Intro: in every dollar that they spend they want a kpi or a return of investment uh if we are actually struggling is because we are to inward welcome to where are my customers brought to you by aoch and produced by stric okay uh hi Jessie welcome to the podcast

Jessie Chong: hi Elva thanks for inviting me to this podcast

Alva Chew: no problem so we obviously know each other for quite a while uh it's great to have this opportunity to you know talk to you about business growth and marketing on this podcast but of course for you know the benefit of the audience and those new to you right uh can you do a quick introduction of yourself and what you do

Jessie Chong: okay so uh my name is Jesse so I run a branding and marketing agency uh for about 11 years so I started my business with like helping and then slowly uh aiming to I mean currently serving uh MNC and some government uh contracts as well yeah so I handle more mostly uh digital branding uh branding projects uh and also helping uh companies do a lot of like uh marketing yeah

Alva Chew: well actually that's a fair bit of Journey especially when you talk about when you first started with smmes and now you have progressed to work on campaigns uh for mnc's and governments right so I think the first thing that is interesting to me is right between the two sets of clients that you work with over the years what are the differences in terms of running their campaigns and you know are there similarities or differences in the kind of business objectives or marketing objectives that they require okay

Jessie Chong: so uh for a lot of like the I would take some example from the SM and the MNC brands that I work with so usually for uhme Brands uh they are very uh budget constraint so uh the budget that they every dollar that they spend they want a kpi or a return of investment so they are very into like least generation they want immediate sales they want to see traction immediately okay but uh the mlc campaigns that I done uh you know for certain kind of commercial brand that is like fmcg brand usually they just wanted like brand awareness and their budget is usually very high so they they sort of like uh they are more generous in terms of the budget and they have more budget to do more interesting campaign and the ROI is actually not very important to them because they just need a eyeball and brand awareness because they know that uh with a good um marketing campaign uh people the sales will come naturally and the sales touch point they have multiple sales touch point but uh for they have a very small sales touch point so sometimes they will would just be on e-commerce and if not popup stores but most of the FN CG Brands they have uh you know they sell on all the ANC Watson's and then they have e-commerce and other partners to do the distribution for them so for them they are not so kind of like hot on Roi

Alva Chew: okay but that that also bring another interesting point right because obviously every startup every small business aspires to become big and grow to the size of you know a national level Regional or even multinational brand like those mlcs right but they start somewhere small and they have budget constraint like what you said right and does it then means that they are stop because they obviously don't have enough touch points and they don't have the budget that but what can they then do to maximize what they have to actually try to break through to the market you know the how do you how do you address that kind of challenge

Jessie Chong: okay so I will take one of a very good uh case study um from a very new startup brand that uh kind of uh derived in the pandemic so there is this uh this suppl brand called mum mum health so they are a startup I believe that their budget is also quite constrain like a normal startup so what they did was uh they did a lot of brand co co-branding uh exercise they did a lot of like because they uh for startup usually you need to do a lot of research understand your target audience better see where your target audience is and then do a strategy you need strategy because uh every move that you make actually will you need to stand time and money so these are M money and time is very precious for startup you know so at the end of the day um I would say the strategy and also they adopt for this brand they adopted a co-branding effort so what they did was uh they create a community out of the co-branding so they work with like uh paper bunnies they work with brands that their audiences love they be in the cafe they build the community so cold branding is one of effort that you can actually drive uh to to acquire the new Target audiences and then Target audiences that uh is suitable for your brand you can actually adopt them yeah

Alva Chew: what about the you know is there a tradeoff uh in terms of uh timing uh and you know budget like what what you say is really good and but that obviously also means that it it takes times to build up right so H how how do Brands go about you know thinking about that meaning like you know I I would imagine a lot of businesses they want sales fast right they want to bring customer in fast right but how does that reconcile with this branding effort because it it it really takes time to grow right

Jessie Chong: okay so uh for the brand usually for the startup brand I will recommend that they actually have a branding effort a brand awareness campaign of co-branding effort together along with least generation uh strategy so you can't actually just run one single campaign you have to look for you know you have to definitely have a campaign that dries sales and then a campaign to build up the brand awareness you know so because uh a new when when there is a brand um you need to brand I mean a brand is to actually have a good branding effort so that people will actually buy the value of the brand uh take for example if you start a new brand nobody knows about you you can't attract uh you can't command a price point uh for such a new product you definitely need to kind of like acquire new customers you need to you need time to educate your customer you need people to adopt your brand love your brand and become a c follower then you will actually build your community and a strong cut following from there because nowadays in uh branding and marketing is very different from the past uh a brand a good brand strategy will be knowing your audiences first then after that do the research then you build a brand to Target your audiences but in the past people built Brands then after that then they target the audiences which is a little bit different

