Burger King Malaysia - THEN

Now, the BK Malaysia website is awful no more (not sure when the new site went live, though).

Burger King Malaysia Website - NOW

If Burger King Malaysia really were in the process of developing its website in early September, I wonder why it didn’t use a more tasteful Under Construction page? But, anyway, at least now BK Malaysia website looks more delicious than BK Singapore’s (see below).

Burger King Singapore Website

Burger King Corporation should imposed Web design guidelines onto its franchisers, so its brand image / look-and-feel remains consistent across the many brand microsites setup by its franchisors around world.

This venture is probably what Bill Drayton described as social entrepreneurship, which involves a combination of pragmatic and results-oriented methods of a business entrepreneur with the goals of a social reformer.

Social Economy on Elevyn

Anyone can signup for free at Elevyn. Members can support / suggest a cause and setup an online shop. Preferably, the online shop sells products made by the community artisans and the community members manage the online shop, from creating product catalog to product packing to delivery to customers.

Every online shop on Evelyn is also encouraged to must support a Cause. A portion of every sales made through the online store will fund the Cause. After each completed transaction, a buyer will automatically see how is channeled to the Cause.

An example, “raise $200 to buy books for kindergarten.” Evelyn takes 5% for each sales and also 10 cents for each item listed on its online product catalogue. Another 5% goes to PayPal with the remaining 85% will be collected by the seller. Once the fund reaches the target $200, Evelyn will send it to field coordinator to fulfill the Cause (which is, purchase books for the kindergarten).

Online Shop at Evelyn

Besides purchasing products, a member can also contribute by (a) joining the cause, (b) making a donation and (c) raising awareness of the cause by embedding widget on website.

Based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Elevyn took 8 months to develop its front-end interface; it was launched on November 11 2008. The company is currently developing backend analytic engine that is able to calculate optimum selling price for each country, by aggregating prices on its platform.

Founded by Aaron Gill in 2006, the MSC Malaysia status start-up can easily passed off as yet another business contacts repository service, as offered by players like Plaxo, LinkedIn and Xing. Although its contacts management comes with nice features like highly customizable Contact Form and flexible tagging, it acts more like a complementary function to its web/mobile information delivery.

Information Push and Pull

EzyPzy’s Listings offers information-on-demand (information pull) facility. Here’s how it works. Create a Listing from EzyPzy’s web, Ajaxy interface. Each Listing is assigned an Ezykode.

For example, an Ezykode for a restaurant can be “Daily Specials.” The Ezykode is promoted on the restaurant’s promotional materials and those interested to find out more about the daily promotions can text message “EZY Daily Specials” to 36881. The restaurant owner can choose either to send out text-based (SMS) promotion information or pictures (MMS) to the requester. The mobile number of the requester will be automatically entered into the restaurant’s contacts list on EzyPzy.

This information pull service by EzyPzy can adapt to many settings, be it selling of real estate and automobile and also sending daily updates to conference participants.

EzyPzy Dashboard

Users can also create Campaign, which involves sending emails and/or text messages to predefined contacts/leads (information push).

The EzyPzy Menu

EzyPay charges service ’subscription’ fee, per-month basis. Fee ranging from RM0 to RM300, depending on the size of contacts repository and number of Listings (see Table below). At any time, a user can easily upgrade (and downgrade) their usage plan.

The Pricing Plan

On top of the ’subscription’ fee, EzyPzy also charges its customers a standard rate of RM0.15 per SMS and RM0.30 per MMS for text messages sent out from EzyPzy system.

From Features to Solution

According to Founder and CEO Aaron Gill, EzyPzy was originally conceptualized as a tool to assist real estate agents to manage their property listings online and push information to their potential leads via mobile phones. As development progressed, the application organically grew and became an integrated information delivery solution.

EzyPzy continues to grow by adding layer upon layer of features and capabilities, in order to differentiate itself in the marketplace. In coming months, the company will introduce new features and functionalities:

• Embeddable customizable contact form, which can be embedded on any website; contact details entered into the form are automatically stored to EzyPzy contacts repository,
• Automated contact details capture of scanned name cards, and
• Scheduler for its email and SMS Campaign.

Launched in May 21 2008 during the World IT Congress in Kuala Lumpur, EzyPzy has over 150 clients storing over 12,000 contact records. The company is one of the first five recipients of the MSC Malaysia’s Technopreneur Pre-Seed Fund.  EzyPzy has been used in two major events in Malaysia, namely the Monsoon Cup and Miss Malaysia Indian Global Pageant. Besides Malaysia, the company has started offering its service in Singapore.

Now, Carrefour Malaysia’s customers can find out latest offers and promotions, by texting “ASK Carrefour Groceries Promo” to 36869. Grocery promotion information (product details and prices) will be sent directly to the customers’ mobile phones via SMS. Each text message ASK query will be charged RM0.30.

