Starbucks Instant Coffee

The title itself is ridiculous.

Starbucks for me used to be nice chairs, good decor, great coffee, predictable third place. After another supermarket item. .. I'm not sure I know what it means anymore.

Read more at CNNMoney.

Cycles and Cradle Billboards!

Went around earlier today to take photos of our baby billboards. These are for our dear brands Cycles and Cradle. It is a season for giving birth now in the Philippines, these are babes made last Christmas.

I wouldn't be surprised because December is VERY fertile ground for baby-making. Don't believe me? You have these working for babies every December: 13th month pay & other bonuses, vacation, gifts, happy people, festive season, good food, cold weather, and putukan.

Cycles in Baby & Kids Best Buy Thailand

Cycles Thailand Team recently met with our dear moms, listened and connected to them. We learned quite a lot with our dear Thai moms like how they liked the scent, where they bought and how they found out about Cycles.

We look forward to serving them more.

The entrance of Baby & Kids Best Buy

Booth of Cycles where moms can smell the mild scent of Cycles

Cycles for Sale!

A fresh, new medium

I find myself pointing to social media more and more. I know it still is very fresh because 98%+ of the time I see people scrambling for answers not knowing what to do with this new animal. Here's a good primer.

A few stats worth considering:

• Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
• 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media
• Years to Reach 50 millions Users: Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months…iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
• If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 4th largest between the United States and Indonesia
• The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females
• Wikipedia has over 13 million articles…some studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica…78% of these articles are non-English
• There are over 200,000,000 Blogs
• 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
• Successful companies in social media act more like party planners, aggregators, and content providers than traditional advertiser

Ignore at your own risk.

Building Expertise

Someone asked me before what are the 10 books he should read to be good in marketing and business. I said there are no 10 books, there are 200.

And now 225.

Here's a list of books I just purchased from Amazon. I cannot read all of them at the same time, so people of Dragon Edge, if you want to be the first one off the box, let me know by commenting on this post. Otherwise, you'll see them in the library after I'm done devouring them.

Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?: Leading a Great Enterprise through Dramatic Change

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

What Every BODY is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Speed-Reading People

The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong

What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20: A Crash Course on Making Your Place in the World

Selling Blue Elephants: How to make great products that people want BEFORE they even know they want them

Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman

The Adversity Paradox: An Unconventional Guide to Achieving Uncommon Business Success

Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition

The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Success by Achieving More with Less

In Pursuit of Elegance: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing

The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly

Socialnomics: How social media transforms the way we live and do business

The Talent Code: Greatness Isn't Born. It's Grown. Here's How.

I Will Teach You To Be Rich

Ice to the Eskimos: How to Market a Product Nobody Wants

The Four Steps to the Epiphany

What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful

Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently

Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies

A Sense of Urgency

You Need To Be a Little Crazy: The Truth About Starting and Growing Your Business

Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity

Marketing Outrageously: How to Increase Your Revenue by Staggering Amounts!

Rules of Thumb: 52 Truths for Winning at Business Without Losing Your Self

Walk in their shoes

One of the things I've picked up along the way doing International Business is that it is not enough to know the culture and tradition of another country, it is best to live it.

I Salute one of our Country Mavericks Jay for embracing the culture of Indonesia. Aside from being fluent with Bahasa Indonesia in a short period of time, he decided to fast together with Indonesia's majority of Muslims.

It truly brings forth better understanding, closer relationships with partners, happier outlook and believe it or not, higher sales.

Follow his journey here.

At the Speed of Thought

Jay just texted me that he experienced a strong earthquake in Jakarta. I searched Twitter and sure enough people are describing it, giving me links from World Earthquake Center among others even before Google News picked it up.

Things really are fast nowadays.

Take care people of Indonesia.