Alva Chew: yeah okay um let me dive into that a bit more okay because uh that sounds good but it can be a bit abstract so so when you talk about okay you you you understand your audience you understand your community then you build the brand right um more specifically what are more tangible actionable examples of brand building activities are you referring to when you say build a brand

Jessie Chong: okay so uh building a brand could be uh example community building right so for example Moon Health uh because they are a new brand so what they did uh because they actually have got presence in KL as well as Singapore so in KL they actually like kind of like take over a cafe and then they invite uh they created a advertisement they invite um you know their existing customer to join them for this Cafe experience and then in the cafe there will be like new orgers visiting the cafe so at the end of the day when they have a popup over there at the cafe uh audiences who doesn't know about Moon health will come to know about Moon health because of the experience and then uh as as the brand collaborates with certain brands uh they are actually reaching out to the Target audiences in a more uh lifestyle manner which is not very heart selling you know so take for example uh when Moon health for example have work with paper bunny right so they created a paper bunny bag and paper bunny is a brand that uh all the JZ is like carrying it right now there's a trend okay the puffer back so when when paper bunny becomes very popular when Moon Health collaborated a series of color uh paper bunny bags uh that can be purchased uh with like you know special discount or limited edition I think that would be a good idea to drive the audiences to the to to buy things and get something like a per SL maybe you have certain percentage of a discount to buying paper bunny back you know so you sort of have best of the both world and then uh in terms of community building it's also encouraging for Brands to kind of like adopt uh FAL uh strategy because uh during pandemic uh we are too much of digital we consume too much of digital things and then after pandemic post P pandemic there's this rise of like events uh things open up and then everybody's hunger for the touch and feel you know they want to see things they want to experience things and all that so at the end of the day I think a good branding uh will be uh I mean a good brand marketing will be uh having the physicals uh couch point and then also have a digital catch point but at the same time building a community because nowadays it's about community so how do people build community is that they organize a workshop they organize outing they organize uh special experiential stuff uh for their audiences to uh attend and then on top of that it's not a oneway kind of conversation they also created like telegram chat you know and recently uh the upcoming trend is that uh in Tik Tok we saw the rise in Tik Tok live streaming and in Tik Tok live streaming uh there's this conversation between the host and the audiences they can ask the host to recommend certain pieces certain product that they want to see they have question the host will actually address it immediately so these are the kind of like interaction that a brand should actually have with the audiences yeah

Alva Chew: well um but when I'm hearing that right it really sounds like there's a lot of work like I mean if you look if if if uh business especially a new one that's starting out right just thinking about doing the physical event just thinking about doing the digital andest still have to interact with audience on live streaming right and that really sounds like uh a lot of work right and and especially when new brands new startup you know talk to you uh do you see that this are and if so right how do you help address such challenges

Jessie Chong: okay I would uh see see what uh for me is I will ask the brand about their budget and what's their objective that they want to kind of achieve first okay and from there I think the thing for startup as I just now mentioned is about strategy so a startup should have a very good marketing plan a brand strategy so that they know at which point of time uh they can actually do certain projects you know what is the goto Market strategy you know example if if you have uh if you are just on e-commerce you you you your brand is only on e-commerce and uh you know to for you for your brand to list on like uh n and all the different uh Supermarket there will be a listing fee you know so to establish your brand online to create this uh uh consumer um demand you definitely need to roll out a strong campaign to capture the audien's attention and then you need to have sampling popups store you know to let people sample your goods okay if you can't do it uh like uh you don't have the budget to do a uh activation campaign then you can do collaboration with like example you can collaborate with banks can collaborate with schools uh give out like a sponsorship and then maybe you can do even the online request for sampling you know so there are different ways to kind of like create this sampling uh for customers and then uh sometimes people also put in uh hoodie bags you know so sometimes you know if you if you a brand that wants to Target the students right like nyp SP and all that right so maybe most of the time they have uh those kind of exam period and uh the schools will ask for like sponsorship that's where you can actually write to them and say or I like to sponsor uh so and I mean this amount of like sampling for your students you know so and then maybe with the sampling you can actually create a unique use code for them to come back to know about your brand yeah so I think uh there are a lot of strategy and a lot of ideas out there in the market but uh I would say that I will strategize uh strategy that will suit the brand budget and also a strategy that can work out for the brand