Carrefour Promotions. Search Anytime, Anywhere with Yellotext

For Carrefour, this search service offers added convenience to its shoppers (especially bargain hunters), by making its promotion information searchable via text message. It also provides the hypermarket giant the ability to narrowcast promotion information to targeted audience, as information delivery is only triggered by users’ search query (information on-demand, on-the-go). In this case, it’s about delivering the right information to the right person at the right time!

This search utility adds a new dimension to Carrefour’s marketing arsenal and complementing its existing broadcast medium - newspaper ads, catalogue, poster. Promotion offers for the period November 28 - December 10 2008 at Carrefour Malaysia are already searchable on Yellotext, as of today.

For Yellotext, this collaboration looks set to further catalyze its users’ growth. Currently, the company is exploring opportunities with more companies in other sectors to organically grow its user-base and expand its search directory.

The 15 promising open-source companies were selected from a total 46 open-source companies (out of 1929 MSC Malaysia status companies, as of Nov 25 2008). However, for whatever reason, MDeC didn’t reveal the identities of the 15 companies.

A simple search (by MSC Malaysia qualifying activities) with the term ‘open source‘ from the MSC Malaysia Company Directory only yields 10 companies, namely:

1. Byte Craft Sdn Bhd
2. Microlink Solutions Bhd
3. KZEN Solutions Sdn Bhd
4. MNS Systems (MSC) Sdn Bhd
5. Getronics Technology Sdn Bhd
6. ELX Operating Systems Sdn Bhd
7. Synchroweb Software (MSC) Sdn Bhd
8. Abyres MSC Sdn Bhd
9. Jayway Malaysia Sdn Bhd
10. Open Application Systems Sdn Bhd

Some people actually traded in Google’s search engine for SearchMash, were apparently quite pleased with the experience and are now sad to see it go.

Link from TechCrunch

• Elevyn, web-based platform that connects community-based sellers to a socially-conscious market
• EzyPzy, contact management, information repository and information distribution web application
• Urekalabs, creator of videoAD and roo.my
• Thisisbinding.com, print, photocopy and bind your work
• TeDDology, social network for Malaysia’s technopreneurs
• SocialWalk, social network that revolves around events

Budding Ventures

Devan Singaram (Elevyn), Kenneth Kiffer Fong (EzyPzy), Roni Shah Mustapha (Urekalabs), Hakim Albasrawy (Thisisbinding), Asyraf Abdul Rahman (TeDDology) and Tham Keng Yew (SocialWalk), together with Roslan Bakri Zakaria, shared their experiences applying for the Pre-Seed Fund and also their start-up adventures. 

For those interested, some key considerations when applying for the Fund:

1. All you need is an idea (with some elements of IT, of course). 
2. The “Application Form” is important (and probably the most time-consuming).
3. Have a right revenue model (e.g. target market and how you plan to get to that market)
4. Research on your competitors
5. Technology innovation
6. Business innovation
7. Present your ideas, concisely
8. Time and pace yourself during presentation
9. Reference - letter of support is helpful
10. Know your facts related your business ideas

SearchMash is the experimental search engine, developed by Google. It was released for public in October last year. The search engine has been my choice of search engine since January 2008, as it offered a much more pleasant user experience, in terms of speed and uncluttered interface (imagine Google minus Google AdWords). And, not to mention its dashboard-style of displaying different categories of search results, namely images, blogs, video, wikipedia.

Unfortunately, Google has consigned SearchMash to “way of the dinosaur”. Since yesterday, the search engine became inaccessible. Maybe Google is planning a rebirth of SearchMash, maybe not. Google launched SearchMash with little fanfare in 2007 and now, the experimental search engine went out with a whimper (no coverage on TechCrunch) (see coverage on TechCrunch).

A look of its traffic pattern for the past three months, SearchMash traffic is noticeably constant, non-growth. The graph below shows the traffic patterns of SearchMash and Microsoft-owned search engine, Powerset.

Traffic Patterns of SearchMash and Powerset

A sad day for me. Reluctantly, I’ve to set my default search engine back to Google.

It was nice using you, SearchMash!

To use the search service, just type “ASK” followed by a search query e.g. “ASK hair salon curve” or “ASK hair salon” and then send to 36869. The search engine can also ‘understand’ queries in natural language e.g. “ASK looking for a hair salon at gardens.” Response time is typically under a minute (depending on network conditions).

Simple Steps to ASK Yellotext

Some search results are followed by supplementary mobile vouchers called ASK Poster (adopting Google AdWords concept). Poster is designed for merchants to send promotional vouchers to Yellotext’s search users and each Poster is tagged to a set of search keywords.

Someone who searches for a bookstore, for example, is probably more likely to have an intention to buy books. She will find a discount voucher for books useful and relevant (and timely). With ASK Poster, bookstore operator can effectively respond to purchase intention by enticing customers with promotional offers.

