The Typical Vietnamese Home, According to Advertisements

Monday, August 23rd, 2010

Vietnamese Home

From Samsung’s Hanh Phuc Don Gian (Happiness is Simple or A Simple Happiness, I’m not sure) microsite: http://www.samsung.com/vn/cuocsongmoi/hanhphucdongian.html#/SanPham

It’s really common to see in TV commercials and advertisements home situations that simply don’t exist in Vietnam. I don’t mean don’t exist for most people, I mean exist, period.

The image about is a scene of a typical American (not sure what they do in Europe) home in a Vietnamese advertisement. A big home, yeah, nonetheless, it’s reasonable to me as an American.

Wealthy Vietnamese, though, live in Penthouses and Villas. So maybe this is a Villa, but Villas don’t have big yards (look at the left).

I always wonder why they use American homes and not something more close to what a Vietnamese person could relate to. One reason could be is to associate the brand with this luxury dream. But I think it’s too far fetched because this is too much of a departure. No one in Vietnam has seen this type of home, let alone lived in one. To me, it’s like an American commercial advertising products for a people living at a home built on the Moon. I can’t really connect with it – I guess it’s great, I understand that’s something I could dream about, but it’s too far from reality for me.

Also, the tagline, Happiness is Simple, seems quite distorted compared to what the image says. If someone showed this to me with a house from the Hamptons or the Moon, I’d say, not so simple. I could never have this. Happiness means to be insanely rich, which means impossible.

As far as I’m concerned it’s not real. I don’t know, but is that something Samsung really wants connected to the brand?

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Social Media in Vietnam, the Reality

Friday, August 20th, 2010

My friend Alan shared this JWT presentation with me, it’s a good read. The truth is, even if companies here, both the locals and internationals, were given this report, their staff wouldn’t really consider it.

The biggest problem in Vietnam is not that brands / companies are incapable of understanding. It’s just that they don’t need to. Understanding online and social media is acknowledging that online could propel a existing brand to greater heights, or it could take a nothing product to become the new star. Sure, I understand that conventional media could do the same, but there’s one key difference: very few companies really compete when it comes to online in Vietnam.  And it’s not like Vietnam is small. Vietnam has 85 million people (13th in the world!)  with 25 million of them online. Over half the country is under 30, and most of those are online or using their mobiles; they’re out and about. They’re doing stuff.

They’re spending. They’re talking. But there’s little connection that companies here want to cement between those two actions. And though there’s incredible opportunity online because no one is really strong here, no one really wants to consider what that means.

Imagine if you had come out with a service like the Facebook of today back in 2000. The competitors in communities and web services back then were sites like Xanga, Geocities, etc. Can you imagine Xanga facing off with Facebook? No, there would be absolutely no competition. But in 2000, we never knew there would be a Facebook, we wouldn’t have been able to imagine it, so of course we couldn’t see the possibilities. It took 10 years to fully realize the potential of Facebook 2010.

And that’s a little what Vietnam is like today, in terms of online marketing and social media. Online marketing today is Geocities. But the major difference is that, we all know Facebook 2010 exists. We can use it to take out Geocities here. But most companies in Vietnam don’t want to, almost as if they shouldn’t peek, like it would be cheating, even if they’re part of internationals whose other branches are already using Facebook 2010 (and those other branches face the other Facebook 2010’s from other companies, they don’t have an opportunity like facing Geocities as they do in Vietnam) .

If you showed Facebook to Vietnam, they would say, but we have Geocities, it’s the same right? People truly do feel that Internet advertising is random, unknown, inconsequential – you can see in how they approach it, how they budget for it, how serious they take online versus traditional media. How they talk about it when they meet you.

TVC, Print Media, companies here do go all out and compete, and I won’t comment more on those because I’m not really knowledgeable about that side. But online is completely open, waiting for someone to think, hey if we can dominate in this, we could just completely take over – no one else is here or cares.

The Vietnamese people are already there. Young Vietnamese are all over the Internet watching videos, listening to music, reading random news. You could say Vietnamese internet usage is almost caught up- if the US and Europe are in 2010, then they’re 2007 or 2008.

And yet Vietnamese online advertising is still 2002. The age before social media.

“Let’s put up banners and count the impressions”

“Let’s make a microsite, spend a ton of money to fuel registrations and gather personal data, and then what we’ll do is never use that data. Never follow-up. Never contact and see what opportunities are there for brand advocates. Sales conversion. Etc. And we can do this all over again next year too.”