Alva Chew: okay now based on you know all these Brands whether it's big or small that you have come across right and you know like what you have Shar just now when you first talk to them when you first interact them right and looking at the ones that you've gone through so far what are some of the most common mistakes or most common misconception that most of them would have when they come to you like it's always that few things that you have to you know kind of re-educate them or to address before you can move on with the uh strategy and campaign

Jessie Chong: yeah I think uh a lot of people think that um I mean a lot of startup thinks that uh to run a campaign you need to have like like few million dollars and maybe they feel that you need to have at least half a million dollar in order to run a campaign but I think in this era right now that we are doing social media it is not the big boys that can do the TVC channels the radio ads and all that right now we are talking about like social platform and uh Performance Marketing which is actually uh if let's say you have a few thousand budget you can also do a campaign if you have a $50,000 budget you can also do a campaign you know so the entry point for brands are quite low but I think the thing is that um if you if your budget is really really very low then I would let you know that don't don't don't uh expect a super impactful campaign because uh at the end of the day all the big brands are also on this platform we are trowing a lot of budget to be in this competitor platform as well that a lot of competition in this social platform because it's a open platform so I would say that a brand needs to be able to allocate a substantial amount of budget to run a campaign but don't be afraid to ask for quotation uh ask for a strategy and then work towards it uh don't don't don't just do nothing at least you do something

Alva Chew: yeah right okay and so now which brings me to another thing that I've always been kind of in interested to to understand more and of course I know it for quite a while so you know I also have an agency that I run and as you know we are more focused on the technical execution of it you know it's more uh on the uh data driven side of things whereas as far as I understand you have you know all these years been very big on The Branding and the creative uh and that is reflected in a lot of the work and campaign that you do so can you share a bit more why that philosophy and why that uh framework when it comes to marketing why is it important and why should businesses pay attention to the more branding and creative aspect of uh marketing campaigns

Jessie Chong: okay so um because we are currently in the social platform we are already spoed with a lot of like content you know so I think currently it's actually very crowded space and uh us as human being we are being kind of spoted with a lot of good content on the social platform so I think in order for the brand to stand out they need to be creative uh visually and creative uh they have to put in a branding effort to make the campaign creative so that at the end of the day when they spend the money uh it will give them back the returns returns in not it's not just about like Roi returns in in terms of like example um people remember the campaign and people will actually share it with someone so the campaign becomes more impactful uh if it's roll out in a more creative Manner and at the end of the day um you know Brands like example all the big Brands right uh they also invested in a lot of money to run good campaigns and then some of the campaigns became award-winning and became top of the town just for example the recent rebranding for uh there's this car brand can you remember Jaguar right Jaguar did a rebranding right created so much they they created so much controversy and that was a very brilliant creative campaign you know so they they try to become uh because jagar is a like kind of seem like a very prestigious sophisticated uh vintage brand but because of the new generation that they are targeting the younger generation and the future generation they created a campaign that is super you know sci-fi and super fashionable that is very abstract as well so it became the top of the town there is like a negative connotation there's a positive uh pool of fans you know so it became the top of the town I will say that the campaign was brilliant it was successful because it became a top of the Town yeah so I think uh Brands definitely need to come up with more creative campaign because because uh creativity is something that cannot be replaced by AI you know and and AI is good in certain aspect but I think the creative part of the campaign uh it makes human thing and also it becomes a memory and becomes a a Tim stamp for our uh as as color to our life yeah

Alva Chew: right you I mean you mentioned a few things and then I'm seeing that there's a lot of uh jump off points where we can dive into um so I'm going to go into uh a couple of them one by one so you obviously mention about AI right and these days um AI is the top of Town Line you said you know we ourself we have an AI chat Bo we also in the AI space uh a lot of marketers are counting AI you know like AI content generation AI video AI imagery which you know like I agree it can be a Double H sword but from your perspective how do you address that Dy you know when when you talk to first of all from your perspective as an agency how do you approach Ai and the use of AI right and also you would have customers coming to you and say hey you know can we use AI for this right do you have client like do you have clients that are de against AI or they also die die want to use Ai and in fact they will tell you that hey you know see why can't we do the campaign for much cheaper CU right now we have ai to to produce so how do you look at you know the the questions and and the and all this uh opinions that comes with the use of AI especially in creative and marketing

