, you may rethink

How many of people around you have DSLR camera?
I see many around me. I don't have specific statistics, but Korea may be one of top in the list of DSLR penetration. For me, although I have 3 Digital camera (0ne Sony F717 and 2 Samsung compact DSC), I don't have DSLR yet. But I really like to have one soon (as long as I have confirmation from my wife) and based on my research, Canon is the top choice as is with its market share.

So I have kept my eyes on Canon DSLR camera. Especically, the new one they introduced recently have HD quality recording function and its video quality seems like that of very expensive movie camera.

But I picked up one news (4/25 Japanese Economic publication translated in English as East Economy) about Canon that will be of great interest to DSLR buyers.
5 of 12 product lines they introduced since 20005 have some sort of defects. Canon produces all its DSLR in Japan to maintain top quality production. What is happening to Canon? Internal people who worked there said that its clean room can not be kept clean and it seems that they have management issue in its production facility.

Japanes companies are well known for their reputation of highest quality. But when Canon, the nation's No.1 company in DSLR, has product (manufacturing) issues, consumers with automatic trust of Japanese company now should rethink of that option and consider this fact.

So which brand of DSLR I should consider now when Apple does not make one and
Leica is way much inflated in terms of price based on its reputation of lens?

Two faces of Apple

Yale and My first Mac...
I first used Mac computer at Yale University in 1992 during my summer school.

My next Mac...
I bought first Power Mac in 1994 while I was doing my Masters degree in advertising in US.

Since then...
I had some distance from Mac, but came back again as Mac user thanks to ipod nano (white 2G).

Now I am using iMac 24 inch, ipod touch II 16GB and airport Extreme. So I would say I am the Mac User...

I am the loyal user of Apple products, but not for the company or employees there (of course except Steve Jobs). Here in Seoul, Korea...Apple Korea is somewhat famous for its lack of quality Service. You can tell it easily if you visit nation's biggest Apple community.

Apple users in Korea want Apple to expand business more here and more proctive presence of Apple. Korea is not small market. It is world 6th or 7th biggest market in terms of advertising.

And according to Goldman Sachs, in 10 to 20 years Korea can be the 2nd biggest (or richest) economy in the world. Apple can be better by leveraging global market more actively.


Here's just one example I encountered a couple of days ago. At the main page of Apple Korea, the main visual has miss-spelling. The copy is about just less than 8 words (just one line).

But how come it can be mis-spelled. This is reality of Apple in other country.
The word right after ipod should be changed into
"가", Not "이."

Design and Marketing

When marketing is basically about communication with consumers and 4P is in big part of what constitute Marketing, design can be part of bigger space of Marketing.

But in terms of coustomer perspective, will you be more attracted to marketing or design?
I bet we are more attracted and responsive to WOW and stylish design. It is human nature that we are more attracted to hansome and pretty people.

When there are both CMO and CDO at one company, I guess that company is in better position to deliver true customer value. It should do that easily when it has good marketing and communication program and beautifully designed product or service.

I guess Samsung achieved its brand status (Top 21 Brand) by incorporating both design and marketing. But if we look at Apple, its marketing, I believe, is somewhat at average level. But its design (along with its UX) is really stunning and we can assume that, by Apple case, Design alone can win the game. So maybe design is more powerful in this regard. What do you think?
(I am a marketer, but I always think to myself that I am designer in communication)

About Memory Card

Do you happen to like any of memory cards currently in market? Most likely, you wouldn't.

2 will be contributed to why we don't like memory cards.

First is Brand. We don't have very trusted or sexy brand that makes memory card
(e.g. No apple memory card etc).
Second is design and how it was made. Usually memory cards come in blue or black color. Black is fine at least, but the blue color of memory card is really bad, unfriendly blue. There are many pretty and attractive blue colors, but none for the memory card. The material (plastic) itself looks very fragile as well.

Do we not have any right to have well made memory card? There is no standard or definition of good memory cards. Most of you already have more than a couple of memory cards, but I beg you don't have sort of piece of mind when you purchased them.

As many contents now are created or available in HD quality, we will need more of memory card to capture our contents and/or memories in high definition quality. But don't worry too much.

Soon there will be cool and sexy memory card from very innovative and trusted brand that is visibly different from current ones. We will meet memory card 3.0 soon. If I were you, I would wait a little more for that new kind of memory card. I just need to be a little busy recycling current ones (back up contents/data to my PC and re-use current ones).

SONY, Samsung and Apple

Who is the top brand in consumer electronics world?
Maybe about ten years ago, many would say it's Sony.
But how many can say it at current moment?

--> Sony vs. Samsung

Sony was very strong brand about 10 or 20 years ago. Sony's walkman is the most popular
and innovative, cool product. I myself had sony walkman. Not one but I had two.
About in 1994, when sony introduced Play station. It is still the brand everyone envies.
But little by little, It's edge and power yield its way to Samsung.