If Vietnamese businesses lack anything which I think would be indicative of the attitude here, it’s attention to detail, with a key example being customer service. Understanding of why customer service is important, not just for general companies and shops, but even to the most expensive of restaurants here, is extremely lacking in Vietnam. And to me, if social media is anything, its core is at Customer Service.

If Customer Service is not important, then Social Media cannot be important either.

“I have a website that advertises my shop and goods. I put my email so anyone can contact me. When people do email me, however, I don’t reply.”

“When people run into an error on my website, I tell them to try again later. Or I tell them they did something wrong.”

“When someone makes an order on my ecommerce site, and it’s out of stock, I just don’t do anything. When they email to ask me what’s going on with the order, I tell them it’s out of stock and I ask them to pick something else.”

That’s how it should be right? Isn’t this how it works everywhere else? I mean, that’s just business.

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School Registration in Vietnam

Thursday, August 12th, 2010

School Registration in Vietnam

I took this photo about a month ago. It’s either parents lining up at a local high school in TPHCM (Saigon)in District 3 to register their kids for the next school year or for exam period. I think this case was the former, however.

Posted by Wordmobi

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Greatest Thing I’ve Ever Been Part Of – Yamaha CUXI100 Community on Cyworld

Friday, August 6th, 2010

Yamaha CUXI100 Community

“Greatest Thing I’ve Ever Been Part Of” – normally, people use such a line to describe having children. Or winning NBA championships. Or being on baseball cards. I can do none, or at least have done none of those, so this is it for me. (I would mention Guitar Hero, but I never really had any input in terms of making the game, so I can claim only to have my name listed in the manual, which is cool too)

The image above is from Yamaha’s Cute Vietnam Project, their CUXI100 community on Cyworld Vietnam. I’ve had the special opportunity to be part of the team that’s worked on launching this initiative online. I’m really happy with the way the site came out (just launched earlier this week), and I really think it’s going to be a big deal.

One marketing executive mentioned to me a few days ago, “I think this will be the greatest microsite Vietnam has ever seen”.

I didn’t want to correct her to tell her that it’s not actually a microsite, but the compliment is very nice, and hopefully, others in Vietnam will over time agree that it’s very true. This is something very different, done in a way they’ve never seen before with much greater effectiveness.

It’s not a microsite, it’s a community. A true community revolved around a brand, the Yamaha CUXI motorbike.

The mechanisms of this site (well, all branded communities on Cyworld) are what make it special. I’d go into detail about them, but I would make it all sound boring. And I think most people would say, “so what?” because these are things that in ways seem extremely simple and obvious, yet they have outstanding tangible effects for the brand involved. These things are not being done anywhere else, not in Vietnam, not internationally, and you’d really have to be a nerd about such things to really see all the layers. Not necessarily revolutionary, just extra steps into making a fantastic campaign.

In this current phase, Yamaha is looking for 100 young women to be “CUXI Girls”, basically representatives for the new CUXI motorbike brand. It’s like an open casting call for everyone in Vietnam to tell Yamaha why they could be one of the girls. It’s fantastic to see all the people who visit the site in real time- you can see their names and pictures and visit their personal sites to say hi.

I’m addicted to it! Maybe that’s bad because I should be working, but I can always say it’s part of my work to check in on things and make sure everything’s good. :P

To find out more (and check out the potential CUXI100 girls), just visit www.cuxi.com.vn.

(Btw, CUXI is pronounced like “cutesy”. Cute, huh?)

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Bitch.vn – Really?

Friday, July 23rd, 2010

Who we are: We're the BITCH who believe in tomorrow children's happiness ! What we do: volunteer & charity works to the needs of unlucky children.

I cannot believe this website exists, a charitable organization that lists its info in English text, but somehow came up with the acronym of BITCH.

Group name: B.I.T.C.H

Slogan: Believe in Tomorrow Children’s Happiness

Temporary Headquarters: 145 Nam Ky Khoi Nghia St., Dist. 3, Ho Chi Minh City VIETNAM

Monthly meeting place, off-line activities: K & K Cafe, Cafe Sport, La Canteen

Website: www.bitch.vn (under construction)

Facebook Group: bitch.vn

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Vietnam’s E3 / Comdex and Booth Babes Recap (Vietnam Computer Electronics World Expo 2010)

Sunday, July 18th, 2010

Ngan Ha and I and the Samsung Booth“Vietnam Computer Electronics World Expo 2010” is Vietnam’s equivalent of E3 and Comdex. I guess I would say it has the name to sound like a Comdex, with some of the big international vendors that would be at a Comdex (Canon, Sony, Samsung) or E3 (VTC’s Games, Logitech), but the rest is whomever else (companies selling juice- well, maybe that’s for the demographic that attends, massage chairs, and other random things.) wants to be there that can pay the fees.