Jessie Chong: okay I think uh we have to use AI wisely and we also have to do fact checking uh so at the end of the day um I would say AI is a great help it helps us to speed up certain processes in our company as well so take for example when we are doing market research uh in terms of like scouting through every website Googling everything you know we can actually ask AI to give us a very quick research on the market uh competitor market and uh we can dive deep into the part about our uh maybe do market analysis that kind of chart right so in terms of like table and all that I think it actually speed up the process but I think the thing that we need to do as uh branding and marketing agency is to do fact uh fact checking and data checking because at the end of the day whatever AI that was pulling out it actually depends on how you address and call out the things you know like command how AI work for you uh in certain aspect if we actually write in a wrong uh Command right the AI promt will be very different so I would say that fact checking is something that is necessary no matter what okay and then uh AI definitely help helps to kind of propel uh idea generation as well so sometimes maybe my uh content creators or my content strategies uh they may be kind of like blocked with their different kind of like ideas they do not know how to um you know they are quite block with some ideas so probably you can get uh AI to kind of give you some uh idea generation so that from this ideal generation you spear on and spin it off to match the highest product and the client storytelling you know so that is the part that is good for Content s and then in terms of like AI photo and all that currently um I heard of one of my uh friend who owns another design agency uh the client budget is limited so the creative designer that work on the project actually uses AI to create their key visuals yeah which I think is uh possible because at the end of the day um uh we are adopting AI but we have to do it Tastefully and then we also have to do it uh wisely as well so uh AI image uh sometimes I also did like some uh campaign generation for example uh when I'm doing a campaign then I need to do some storyboarding to sell the story to the to to my client so instead of like using my illustrator uh illustrator to draw all the illust ation for the storyboarding which will take like maybe three days I actually uses a AI uh storyboard uh platform to generate my AI storyboard so I could actually call out uh certain kind of scenario that I wanted and then the illustration will be done over there and I can actually send it to my client within like three hours you know instead of three days so actually I I would say that um AI can Propel uh the work for us but we have to use it wisely and we also need to use our wisdom to kind of like um make sure the work that is being delivered to the client is exactly what you have in mind yeah the human touch is still very very important

Alva Chew: so just like you you you mentioned a few tools right uh you might uh share like so you mentioned about there a few tools that you use to generate uh images story board so what are exactly those tools that you are using okay uh there's this uh storyboard uh hold on let me double check I mean like for us right I I can tell you honest we we Tred meat Journey forward and stable diffusion forward and then we like okay forget it this this is just too challenging right this uh

Jessie Chong: this AI Story Board that I love a lot but you have to pay for it so it's all Brute BRS AI bruts do a do um maybe I I can copy the link uh it's spelled as b o o r d s. a okay brute all right b o b o uh b r o o as s b o o r DS oh b o o r DS okay cool cool cool yeah we'll check it out later so actually a very good AI storyboard generator it allows you to uh customize your characters and then after that you can give a name to your characters you can tell the story and then they will actually illustrate for you okay that's interesting that's interesting um okay so that's for storyboarding any other AI tools that you have been using or started to experiment especially with regards to video content video content uh I did try me Journey uh I think for video content I haven't explored that much yet uh if you have any recommendation please tell me as well

Alva Chew: I think actually I think from I speak you know on the matter of a like what you mentioned right uh it definitely helps uh but of course the um the appropriate usage I would say you know if is content generation for sure AI you know is is superb if you prompt it and engineer it correctly that will help with content Generation by a lot you know and and as a SEO agency I can say that 90% of our content has some orm of AI assistance in it and and it works it's not like you know it would be penalized or anything um images like what you have tried you know obviously image it works I think the final frontier probably from a cretive standpoint is still video it would definitely get better but I think at this very moment you know even the AI tools right can't really give very um uh comfortable I wouldn't use the word realistic they're definitely realistic it's just that it's not comfortable for human consumption yeah yeah it's like you look at you look at an AI generator video no matter how realistic it just feels off and and your and your human VI can feel it right yes and I think video is probably the last frontier in in Creative right that uh still require a lot of uh human element so I think videographers uh you know video producers still got job

