(no subject)
In the chance encounter on msn just last week, I chit-chatted with a primary school friend about how delicious is the Beef Horfun and the frog legs in Geylang Lorong 9.
That translated to a dinner with me and HIM and 2 of my primary school friends last Saturday.
Oddly even though today is already Tuesday, I find myself thinking back to that nice dinner and the even nicer 2 bottles of red wine we drank in Robertson Quay after dinner.
As the alcohol flowed, lots of anecdotes and stories burst out:
So-and-so bursting into class at primary 1 dancing and singing “Yang gui fei ah yang gui fei!” like a gay Billy Elliot (not me)
So-and-so found a stash of his dad’s porn material (it didn’t stop at just magazines but video tapes - cos CDs & LDs weren’t invented yet) and his home became officially porn central (not mine)
So-and-so was a librarian as an ECA in primary school and is now working as a librarian now in Toa Payoh Library. He declared: Oh my god, I’ve been a librarian my own bloody life! (not me)
So-and-so always wore huge black specs and is always reading in a corner like a really boring and good boy; and gets picked on by the music teacher cos he really can’t blow the recorder right - on the rare days he bothered to bring it to school………(hands up)
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Yesterday I had a huge bomb from my overall boss. All of us in the marcoms department (each handling a different brand) has to come out with a new brand tagline for one of our emerging brand - a herbal brand that is not quite unlike Eu Yan Seng.
One of them, the new girl, gleefully volunteered to be the consolidator.
I was horridly busy with work and the arrow only shot out at 3pm. By 5pm I decided to stop all work and go downstairs to Han’s for my emergency chicken pie and tea while crafting out a tagline. Decided that taglines are a crap shoot at best as everyone has their own opinions and likings: choose a tagline that condensed all the brand values in it, you get something plain, simple, insipid and probably super forgettable. Get a tagline that’s full of attitude but it’ll probably be exciting and extreme in attitude but low in brand values. Choose a tagline that has both attitude and brand values, you could be focusing on the wrong set of brand values the bosses want. Choose the right set of brand values, you could be squeezing too much information into an emerging brand. Make it too perfect and ‘polished’, you might be slapping your own identity as an authentic Chinese herbal brand (too English could be a bad thing).
Worse of all, it is an issue because I was hired based on my experience in an ad agency writing copy; so in a way, my bosses expected something out of me.
I ended up feeling very uninspire and decided to work on brand positioning first….. .................. ......... ...............….. .................. ......... ...............….. .................. ......... ...............
Ended up with 3 pages of taglines and a fanciful map in front.
When I submitted, the new girl said, Wow! I only have a table, how to squeeze in the positioning map and taglines? Then she crossed out the tables under my name and wrote (See Attached). And submitted the whole thing to my overall boss. Well, let’s cross fingers and wait. J