Anyway, “Vietnam Computer Electronics World Expo 2010”. That’s a long title. I guess we could also call it VCEX, pronounced VSEX. Or Just CEX = Sex. CEX 2010! I feel like the long title is some kind of insecure way to compensate for the lack of actual expo content.

To recap my experience, I figure we can just review my live updates from Mimo, in sequential order, from when I got there around 10:30 AM:

By the way, I really hate the term “booth babe”.

Canon had a good booth in which you could take a photo, have it printed for you (friends got it) instantly, with its own souvenir frame. Samsung tried the same thing, but they in turn, were a lot more rude (I took a photo for this one), and then told us to come back 5 hrs later to pick it up (no thanks). I didn’t bother checking out Logitech because I didn’t feel like trying anything they had. Halo Shop, however, was there as well, but not selling anything. That was probably for the best as the convention wasn’t the best fit to mention mass piracy, but disappointing nonetheless. VTC had a big stage to promote their games like Audition and FIFA online. I saw a guy with an unofficial Guitar Hero controller (in the pictures), but not sure if he was going on stage with it or just


silly.

I got through the hall in about 1.5 hrs, and thought there’d be 2 or 3 more halls, but that was it. The biggest and best in Vietnam in 1.5 hrs. The actual convention center only has 1 hall. And this was in the super new convention center built in Phu My Hung-if Saigon really does become huge, they will have to rebuild a new center or expand by 2015.

Overall, it was interesting. I enjoyed it. Would have liked to see more interactive exhibits and more space. For most booths, there was nothing to do, or if you were there to see something, you had to really fight to see that one phone or that one TV. Also, I thought there would be a better retail sales presence, but nothing to really buy. One vendor had special convention prices that were more expensive than their normal prices!

The pictures!

The Sony Gran Tursimo 5 booth. I guess I am not sure if both the TV and Playstation 3 were 3D, or just the PS3. I couldn’t see much of the racing with other cars because the players were all so brutal.

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VTC / Audition Both and Stage. Despite the pictures, I didn’t actually watch any of this.

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Next to the VTC booth was Guitar Hero guy
..

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A young kid playing a game (kind of looked like Lemmings + SimCity) and me checking out the Dr. Care booth.

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More ladies.

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Anitvirus – Back Khoa and NOD32

937971594 s9mYJ S Vietnam’s E3 / Comdex and Booth Babes Recap (Vietnam Computer Electronics World Expo 2010) 937971772 aacss S Vietnam’s E3 / Comdex and Booth Babes Recap (Vietnam Computer Electronics World Expo 2010)

Ladies.

937971838 k435t S Vietnam’s E3 / Comdex and Booth Babes Recap (Vietnam Computer Electronics World Expo 2010) 937972131 pHBAC S Vietnam’s E3 / Comdex and Booth Babes Recap (Vietnam Computer Electronics World Expo 2010)

More.

937972263 thxJV S Vietnam’s E3 / Comdex and Booth Babes Recap (Vietnam Computer Electronics World Expo 2010) 937972965 Dz5LE S Vietnam’s E3 / Comdex and Booth Babes Recap (Vietnam Computer Electronics World Expo 2010)

And more. I think the girl on the left in blue was maybe the best looking girl I saw.

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Black Eyes (Not the Peas) and Old Friends

Monday, June 28th, 2010

image thumb Black Eyes (Not the Peas) and Old Friends image thumb1 Black Eyes (Not the Peas) and Old Friends

2003, and a couple of days ago in 2010.

That’s me and my friend Minh. We were roommates during EAP in 2003, in our 4 months in Hanoi. Since then, we’ve only met up a couple of times, but the friendship is still there, and despite the time gap and changing roles in our respective lives, the relationship dynamic is still the same as well.

Not sure if you can tell, but I have a black eye on the right side of the photo- picked it up a few days ago during basketball, accidental downward strike of the (someone else’s) elbow into my face.

My first black eye ever!

Manly!

As you would expect, as if from a movie script, I had to go to a potential client meeting with it. No one asked any questions or stared impolitely, which is actually a bit surprising in Vietnam. My own team couldn’t help it when they saw me the day after it happened.

