The following happened at MTI but it could equally go under the marketing in Taiwan topic – or even a separate one, ‘Mickey of the day’ - I have since worked in other Taiwan companies and while the marketing is bad Mickey took it to new heights of stupidity.
Every three or four months Mickey would call an emergency meeting after being roughly appraised by the upper management - Now that we had a qualified engineer in charge of marketing, they couldn’t see why big things weren’t happening.
“Xien zi wo di pressure hao da. (I am under a lot of pressure at the moment.) Hen dwo ren zi ask product marketing xien zai zai zuo she ma?” (Lots of people are asking what product marketing is doing),” said Mickey in the part English/part Chinese style all the guys use in these companies.
“Wo men bu gou professional, bu gou innovative. (We have to be more professional and innovative).”
It was those special two words again that western companies supposedly were and therefore every manager in Taiwan had to pay lip service to - Pity he never gave any concrete example of how. And this missed the point as it didn’t seem to occur to him that nobody in his department was doing product marketing: Mickey was acting as assistant to the vice president spending most of his time abroad talking to clients; Fred, the new guy recruited as a product manager was actually performing the job of account manager; the technology guy spent all his time testing new solutions; Josh was working with sales; and the girl recruited to handle marketing information was doing manuals…oh, and Joe, the guy who didn’t recognize my white skin, he had an unusual job: Mickey found out that Joe could actually do marketing and so his job was to organize all the research he had done in his previous job for an international company and give us daily presentations. Mostly of them totally unrelated to the smartphone market but it didn’t matter to Mickey.
Anyway, then we got to the point of the meeting: we were going to get better by internally reorganizing. “I think one thing Robin Liao did was organize marketing into good divisions, but I think we can do it better,” said Mickey.
Product marketing, corporate marketing and technical marketing. You can get that on the first page of the textbook, I thought.
Mickey continued, “But I think we should now be divided into PIM, MIM and TIM – product information management, marketing information management and technology information management. And I think because Bryant is obviously in TIM and Josh, because you don’t have a technical background are in MIM…Now the people in MIM are going to provide the data to support the people in PIM who will be drawing up specs…”
So I can’t propose a product only fucking write the marketing plan once it has been done…Hold on it doesn’t matter as I don’t think PIM are actually allowed to think of new products either.
Showing posts with label Taiwanese and marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Taiwanese and marketing. Show all posts
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Taiwanese and marketing II
“Hey, Eric man, I have the solution to your financial situation. I need your translation skills this weekend,”said Josh in his usual upbeat style while we were in the bar.
It was friday night and he had just got a call from a client who needed a product brochure and company profile by the next Monday morning.
When he started he had been expecting work on web sites that took a month to complete or larger marketing projects. Unfortunately, he constantly found he was being called up at the last moment to do copy writing, editing or translation of materials that had been sitting on someone’s desk for a month being ignored. Why? - Because it cost money and no one wanted to take responsibility for finding anyone. Josh could speak good Chinese but he couldn’t read or write. He was interested in knowing as much as he needed for effective communication at work, he wasn’t interested in reading ancient Chinese scrolls like Eric.
“Man, I have some museums to visit this weekend. I am a busy man.”
“You are also broke and you know it.”
“Don’t you know it is not polite to present the cold truth to a man. How many words?”said Eric.
“5,000 words."
"Fuck, dude, I ain’t going to get any sleep this weekend, am I?”
“You can earn 10,000NT. That will keep you in smelly tou fu and museum tickets for a while.”
Josh wanted Eric to do it because Eric, for all his complaining, was reliable. He had given the chance to so many enthusiastic foreign guys who wanted to grasp the mantle of opportunity, only to be let down.
Eric was reluctant notot because he cared about going out that weekend, but because he guessed what the content would be.
“Motherboards,”replied Josh.
“Don’t you ever get any interesting clients? Buddhist temples? Think tanks that need papers on Cross-Strait Relations translated.” It was wishful thinking, the last time it had been Flash memory chips, and the time before processors.
"This is Taiwan," replied Josh.
Eric went home, took a couple of deep breaths, hoping to exhale his interests and personality from his body, and settled down for what he knew would be an excruciatingly tedious weekend of hellish translation.