Jessie Chong: I will say that uh Photoshop came out with the beta and quite useful so uh when we were editing certain kind of like key visuals or shutter stock images that we want to a uh change certain kind of Fabrics or add a different kind of like color to the Hair Etc uh they did client was like asking for it so because it's a video so video can't be edited you know so we we were praying that oh I would really wish someone to get like to to actually create a product that can help me to edit the lead so I don't need do a refling you know so but not happen I can't find the software as well so we should wor it to happen yeah right right understand

Alva Chew: yeah I think video is probably still a challenging part and in fact that's also kind of the reason why for us uh when it comes to content a lot of our content generation has been uh you know using AI except for the video part in fact video we we kind double down on the human resource because we realize people want that human authenticity when it comes to video content but going back to just now you mentioned about um the Jaguar example which is which is really kind of a interesting one and I'm fascinated by your take and your your position on on that uh uh uh campaign because most of the people I know including myself right we don't really have a positive th on on that whole campaign um so I think but the more interesting question I want to ask right is okay as a campaign it is definitely creative is definitely out of the box right for the attention grabbing n of it right for that better term the attention grab of it like you said it definitely achieve what it set out to do but I think the bigger question for businesses is right when you have this um thinking or or or this on one hand you want to do creative campaigns and you want to break off the more and you want to make people take notice but on the other hand how do you Jugger whether it would alienate your audience or would it create problems for your sales cycle because at the end of the day all campaigns have to support the ultimate business objective of driving Revenue right so that's I think the concern now Jaguar probably is you know they on multi-million dollar brand they probably can take one or two B campaigns you know it could be it could be aention grabbing it doesn't move sales they can move on to other campaigns but a lot of other businesses probably can't take that hit you know so there's always this dilemma of should I go for something that's more Agy should I go for something that's more creative and I don't know whether you will get me sales or do I go with something that is more conventional that's safer you know because that's all I know so how what's your take on on that kind of dichotomy

Jessie Chong: okay so my take is uh I would say that uh this is just my thoughts okay so I feel that uh for Jaguar to make such a b move uh is also because they have a lot of data back uh research they also look into the sales trend from their marketing from their previous sales uh they they definitely did a t look at their current audiences okay in order to create the I mean for them to come up with this campaign I don't believe a brand uh such as Jaguar will do uh very uh toless kind of like uh campaign without any fact checking and market research I believe that the vision for Jaguar is to really create the future they want to Target the future audiences they want to Target the young audiences definitely Jaguar have still will have their vintage design because Jaguar will also have their uh vintage design that people will light and people will buy but I think the launch of this new series is actually for the younger generation yeah so it's really I would say that uh because we are not in the Jaguar team we are not in the management team we don't we do not know the data and the fact checking that they have went through with their analysis so we cannot just uh kind of like give a a a remark because at the end of the day when they do something they should have a plan you know so definitely in the campaign um there will there should a marketing agency should have a plan A and A Plan B you know so if let's say the campaign roll out and the results is good and then what's next what's the plan B next are you how are you going to sustain the results and then if the result is not good then what are the actions taken to tweet or kind of like uh you know what what what's the action taken for Plan B in order to achieve or help the client to push for more result yeah so that's my take yeah right so but like again

Alva Chew: right um Jaga you know being Jaguar they probably can take a hit or two but when it comes to a SM or startup right how do you how what what what how would you advise them if they when they look at it how how should they approach it you know um to be more creative to be more daring and R taking on more controversy or you know look at things that have been tried and tested in their in their industry or what their competitors have done

Jessie Chong: I think for brand they have to go back to their core okay so they have to understand the core of what is the USP or what is the what is the brand what what are we trying to tell our customers um at the end of the day it really depends on the product that or the service that you are selling I would say authenticity will be the best uh because uh gimick or kind of like following Trends can only happen uh you know like just a kind of flick of a finger you know like you know after a while uh it's not there but I think for Brands to be relevant to kind of like have a long-term strategy is to be authentic uh just be honest with the brand the campaign can be creative but the you USP has to be authentic and stick back to the core brand uh the core belief of the brand so uh in terms of like in certain platform like social platform you can be more daring but maybe uh in a radio ads uh you want to be more uh sharing of the authenticity the USP of the brand you know I think the brand need to strategize the tone of the voice uh and also kind of like strategize the content uh what kind of content to put out in different platforms that like example when a when when you're are doing a PR article then most of the fact checking uh the content sharing the storytelling of the founder how they create the brand these are actually important uh information that people will actually relate to then if it's a advertisement then they can be more creative and more quy or you know uh more creative then when it comes to social media content you could also have like trending content that uh you know like connects to the trending song like a you know that kind of thing but when it comes to a certain kind of YouTube content maybe you are you're in a panel talk and all that then just bring back your authentic self like so I would say uh different platform different strategy yeah but the the brand has to stick to their core