Samsung is now the king of TV. Its market share against sony is now two digit difference.
It is also the number 2 in mobile phone. But for the high end phone, it will be the No. 1.
For major countries, Samsung is now No.1 player and brand in mobile phone. For most of CE products from washing machine to refrigerator, Samsung is now the cool brand. Samsung is unique brand and its fundamental is quite strong. It has been No. 1 in memory semiconductor
for many years. As you can see, many digital devices use Samsung's memory chips inside to enable their products including Apple. It is well known fact that the huge success of Apple's ipod in big part be contributed to Samsung's supply of memory chips at the very attractive price to Apple.

--> Samsung vs. Apple

Now Samsung became the glory brand that Sony used to be. But for the brand loyalty, it still
has to go another extra way to be like Apple. I myself used to use Apple. I was one of the early adopters of Apple Power Mac in 1994 or 1995. I paid 3.5K $ for my first power Mac. But it had
many freezes and it lacks in terms of reliability. But Apple now is the pronoun of great User Experience. I am using iMac 24 inch as my desktop and ipod touch II for my mp 3 player.
Its user experience is really the top notch. I really like to buy New Mac book pro, but the cost is too high considering the low evalution of korean won (currency). And Apple Korea's Customer Service is very famous for its in-capability and ignorance to local market (Korea).

Though the product delivers the far good value, if the other expericences and values (from employees) are less than our expectation, its total UX can not be good. For this, I guess Apple needs to work much harder. And considering these other UXs, Samsung can become like Apple soon. Pls take a look at Samsung's new LED TV. If you look at it in person, you can see that Samsung will now take up the brand loyalty status of Apple if it continues to apply the efforts of LED TV to other products of Samsung.

From walkman to ipod and to LED TV, we need to take up big part of people's lifestyle to be the trend-setting & truly innovative product. With the advent of Full HD contents and recent global economic downturn, TV is getting more presence and people's time. Some also say that Apple with its rather limited product line-up (ipod, iphone, laptop/PC) has advantage to produce innovative products, but if it gets bigger size of Sony or Samsung, it may lose its edge.
Well, let's see who's (Apple or Samsung) doing better job of providing true digital experience...

New LED TV

Samsung recently introduced LED TV series. Though I myself am with Samsung, I didn't find WOW product like apple that gives beyond expectation User Experience from our product.

But this time, I was so amazed by this new TV. I guess this is really the first Samsung product with great user experience. Its picture quality is something you can't expect from the TV we know of now. It is 10 times brighter than LCD TV.
And it consumes a lot less electricity (about 40 less). The paper said with the use of one year, you can save the money that can buy LCD TV.

And good thing for earth. It is very eco-friendly as well. I am now market for this TV. We were very happy with our current TV, Sony wega CRT TV with HD quality. But now it is time to move to the new king of TV which is Samsung.

The source of real competitiveness in Korea

Recent game in WBC 2009, Korea beat Japan by 4 to 1 making its entry into final 4.
How this can be natural (not surprising) news to koreans?
Japan has about 5,000 high school baseball teams, but korea only has 50 high school teams.
With 1% of numbers playing baseball game, how this is possible. They practice the game much
harder than anyone in the world. Maybe in theory 100 times harder...

I was in high school in 1980s. I can only get out of the school after 10 pm. We usally go to school
before 8 am. In the recent book of Outliers, the story of success, Malcolm Gladwell points out
10,000 hours of dedication (investment) to be really efficient at something. In korea, a lot more
people do practice this 10,000 hours from early on whether you study or play music/sports, etc.

So the extent to "work hard" is quite different between Korea and other nations. I don't know where you are, but note that there is a nation that practice this kind of hard to imagine hard work.

How to make memorable message

http://news.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2009/03/13/2009031300862.html (Chosun daily's article in Korean)

From weekly biz (3/14/'09) in Chosun dailly newspaper, there was an article about Standford professor Chip Heath's popular book "Made to Stick."

Things I found useful in the articles are;

- State the key idea/message first in writing email (just avoid burying the lead)
- 6 principles: Simplicity, Unexpectedness, Concreteness, Credibility, Emotion and Story
- Biggest ROI is "Concreteness"
- becareful in using "Unexpectedness"
- Please avoid "Curse of knowledge" meaning that you don't have to use difficult message or wording to look you know a lot more than others... it just makes other people don't get what you say. What matters is Simple and clear message.

Insight from Cialdini's new book

Recently read "Yes: 50 scientifically proven ways to be persuasive." this book again, as I learned a lot about marketing from his 1st book "The influence: The science and practice," gave me
some useful insights in marketing.

- When a loser becomes a winner?
--> When GM pulls out automobile, its sales soared like rocket because it became scare (Scarcity Principle)
- Explanation of New Coke Big flop
--> During the taste test, new coke was scare and it was more popular. But when it (new) was introduced, the old coke got scare and due to the "Loss Aversion," people get crazy about old coke.
- Never use "Negative Social Proof"
--> If you use negative social proof, it only results in negative actions against your original intention to cause positive action (e.g. not taking towels from hotel, etc)
- If you run restaurant or await RSVP for your guest inviting event
--> Don't say "pls call if you can't make it." It has no effect. You have to ask "Would you pls call
if u can't make it?" If you get Yes answer to it, it will increase your response rate from 10 to 30%. (Commitment principle)