The era of comfortable vagueness in marketing is officially coming to an end. For decades, corporate marketing departments operated under immeasurable “brand awareness” and abstract buzzwords. A century-old statement by John Wanamaker, “Half the money I spend on marketing is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half”, supported this vagueness. In today’s world, […]
In my last post, I wrote about how Vietnamese families treat gold like a savings account. But something interesting is happening as Vietnam gets richer. Gold is slowly moving from the drawer to the wrist. The same metal is starting to play a second role: not just protection, but self-expression. To me, this shift says […]
When Coca-Cola first reached China, shopkeepers “translated” the name Coca-Cola themselves. They picked any characters that sounded roughly like “Coca-Cola,” and some signs ended up reading as nonsense like “bite the wax tadpole.” Coca-Cola later took control and registered 可口可乐 (kě kǒu kě lè), which sounds like the original and means roughly “tasty fun” (Quartz). […]
If you want to understand a consumer market, start by asking a simple question: where do people keep their money? In the US, the answer is a bank account, a 401(k), maybe some index funds. In Vietnam, for millions of households, the answer is a gold bar tucked away at home. Honestly, it’s one of […]
Almost everyone has heard of Alibaba, but not everyone realizes how much it has changed the way businesses approach international sourcing. Recently, I was talking with a friend who owns a small business, and he mentioned that he had made his first purchase through Alibaba. Although he was skeptical at first, he said the experience […]