Alva Chew: which again goes back to you know something we talked about just now content maybe you are you're in a panel talk and all that then just bring back your authentic self like so I would say uh different platform different strategy yeah but the the brand has to stick to their core which again goes back to you know something we talked about just now which is like there are so many platforms and like you mentioned you know this platform probably have this consideration and that platform has that consideration again it sounds like a lot of work again it sounds like there's lot of resources needed right so and there are two School of thoughts when it comes to approaching you know marketing right you have you know the quote unquote you know I call the Gary prv school of thought where you need to be everywhere you know all the time all at once you know and you just keep pushing out everywhere so that you know you maximize the attention then there is also the other school of thought which is being uh advocated by people like Alex hosi right where is you find a channel that works and you dable down on it and then you get all your you get really really good at it you make your first couple of million on it and then you squeeze and maximize some then you move on and expand to other channels right so what's your take on this how how do you look at it and how do you advise Brands to navigate this uh for a startup brand yeah let's say for for a startup brand

Jessie Chong: okay so the brand has to allocate a budget for a full year first and then uh in terms of the testing they definitely do they definitely need to do some testing like put some budget to run some ads or uh for different platforms and uh after maybe 1 month two months 3 months you will need at least 6 months to kind of have a very um Consolidated uh data okay so from six months of rolling out the campaign they can identify uh which platform actually gave them the ROI okay so uh then after that they can double down on the platform and the channel That give them the most Roi but still maintaining the different channels presence because at the end of the day uh audiences like us um why why are brands on so many channel is because of the consumer Behavior because we as consumer right now we don't just want a single platform like example in the past we use Facebook a lot but currently I'm not using Facebook anymore you know I'm using Instagram and Tik Tok and Linkin right so different ages a different consumer goes to different platform and example my nieces they are actually on YouTube channel you know they are really on YouTube channel I'm not a very YouTube person you know so but my my dad for example he's on Facebook Channel you know my mom is on Facebook Channel and then the siblings and the age group that uh people in the 20s to uh 45 or 30s uh they are actually in Instagram Tik Tok Channel so where is your audiences they are actually not just using a single platform they are actually using multiple platform you know and business owners and uh startup entrepreneur uh you know and you know certain kind of uh pns we are starting to use more Linkin Channel as well as a social platform so at the end of the day if you are if you I don't know whether you scroll through your Linkin you in the past you don't see any kind of Lifestyle at like selling cars or or maybe certain kind of fashion brand but recently right as you scroll through t uh Linkin right you will see like uh Gucci actually put on an ad over there uh BMW actually launch a sponsor ad you know when we are scrolling through you know so these are some of the things that brands are also uh leveraging on the platform to be there

Alva Chew: yeah I saw I think I saw some BMW I'm pretty sure I don't see Gucci I think you you saw Gucci because it's you they targeting you they're not tarting me I I do I do I mean I see the BMW but you brought up a good point which is you're talking about LinkedIn right and that goes to you know a lot of Founders a lot of business owners these days are being more active more present on Linkin and that has a lot to do with personal branding a l business owners are are developing their personal brand to to to try and you know uh surface themselves so what's your take on personal brand and how do you approach it as a business owner um do you see it as something that you know that you have to do because you know you're you're providing an agency service how do you navigate that