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I Join a Basketball League, Fun and Losing Ensue

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

845153105 jVCKH M I Join a Basketball League, Fun and Losing Ensue

Over the last two months, a bunch of friends who play together joined a league organized by Dillon Berner, the Basketball Coach at Saigon Sports Academy. Each Sunday afternoon, each team had a game. Referees, FIBA rules, 40 minute games, 4 quarters, everything regulation. The total length of the league was two months, and the fee to use the indoor court at ACG International School came out to about $25 per person, and we had around 10 people on the team (some players left the team).

By the way, the picture above is me, but is not me playing in the league. It’s just a picture of me playing at Phu Tho, but there are no pictures of me in the league (Thanks to Hai for the photo). Why?

I think we finished 0-10.

Seriously.

Once again (I guess once is not correct, but many times) proving that any team with me is going to lose.

Rather than go deeply into why we lost all our games (we are collectively short, we are not that skilled, for most of us, this was a rare occasion playing organized basketball), I just want to talk about my own personal highlights. Don’t worry, there weren’t a lot. I probably scored 10 points comb combined in all the games, and I did play a good deal of minutes. I think I shot 50% on free throws, and I taking 4 of them.

My memories:

  • Against the Japanese team, their center had a fast break and I was either the only one back, or the one focused on stopping him. I have been keeping in mind to take charges, so I positioned myself, stood straight up and he rammed right into me. He was probably at least 6’3, whereas I am 5’6. We both fell down, he was on the ground a lot longer than me (wimp!), and I realized he had kneed me. It was a pretty deep knee, and I’m still hurting. Unfortunately, I also got charged for the block. So why am I talking about getting injured while getting a foul called on me? Because I don’t want to be a soft basketball player, I don’t want to back down. I want to give a challenge, but not necessarily be sloppy, foul prone, but I want people to give me respect that I am not afraid of anyone.
  • Against Coach Berner’s team (keep in mind that this team and the Japanese team were two of the three best teams in the league), same situation as with the Japanese team. Their big center is coming down, I take the charge. This one I am fairly certain I had the right positioning, but I still get the foul called on me, and their big guy, out of control, just barrels into me full speed. A few days later, I realize I have a bruised ribs in my upper chest and it’s really difficult to breath deeply and super painful to laugh or sneeze. I end up missing a week because of this injury.
  • Against the Japanese team, we were playing man defense and I handled their Point Guard. I got run into a pick (unfortunately, no one on my team warned me), and I knew they were going to do a pick and roll. I bounced off the pick, went to the roll guy as he got the pass and went up for a simple layin, and blocked him. I got called for the foul though. I’m not sure if I did foul him, but I definitely had him, he definitely thought he was completely free. The odd thing about this was I’m not sure why the guy on my team (not even sure who had him) wasn’t the one also defending the layin- I was the one who ate the pick. Anyway, I was impressed with myself on that one.

Overall, I didn’t score a lot of points because I am not so comfortable in terms of finding my own shoot in that kind of 5 on 5 setting with such size and skilled players in the league. I’m not a great shooter, I’m more of a driver, but with most teams playing Zone against us, it was really hard to find the spacing to drive in. Instead, I tried to focus on setting picks, getting people some space to shoot, and competing on defense, trying to make sure I always got back.

We definitely got better as time went on, getting a better feel of how real basketball is played, and by the end, I felt like I was in really good shape, could compete on every play, and even when we would lose by 30 points (ex. something like 50 – 20).

We had the most losses in the league, no just because we lost all our games, but we would try to play multiple games per Sunday if an opportunity arose. There were other teams who completely quit the league, and then there would be teams with no one to play. So we stepped up. And lost. But we never backed down.

Our Team Name? Weekend Warriors.

I had a good time. I hear a new league starts in July, not sure if our team is down for it, but I wouldn’t mind at all- it definitely motivates me to find a way to keep practicing and get better. It’s gotten me to try to focus on every play, really work, really not be lazy.

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Volunteering at Warriors Basketball Camp for Disadvantaged Youth

Sunday, June 20th, 2010

905456550 L4SGe M Volunteering at Warriors Basketball Camp for Disadvantaged YouthLast weekend, I had a chance to volunteer as a coach in the Warriors Basketball Camp for Disadvantaged Youth, run by Dillon Berner from Saigon Sports Academy.

I actually thought I would be there for a few hours, not knowing much about the camp and the program when I volunteered to help. I ended up spending almost  a whole day there, starting from 8AM, walking to ACG International School from my apartment in District 2.