Mobile voucher is free to all ASK users. Instead, Yellotext charges merchants based on the number of times their vouchers are delivered to search users. Additionally, merchants pay for listing on the ASK search directory and search users pay RM0.30 for each set of search results.

Txt Msg Rules, Still

SMS usage is still showing strong growth. A recent market report “2008 Global Mobile - Data and Content Markets” by Research and Markets estimated over 2 trillion text messages will be sent worldwide in 2008 and the number is expected to grow further. “Market Trends: Mobile Messaging, Worldwide, 2006 - 2011” by Gartner also expected text messages to surpass 2 trillion in 2008; Asia-Pacific and Japan are the biggest users of mobile messaging with estimated 1.7 trillion messages to be sent in 2008. Gartner also estimated mobile messaging revenue to reach US$60.2 billion in 2008, a 15.7% increase over 2007.

In Malaysia, 56.9 billion text messages were sent in 2007 alone (Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission). That’s about a billion text messages sent each week!

According to Chow Tuck Mun, CEO of Yellotext, ASK service “combines the two widely used applications, search and SMS.” Its ASK Poster is a well thought out approach to SMS marketing. Conventional bulk SMS marketing is spam-oriented whereas Poster is driven by users’ intentions and allows contextualized mobile marketing. Rather than simply throwing spaghetti against the wall and see if it sticks, ASK makes SMS marketing more targeted, intelligent, effective and less intrusive.

ASK search is in early commercialization stage and its directory already has over 3,000 records (and growing) covering eight major shopping malls in the Klang Valley area - Pavilion, Suria KLCC, Berjaya Times Square, Mid Valley, The Gardens, 1Utama, The Curve and Sunway Pyramid. Currently, the ASK service is only available to subscribers of the three main Malaysian mobile carriers - Maxis, DiGi and Celcom.

However, the new social media enables consumers to connect with one another and brand owners to co-create brand experience. Global corporations like Procter & Gamble, Dell, Coca Cola and many others are already adopting social media as part of their brand building infrastructure.

What about Malaysia’s biggest brands? Are they using social technologies? How are they using the conversational media to listen and interact with their customers?

To answer the questions, I’ve investigated social media plays of companies listed in Malaysia’s Most Valuable Brands (MMVB) 2007, created by the Malaysian Association of Accredited Advertising Agents, in collaboration with Interbrand. This exercise involves searching for the brand names in social networks (Facebook, Friendster, MySpace), video-sharing site (YouTube), online photo-sharing site (Flickr) and microblogging (Twitter, FriendFeed). The results are presented in the “Social-ize the Brands” table below.

Notes to the table:

• “Rank” is the actual ranking in MMVB 2007.
• Giant and Dutch Lady, which appeared in MMVB 2007, were omitted as both are non-Malaysian brands.
• Only initiatives created by brand owners are considered to provide a better indication on the importance of social media marketing to the brand owners.
• For more on how MMVB’s Brand Value is calculated, read here.

Social-ize the Brands: How Malaysia’s Most Valuable Brands are Embracing Social Media

Some Observations

1. Big brands adopting social media marketing
   • About 60% of Malaysia’s most valuable brands are leveraging social utilities like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.
2. Conversations with AirAsia
   • The budget airline has the most interesting and purposeful usage social media marketing tools and are ‘designed’ to engage with its target audience.
3. User-generated content
   • AirAsia is tapping into the power of bloggers with its blog, “Just Plane Thoughts.” Besides contents posted by 16 AirAsia bloggers, the site also encourages its readers to post their travel stories and comments. Although the blog is moderated, negative customer comments also get posted. Newspaper The Star also allows its readers to post up contents on its Citizen’s Blog site.
4. Conversational vs Informational
   • AirAsia’s blog is more conversational than its competitor Malaysia Airlines’ Living Malaysian Hospitality, which is geared towards providing corporate news.
5. Facebook rules
   • The fast-growing social network is by far the most used social utility among the biggest brands in Malaysia, followed by YouTube. Facebook ranked 8th in Malaysia’s Alexa Top 100 Sites; YouTube ranked 4th (as of Oct 19 2008).
6. Tweet with Astro
   • The use of Twitter is gaining popularity among enterprises. Astro, the subscription-based satellite TV provider, is the one and only Malaysia’s big brand on Twitter.
7. Bank with blog
   • Malaysia’s largest bank, Maybank, is the first Malaysian bank with a blog; uses its “AllYou” blog to complement its online banking site, Maybank2u.com.
8. Blogging CEO
   • Tony Fernandes of AirAsia is the only Most Valuable Brand’s CEO with a blog.
9. Not-so-social lifestyle
   • Consumer-oriented retail brand, Parkson and apparel brands - Bonia and Padini - are notably missing in the social media sphere.
10. Financial-ly not social-able
    • Financial institutions dominated the MMVB list, with 32% representation. However, out of the eleven big brands that are not using social media, six of them (or 54%) are from the financial industry.