When it comes to marketing proneness, Taiwanese (and other Far Eastern) vendors often were afraid of their own shadow, not to interfere with lucrative OEM deals that western vendors utilized to the full extent: you may build your own stuff, but we contract you to build our stuff and you shall not interfere with that.

For good portion of it, the said mantra is true to this date, with Far Eastern industry giants still afraid to speak out, even though they now do almost everything for Western vendors such as Apple (NASDAQ: APPL) – without Foxconn (TPE: 2354) (iPhone, iPad, MacBook Pro), Pegatron (TPE: 4938) (iPhone), Asustek’s (TPE: 2357)  China facility, Flextronics (NASDAQ: FLEX) and Quanta (TPE: 2382) (MacBook an MacBook Air) – you would not be able to buy your favorite product from Cupertino (Designed in California, Made in China / Taiwan).

Not anymore – Asustek recently found balls of steel (that corporate move to Singapore seems to have helped) and decided to ditch the fear of the West and go for the jugular.

In two infographics, Asus attacked Apple’s products, pushing its design and manufacturing capabilities.

First ad attacks the MacBook and pitches its Zenbook:

ASUS North America tries to prove ZenBook is a thinner (and better) product than Apple MacBook. And 50% cheaper.

Second picture goes for the Golden jugular, pardon, Apple:

Golden Apple (Watch) is not the solution. We (our ZenWatch) is.

Who knows, perhaps Asian tigers will start challenging its former and current customers on more fields than just the price. After all, the key to selling a product is something that Far East still has trouble understanding – it’s not about the physical product, it’s about the experience.

Still, a ballsy move Asus. Ballsy indeed.

The post Asus’ Balls of Steel vs. Apple’s Golden MacBook and Watch appeared first on VR World.

Google Taiwan (NASDAQ: GOOGL) launched a tutorial and training program – the Digital Mars Initiative – to help college graduates hook up with local companies and eventually get hired.

“Why ‘Digital Mars Initiative?’ The name ‘Mars’ came into the picture because these ‘Martians’ think differently with more innovative and new ideas and we are helping them to get into the digital marketing field,” said Stanley Chen (陳俊廷), Google Taiwan’s country director.

Chen made his remarks during a press conference at Google Taiwan’s headquarters on Feb. 5. During previous conversations with Google’s vendors, Chen said, he has often heard complaints that employers had hard time recruiting the right talents while college graduates had a hard time getting hired, because what they have learned on the campus may not be the advantage for them to be recruited.

“We decided to offer the chance to help, train and recruit these young men and help our friends in different industries find their right employees at the same time,” Chen said.

Chen said that the 60 companies in 13 industries participated in the program and offered up to 170 vacancies in marketing, gaming, e-commerce and mass communications, while the average monthly paycheck for these jobs would fall between US$967 and US$1,451. The “Digital Mars Initiative” is the largest talent recruiting project across the Asia-Pacific region, Chen said, and is aiming to help at least 2,000 Taiwanese college graduates by the end of this year.

Those who register online will receive free courses by Google, including digital marketing and keyword advertising – the Good Adwords.  After they complete the courses, Google will also offer chances for them to be certified.

“Google is optimistic about the potential and competitive advantage of the Taiwanese workforce and will continue to strengthen local young people’s abilities through diverse and long-term talent cultivation projects,” said Google Taiwan Managing Director Chien Lee-feng (簡立峰).

The post Google Taiwan Lanches “Digital Mars Initiative” appeared first on VR World.

Social media is increasingly supplanting more traditional avenues of marketing and advertising, as evident with targeted campaigns run on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks. Businesses are likewise increasingly adopting a mobile-first approach to content, marketing and scale. VR World sat down with Hanna Andrzejewska, Marketing Manager at email marketing firm GetResponse, which is gearing up for expansion into the ASEAN region, kicking off the GetResponse Asia Tour in Singapore on September 23rd, with two other cities in the region to follow.