About 100 disadvantaged youth from Saigon were bussed in to spend two days at ACG learning about and playing basketball. Many had never played before, my guess this was more about providing a positive experience to many young kids who have started a difficult life.

I’m not particularly good at basketball, nor would I say I’m an expert in knowledge, but I had a lot of fun working with a number of the kids one on one. I’m much more comfortable teaching 1:1 than I am in groups.

Coach Dillon put together a lot of impressive sponsors for the event; each kid slept over, had all meals taken care of, but also got a full set of clothes, including shoes, which were sponsored by Puma and Reebok.

Very cool and impressive stuff. Of course, I wish I could join a basketball camp where I could learn how to get better.

Other images from the event (go here for the gallery):

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Wisdom Teeth Removal at Westcoast International

Saturday, April 10th, 2010

That’s me:

Michael Wisdom Teeth Map (Small)

Or, rather, that was me before I had 4 wisdom teeth removed a couple of Fridays ago at Westcoast International on Dong Khoi by Dr. Andrew.

Here’s the after:

830224896 zd3om L Wisdom Teeth Removal at Westcoast International

I haven’t put the teeth under my pillow for the tooth fairy yet, but who knows how much I can cash out with those!

I had been meaning to get my wisdom teeth out for awhile for a few years now. I still had insurance before I left for Vietnam in 2006, but the dentist got sloppy with the scheduling, and I missed out. I started thinking about doing it Vietnam about a year ago, and after a few rescheduled appointments, I finally got it done last week.

My appointment was at 10:30 AM. I came in, sat for a few minutes and then one of the dentists came to get me. I asked if I should take all 4 wisdom teeth out at once, and Dr. Andrew then came in (by the way I’m not sure if Dr. Andrew is a real doctor. The title should answer that question, but in Vietnam, it’s not uncommon for non-doctors to be called doctors) and we talked a little. I decided to do all 4 based on his advice, and I lay down, waiting for all the fun to begin.

“Get those needles away from me!”

The shots actually went well. I would love to make-believe that I’m super tough, but I’m not. After the dentists applied a form of anesthesia on my gums and mouth, I was injected several times (probably 5-10 times total) all around my jaw. I actually didn’t feel much, and sometimes I wasn’t even sure I felt anything.

I was pleasantly surprised by the relatively little pain and discomfort I felt during the process. In the middle of it, I was thinking, “this is going pretty well, a lot better than I expected. It could definitely be a lot worse.”

I had been told earlier that the whole process would take close to two hours, but it took less than one hr. Despite this, I didn’t feel like any of it was rushed. I closed my eyes and listened to music most of the time, but occasionally I’d open them and see a big sharp instrument. I would then quickly close my eyes again to avoid thinking about what was going on.

I have heard horror wisdom tooth stories of people with residual bleeding who later had to go to the emergency room. My sister had a swollen jaw for a week. As for me, I didn’t even take a nap after the surgery. The next morning, I was pretty low in pain and probably could have avoided pain medicine completely. I even had a fairly normal dinner the day after surgery, with just slower chewing to compensate for slight pain and soreness. In the week since, I’ve had some pain, but nothing particularly terrible and unendurable.

Perhaps some of this easy recovery could be just me, but I think most of the credit has to go to the dental work. Relatively little pain, little or no swelling- it could definitely have been a lot worse.

The end cost was a bit high, $700 USD for the four teeth with local anesthesia, another $250 if you want to sleep during the procedure. This certainly isn’t for a normal Vietnamese. I guess I’m lucky in that I have done well enough in my work career that I can save enough money to pay for this. Westcoast is probably the most expensive (and one of the best) dental practices in the country, so considering you’re getting the best, it wasn’t so bad. I don’t regret it at all. Dr. Andrew was nice through the process, and did a good job of communicating and just creating a positive atmosphere during the extraction. He called me the day after surgery just to check in, and the other dentists were pleasant as well.

In a way, none of what everyone did was that special or extraordinary. You do pay high fees for a high-end professional service. But just because someone is paid to be a professional, doesn’t mean they actually are.

Especially in Vietnam.

My Review Verdict on Westcoast: Certainly a premium dental service, but if you can afford it, I recommend them highly. Having wisdom tooth surgery is one of the most daunting dental experiences you can have, and I had all 4 teeth pulled out at once. Somehow, though, the procedure was done so well that I felt like I could have gone and played basketball the next day if I had really wanted to.

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