Jessie Chong: okay so um I started my personal branding Journey last year so uh I see definitely a need that uh personal branding needs to be done not just for business owner but I think for every individual I think it's important uh even uh pme or executive they could also do personal branding because when they uh take the leadership role to share something their thoughts and uh you know it's also like kind of like uh they will attract uh you know opportunity for themsel you know you sometimes I do check on my colleagues you know what they share on Linkin as well I want to understand what are their thoughts you know on leadership or on I mean on their thoughts on on certain design Trends and certain leadership they do share good content that I also learn from as well so it's a exchange I would say I think for linking U personal branding it needs to be authentic uh it can't be just for the sake of doing it and uh a lot of Founders are using AI to do the content you know so I would say that um personal branding is important in Linkin I think for everybody uh yes for business owner is very important uh but I would say um when I started last year uh I did kind of like uh feel that uh I was kind of out there and more outspoken yeah because a lot of times uh when I do my projects after I finish my projects I just keep quiet and nobody knows what kind of project I do you know so it's good to kind of share the things that I do so that people know that uh they can seek help from me when they want to enter a new market you know yeah and then they can actually have certain kind of like they they could also invite me for certain sharing or panelist talk and all that so I think it's a place for knowledge sharing a place for support for Community as well because uh this year last year is not easy for business owner you know so I think when we share our struggles there's a lot of uh content out there uh a lot of entrepreneurs that I know that are struggling last year so when they share their authentic story I think uh people can fear it uh there is encouragement notes coming from different people and uh I think that is a very good space to have this positive uh Community again you know um like what you just share right again I'm seeing multi layers to

Alva Chew: Fu the conversation of to but there are two things that are right now at the top of my head right where you talk about so there are two parts one you you talk about the authenticity portion right and then you also talk about a lot of people a lot of you know people that we know in the network and the connections they're not really doing that well last so I want to jump into the part about authenticity first a lot of people are saying oh yeah you know when you build a personal brand you need to be authentic you know so the the big buz word is authenticity but is authentic is being authentic sometimes a bit too much is it like being too authentic can be a bad thing like to the point where sometimes people are sharing things that are way too personal way too vulnerable and way too frequent you know like like is is no longer is no longer you know business so um how how what what's your take on that you know and and how how can someone who's developing personal brand right navigate that you know without without being I mean for l a better without being cringy

Jessie Chong: I think uh balance is the key word okay that I will advise everybody to dog when sharing content you know so I mean as uh as a personal branding uh definitely there are some things that sometimes when I write a certain kind of story that I want to share with my audiences before I post it I will actually reflect on what kind of comments I will generate from the audiences is it a negative sharing or is it a positive sharing so if it's a very negative sharing then I will not share it I will actually remove it because I I think that uh in uh Linkin uh Community I think it's good to have positive sharing uh negative is not say you can't share but I think it's better not to share because at the end of the day when you share a negative sharing uh it reflects on your personal being as well you know so I did uh have a negative sharing in the past where one of my ex staff did something and then I share my experience and then uh I got certain kind of support but lately after reflecting for a few months I actually removed the post because I feel that I do not want to be relate to that kind of personality because I am bigger than that person that I was you know because sometimes we are too CAU up in our own situation we will be kind of like using our own thoughts to justify uh to pain uh to let people know that we are being misunderstood and you know but at the end of the day I just felt that it's not needed because at the end of the day uh when you are doing things right uh everybody will be supportive of you uh you don't even need to tell people what you need to do or people who support you they know you are not that kind of person they will uh fight for you they will Bouch for you so I I feel that that time when I removed the sharing uh the sort of not say super negative but negative and emot not say negative I would say more emotional sharing I remove it from my l linking post because I feel that as a professional I do not want to uh pain myself as that kind of like you know Persona so right I want to curate myself to I want to be kind of like be mindful of what I share uh to have a more positive impact so I think before we share anything it's good to kind of like have a soft reflection first then after that uh reflect whether will you have any implication on your professional uh you know Persona then after that you do the sharing I think authenticity I mean in terms of being weak and uh if let's say you are facing a struggle I don't think that uh it's not good to share I feel that it's good to share because sometimes you may also Drive in like supporters and maybe uh one of your maybe you CH upon a venture capitalist that will Salvage a certain situation you know so if let's say uh I also think that mentors are very important so as entrepreneur and startup I think it's good to have very wise Mentor that will give you very good advice because along the way uh there will be many difficulties that you will face in this challenging world so as as good as you need to have uh some mentors to kind of give you the proper guidance

Alva Chew: okay well that that's that's really uh quite insight and I think yeah I mean it makes a lot of sense for a lot of people including myself you know especially we are doing personal branding uh probably not go for the cheap shots you know just to milk emotions but you know to be very careful about what we are really putting out there because that obviously reflects you know uh what people perceive of us and what we truly feel as well on the other side of it you just now also mentioned that and a lot of all this emotional sharing and more raw Sherry probably comes from the fact that a lot of people are not doing so well last year right I've heard of that I've heard from many people in my network that you know it's not most people that in even people that I assume are doing quite well are actually not doing that well can you speak to that a bit what what what building was wrong or you know what what bu think happened in last year 2024 where a lot people are actually not really doing that well what do you think is the main reason for that

