I just could not wait any longer to relaunch my blog with its new design. There are still quite a number of things I want to work on and improve, but the basics are here… so it’s live.

Along with this new design, I aim at changing a bit the topics I blog about to re-centre myself on the web a lot more. As a result, expect to see more posts about web strategy, start ups, online user experience and behaviour and web design. Of course, as all good rules mean to be broken, my first posts (still being worked on) will be about the Kindle, which was released internationally about a month ago. But as Amazon released Kindle for PC, talking about the Kindle is almost on topic…

I will also try to build some more resources around the blog, especially in relation to user experience in Asia, as well as resources I use on a regular basis in my work and personal projects. Yes. Personal projects will be another aspect of this blog. I have been advising people regarding web strategy and user experience, but in the end, I only rarely put myself out there and this is about to change. With two friends, we are working on a project called go2gethr and I will be blogging about how the project is going as it unfolds.

Let me know your comments about the new design and especially tell me if you see broken stuff!
Enjoy the reading…

Back from the dead is maybe an overstatement, but anyway after 6 months away from my blog, I decided to start writing again. My last post was on April 10th, 2008… a few days before I joined GoAnimate. A near death experience!? Not quite. GoAnimate is a new start-up based on in Hong Kong trying to make animation mainstream by empowering anybody to come up with their own animated stories. The idea is not to replace animators, on the contrary. The idea is to democratize animation, by letting anyone use content created by animators to create their own stories. Needless to say such a project (even though as a product manager I am merely an employee in the venture) takes up a lot of brain space… so, to make a long story short I stopped writing.

I have always wanted to restart my blog as a way to get my brains thinking again about user experience in general instead of worrying about meeting my next deadline in my job. And in the past week, two people “scolded” me because I had stopped writing (David Jacques and Jane McConnell), so I decided to take the matter seriously and here I am… As always when I start something, there are many plans, like redesigning the blog, host a version of Wordpress to allow more flexibility and maybe even use GoAnimate animation to accompany some of my posts. But overall, the idea is the same: “Talk about Customer Experience and cultural aspects of living/working in Asia”. First post to come in the time I need to write it…

I am back in Hong Kong after six months exiled in China to learn Mandarin. It has been a great experience and will definitely lead to some new posts on this very blog.

One of the changes that may occur on the blog is that some posts may be in Chinese (simplified) from now on. Posts in Chinese will contain a short translation in English.

The first post will be uploaded very soon.

再见！

The expo is definitely not what I expected. With a name like that I expected some kind of display of Hong Kong best brands that would promote themselves. Nope Nope… The expo is actually a gigantic market where you can buy whatever you want from brands that are or not from Hong Kong. Food is the main item, but products span from beauty stuff and Chinese medicine to clothing and furniture (photo album on Flickr).

The expo is still interesting to understand what makes Hong Kong consumers buy…

Rule #1: Product demonstration always attract crowds
Rule #2: Display discounts all over your booth
Rule #3: Get a loudspeaker louder than your neighbor’s

Or…

Get ready for a looonnnnggggg day

Around 2 months ago, my Internet connection stopped working. It took me plenty of courage to get myself to go through the PCCW hotline and solve my problem (I usually prefer going to a store rather than trying Call Centers). As I was on the phone, the support person told me my Now Broadband TV subscription was almost over and that he could propose me some good deals to renew it. He said he would call back two days later.

Time passed…

… and passed…

And two days ago I decided, seeing one of these PCCW Now booths in the street to go and check for myself. I discovered that my contract was already over and that they just had continued to charge the service as usual. Well, I consider myself lucky that they did not start charging more without telling me, so that’s fine.

Then the guy started to enumerate the different options I had to renew. Of course all of them were forcing me sign a new contract for 12 to 18 months, even though I have been a customer for more than 18 months. After some negotiation, he told me that there was a way for me to get a nice subscription and 3 months for free. He just had to treat me as a new customer, come to pick up my current set-top box and replace it by a brand new one.

Reluctant to sign for a long contract, I asked him what would happen if I was switching subscription through the DIY (do-it-yourself) TV system they have. He told me: “Well, you would pay full price and get no discount.”

To summarize, if as a customer I change my subscription I use the way that costs the least to the company, then I will pay the most (that’s DIY). And if I ask the support person to stop my current contract and come to my place to exchange the hardware, then I will pay the least for the service. How could a company do something more mind-bending than that?

Well… This kind of things happen of course everyday, but I just had to write about it!

Last week-end, as my dad was visiting, I went to Shenzhen to show him the difference between Hong Kong life and China life. Sure enough, you cannot summarize China by looking at Shenzhen, but you see a big difference with Hong Kong right when you cross the border. Colors are paler. It is dusty everywhere because of the continuous construction going on. People look tired. You can tell you are not in Hong Kong anymore. You can tell you are in a country that is developing and in a city that is still struggling to find its identity.

On one of our errands, we saw a celebration in the street. A Hong Kong jewelry brand was celebrating a very important event. That brand had joined the exclusive circle of “CHINA FAMOUS BRANDS” as the certificate that they were showing off explained (see picture on the right).

That got me thinking… How can a certificate, be it from the most important government body, give you the status of a famous brand. Aren’t the people supposed to decide which company is famous and which one is not?

Now, I am reading “1 Billion Customers” by James Mc Gregor right now (a book that I recommend to anybody with interest in doing business in China). In the book he explains how the Chinese government when there is a lot of money at stake will find ways to benefit more from it.

To me that example could be one of these. Branding, advertising and marketing in general are great sources of revenue. So, what if the government could issue a document that decided whether you were famous or not, whether your brand was a valuable asset or not, wouldn’t that be a great power in the hands of the government?

Going mainstream gets harder and harder by the day. Significant behavioral differences and increasing expectations among customers makes it near impossible to develop a message that will reach every consumer. As a result targeting niche segment can become a more and more valuable option. That is one option that the Telecom provider Smartone is following in Hong Kong by targeting explicitly the Filipino community.

Smartone brand is usually red and white, but this store closed to a Filipino hotspot in Hong Kong Causeway Bay has been totally rebranded to fit the community taste and even displays Bahasa language instead of English or Chinese. Shops assistants are of course Filipinos as well. With a huge Filipino community, dedicated Filipino shops are not uncommon in Hong Kong, but it is very uncommon for a “big” company to recognize the fact and spend the effort to research the needs of that community. With no other company following the example as thoroughly, Smartone surely has a huge lead in a community of several hundred thousands.