It was friday night and he had just got a call from a client who needed a product brochure and company profile by the next Monday morning.
When he started he had been expecting work on web sites that took a month to complete or larger marketing projects. Unfortunately, he constantly found he was being called up at the last moment to do copy writing, editing or translation of materials that had been sitting on someone’s desk for a month being ignored. Why? - Because it cost money and no one wanted to take responsibility for finding anyone. Josh could speak good Chinese but he couldn’t read or write. He was interested in knowing as much as he needed for effective communication at work, he wasn’t interested in reading ancient Chinese scrolls like Eric.
“Man, I have some museums to visit this weekend. I am a busy man.”
“You are also broke and you know it.”
“Don’t you know it is not polite to present the cold truth to a man. How many words?”said Eric.
“5,000 words."
"Fuck, dude, I ain’t going to get any sleep this weekend, am I?”
“You can earn 10,000NT. That will keep you in smelly tou fu and museum tickets for a while.”
Josh wanted Eric to do it because Eric, for all his complaining, was reliable. He had given the chance to so many enthusiastic foreign guys who wanted to grasp the mantle of opportunity, only to be let down.
Eric was reluctant notot because he cared about going out that weekend, but because he guessed what the content would be.
“Motherboards,”replied Josh.
“Don’t you ever get any interesting clients? Buddhist temples? Think tanks that need papers on Cross-Strait Relations translated.” It was wishful thinking, the last time it had been Flash memory chips, and the time before processors.
"This is Taiwan," replied Josh.
Eric went home, took a couple of deep breaths, hoping to exhale his interests and personality from his body, and settled down for what he knew would be an excruciatingly tedious weekend of hellish translation.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Taiwanese and marketing I
Josh had set up a marketing company because he thought it was clear the Taiwanese needed it. Clear to him and me that is, but not to them....
The first interview he would speak to the marketing manager who would invite me back for what he assumed was project kick-off.
Unfortunately, it didn't work like that.
"Excuse me, excuse me," would say the over-apologetic marketing manager, who interviewed him the week before. "The operations director can't make it today. Can we reschedule for next week?"
He wanted to ask what the fuck this had to do with the operations director, but a pattern was emerging: he would have to meet with 4 or 5 different guys ranging from project management to senior power engineer because the highest position of the person in marketing was manager, and he needed all his budgets approved by everyone else. Marketing was regarded as unimportant – writing a few press releases, manuals – so it had no effective budget, and was usually affiliated to another department.
On this occasion, the 3rd time they had rescheduled - he had cancelled other opportunities and had arrived at the office once before, only to sit in the reception for half an hour. Invariably hot, frustrated, and sneezing black sooty snot, after having driven an hour to find the place in an industrial park. He desperately wanted to tell them to go fuck themselves, but that was the way it was done here.
Then once he had met everyone in the company it still wouldn't go through because a project with an outlay of about 4,000 US dollars had to be authorized by the President of the company.
The marketing company wasn't as glamorous as he thought.
The first interview he would speak to the marketing manager who would invite me back for what he assumed was project kick-off.
Unfortunately, it didn't work like that.
"Excuse me, excuse me," would say the over-apologetic marketing manager, who interviewed him the week before. "The operations director can't make it today. Can we reschedule for next week?"
He wanted to ask what the fuck this had to do with the operations director, but a pattern was emerging: he would have to meet with 4 or 5 different guys ranging from project management to senior power engineer because the highest position of the person in marketing was manager, and he needed all his budgets approved by everyone else. Marketing was regarded as unimportant – writing a few press releases, manuals – so it had no effective budget, and was usually affiliated to another department.
On this occasion, the 3rd time they had rescheduled - he had cancelled other opportunities and had arrived at the office once before, only to sit in the reception for half an hour. Invariably hot, frustrated, and sneezing black sooty snot, after having driven an hour to find the place in an industrial park. He desperately wanted to tell them to go fuck themselves, but that was the way it was done here.
Then once he had met everyone in the company it still wouldn't go through because a project with an outlay of about 4,000 US dollars had to be authorized by the President of the company.
The marketing company wasn't as glamorous as he thought.
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