Jessie Chong: I would say that uh during pandemic um there was a over hiring okay and then uh the adoption for digital and uh content and everything just kind of like scaled down uh it like suddenly you know so I think during our starting of 2024 uh I have a lot of agency friends and business friends so they were saying that business was very slow beginning of last year okay so I think the the thing is that because um a lot of brands are actually going out Singapore uh brands are actually going into emerging countries so big bigger brands are going into like Vietnam uh Cambodia India and other countries I think the challenge here in Singapore is that um because we have rising cost uh inflation and also there's this wages of increase in wages so it becomes very challenging for um business owner in Singapore to keep up with the pricing you know like the the price point and in because Singapore is such a small country and um there's a lot of competition if every company is looking into uh closing a business in Singapore right so you the the is just a small dot you know so I would advise um uh companies to actually look out of Singapore expand overseas and then you know with the help of EDG Grand uh which uh I actually help a lot of my clients to get the EDG Grand and then pivot them to expand overseas with MRA Grand so I think sanon is just a a a small dollar so we need to get out and then the bigger Market is outside uh if we have actually struggling is because we are too inward we are just closing business within our circle of friends uh our immediate contacts or referrals and then pitching for government job you know last year I think there's a government job there's a job listing and then uh in in the end 35 companies participated in the tender you know so wow so the cheapest cost will win the project right so the end of the day how can companies survive in Singapore if you are always going for all the lwh hanging fruit right so we definitely need to be more aggressive be more Brave to go out to the country you know maybe Saudi Arabia maybe Dubai uh maybe other countries other parts of the world to clinch uh bigger deals bigger projects yeah and then be internationalized I think that will be a better kind of like a a better marketpl because it's much bigger Marketplace yeah so I think the the the challenge is really about everybody is too Inward and then trying to get jobs inside Singapore so people who are actually doing overseas project they did not struggle they they their companies are all surviving really well yeah so I I think that is the thinking that I have for last year

Alva Chew: well that's interesting uh you sp definitely I think businesses um you know Brands uh and agencies as well in Singapore definitely took quite a bad heit um but I also have heard from uh my network from other parts of the region across Asia and even some in North America as well that are also not doing as well last year which was actually quite surprising to me so I assume it could be more of a you know globble thing that everybody's kind of feeling uh some of the factors that you mentioned just now but looking forward right I mean we are obviously now in a new year start of the New Year taking into account what you just said about the challenges and some of the factors right moving forward if there's one thing that brands should focus on right businesses or agencies are if there's one thing that brands should focus on to attract more customers and grow what would that be

Jessie Chong: I would say um get your hands dirty on Tik Tok yeah because Tik Tok social commerce is something that is a direct sales uh it's a kind of like a you don't really need a super crazy budget to get things started um you can also adopt our agency to kind of like help you to to do some Tik Tok live streaming uh live Sales brand awareness so I mean Tik Tok is got to be a good platform uh for uh new brands and existing Brands uh because you can through the live stream uh educate uh your product USP uh do your content sharing and then acquire new customer audiences and ask them to do a immediate purchase I think that is the thing that a lot of Brands wants which is immediate purchase yeah so I think uh Tik Tok is the future uh I mean it works for America it will work in Asia as well uh is actually we are kind of like uh we are actually quite slow in the game but I would believe that this year everything will pick up really fast right but I mean tto is still not back

Alva Chew: right but I mean tto is still not back in us right now right it's still it's still off right is it?

Jessie Chong: you crush him up depends on Trump right yeah

Alva Chew: yeah that's that's their problem to solve okay so Tik Tok yeah right that's interesting uh okay definitely something to to to to look into at least we at least we don't have to worry about it being banned

Jessie Chong: so definitely something I also want to I also want to do a shout out for your aoch chat I think aoch is also a platform that brand should have in their website because uh aroch chat helps to answer all the less important question right is like customer service right so I think uh brands should actually adopt aroch as well in their e-commerce platform

Alva Chew: yeah thanks thanks for the show I I mean we definitely we definitely do agree we are definitely think thought so ourself but yeah I mean it's it's one of those things that definitely can help with you know uh efficiency and productivity right and more importantly get customers to buy faster I think that's what all brands and businesses want and thank you for coming on to the show thank you

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