Self-service marketing and advertising are not exactly new, with both enterprises and small businesses starting to eschew the old-world approach to running campaigns via PR and advertising firms at the turn of the century. When Google AdSense first popularized contextual advertising, for example, companies could run campaigns for as cheap as a few dozen dollars, compared to the millions one would have to spend for a TV spot or sponsorship.

Today, social media allows for targeted campaigns, and messages are being pushed based on interest, connections and context. With the ubiquity of mobile devices, businesses can even reach consumers based on proximity, thereby highlighting the power of the incidental sale, impulse buy and on-site promotions. In terms of marketing, it pays to be responsive and even adaptive in reaching out to one’s audience.

Design that adapts to users’ needs

“With the increase in use of mobile devices to access the web for research, entertainment and commerce, responsive design ensures that the user experience across thousands of varied devices is predictable, intuitive and native as possible to the user’s expectations and needs,” Andrzejewska tells VR World. “Adaptive design particularly has a few advantages over general responsive design for the end user’s experience. It allows businesses to accomplish differentiated experiences for users based on the specific intent of the mobile user, therefore, focusing more on the user’s behavior and specific needs rather than delivering a standard fluid layout designed solely to ‘fit’ in the user’s screen.”

“Adaptive design takes into account usage patterns and user behavior to deliver content specially design to convert and fill the need of the user and device,” Andrzejewska adds. “Whereas responsive design will tend to always present similar content and experiences across all devices ignoring the fact that intent and needs are inherently different based on the user’s medium. Adaptive design clearly has the advantage here for businesses will the goal of high conversion via intuitive user experience.”

An increasingly mobile audience

“Marketing has always been about being active where viewers spend most of their time, and this attention is diminishing in traditional media, and is moving towards new media,” Andrzejewska says. In this regard, she stressed the need to refocus marketing efforts in addressing an increasingly mobile audience. “Mobile web adoption is growing eight times faster than web adoption did in the 1990s and early 2000s, which means it’s becoming a more integral part of our daily lives.”

Andrzejewska advises that the mobile-first approach that many startups take today should not be taken lightly. Citing a study by Smart Insights that finds users spending 89% of their time on mobile apps vis-a-vis 11% on mobile web pages, she says businesses should have a presence where customers are. “Mobile-first means that businesses are meeting their customers and prospects via a medium with which they’re most intimate. Failure to do this ignores the user’s expectation and demand for enjoyable experiences tailored for them, and in return the customer ignores the brand. Which translates into less opportunities for sales and growth.”

Opportunities for growth

With the diversity of potential audiences, however, a cookie-cutter approach may not exactly be appropriate. Andrzejewska cites the case of Android rising fast in emerging economies, and Google actually addressing the demand for inexpensive but decently-powered devices meant for these markets. “One powerful example of the nature of business in many parts of the Asia Pacific market is the recent entrance of Google’s Android One in India,” she says.

“With only 10% of India’s 1.2 billion population owning a smartphone, Google has realized that India and other Asian countries are less likely to spend $600+ dollars to purchase phones due to less spending power,” adds Andrzejewska. “In response, they have reengineered the Android operating system to take greater advantage of lower-end hardware, thus creating quality smartphone products that could potentially sell for less than $100 per unit. This strategy will tap into a market that other premium companies like Apple, whose growth and market share is plateauing, cannot enter due to a high price point and lack of understanding of the market.”

Here’s where the ASEAN market comes in. GetResponse’s founders consider the region to be a potentially high-growth market. While the Delaware-headquartered company has been availably in global markets, including Asia, its regional offices are located in Canada and Europe. The company has “recently noticed increased demand in the localized version of the platform” from clients in Asia, particularly in the user interface, mobile application and communication templates.

Building up in Asia

“We decided to officially launch and emphasize our presence in the ASEAN markets because growing customer demand and comparatively few native email marketing alternatives, for one,” says Andrzejewska. In addition, the company wants to capitalize on the “fast-growing Asian technology markets, especially with a focus on online marketing.”

She notes that the rise of technology startups in the region has “generated a huge demand for complex, complete solutions that meet expectations of marketers,” and that a platform like GetResponse will “help enable regional businesses to tap into global solutions in reaching out to their audience both locally and globally.”

For Andrzejewska, the plan is for the company’s Asian operation to “go beyond serving our current customers.” In this regard, the company plans to expand marketing activities, “including event marketing, affiliate relations, and dedicated partnership programs for re-sellers.” The plan is to eventually open a general office in the region as part of its strategic roadmap.

The post GetResponse Talks Adaptive Design, Mobile-First Approach, and Expansion to Asia appeared first on VR World.

Lenovo surfs the hot waves of Japanese summer with a marketing idea combining beaches and tablets.

Summers in Japan may be notoriously hot, but it is one of the better reasons for people to hit the beaches there. In fact, Lenovo’s latest marketing strategy in Japan rides on this very notion, with a little familiar twist of course. If you’re already used to iPads as food menus, then the idea may already be quite familiar, though this may offer something  a bit more.

The Lenovo House Beach Marche, as it is called, looks like an unassuming little beach house plastered with Lenovo flags and tarps that is currently located somewhere around Japan’s Yuigahama Beach in Kamakura City. From a distance, it may look like a special company event booth, but once you take a step inside, you’ll instantly realize that it’s a tech-stylized beach restaurant.

Each of the Yoga Tablet 8 units that are placed on the tables can be used for the shop’s “Beach Concierge” service, letting you order food, snacks and drinks from a custom menu. If you’re not up for a snack yet, there are other units that can be used for simple Wi-Fi internet browsing, giving beachgoers a general firsthand experience using the Yoga Tablet units.

Aside from showcasing the Yoga Tablets, the shop also has a photomosaic booth, where interested customers can stop by for a free instant photomosaic snapshot. As it is promotional event after all, small PR events are to be scheduled at the place from time to time during the event’s period. There are even upcoming Beach Yoga events there, because apparently you can’t just get one Yoga Tablet without showing off the real thing.

The choice to specifically use the Yoga Tablet 8 in their marketing is for course no accident. Aside from its relatively easy usability and handiness, 7-inch tablets and other models with similarly-sized form factors are actually enjoying a considerable level of popularity in Japan’s tablet market for the past few years.

The Lenovo House Beach Marche is open to all potential customers till the end of August.

The post Japanese Summer is all Beaches and Tablets for Lenovo appeared first on VR World.

Largest cell-phone retailer in the world... really?

Thus, it makes me feel sad that TIME has put for a marketing lie for a fact, and positioned it in its numbers section on page 12: “13 Million – Number of iPhones sold since their debut – making Apple the third largest cell-phone retailer in the world”.
Excuse me?
While I have nothing against Apple Computer Inc., I will call BS when I see one. The market numbers may be true for United States, or for North America, but stating something like this is just… well, beyond belief. 13 million phones are large, yet a small change in the world that measures more than one billion cellphones sold every year.
Apple is gaining tremendously, but the company is selling less cellphones than companies such as Nokia, leader with 112 million sold iPhone-competing (Smartphone) and 400 million overall phones, Samsung, RIM, Sony Ericsson, LG and of course, hot-growing HTC.
Apple iPhone offers a lot of things and nobody can deny that the product features best user interface for surfing, BUT – if you are as reputable source as TIME, Newsweek or similar publication, you cannot play with something that growing minority of your readers (future ex-readers?) will notice.
Sadly with this, my confidence in TIME is pretty much shaken, and it seems to me that “Old Media” is just unable to cut through the BS and these side-kick made-up unchecked stories are. Now I wonder how many TIME stories I did not had time to check, but yet took as a fact.
And for what? For 100 character comment that was so easy to check – just by typing “cellphone sales world” or “cellphone sales USA” in Google?

The post Why even the TIME magazine can’t cut through marketing B.S.? appeared first on VR World.