Monday, June 4, 2012

Write for your brand

We don’t have summer holidays in our country because apparently, we are blessed with summer all year long …and that’s potential a joke, if you hadn’t noticed. Now is the two weeks school holiday in Malaysia and parents take time off to bring their kids away for a short break and us included. We flew to Penang last weekend for a short weekend getaway and for that 45 minutes flight, instead of taking an interrupted nap because some kids in front my seats wouldn’t want to be strapped in seat belt, I took the time to read the inflight magazine, Travel 3sixty by AirAsia.

It’s not like I didn’t bring my own magazine but since the magazine was in front of me I just grabbed it. For that effort, now I know who’s who in AirAsia, I learned about their staff’s past activities and opinions, I know that AirAsia fly to Manila and Kerala, dived into their plans and aspirations, and I feel closer to the brand just by flipping over that simple magazine. The effort is not new, you would say. Other airlines also have done it for so long. And how would the same effort apply to other industries, which are not service-oriented?

Your concern is valid because time is an essence and not many people are ready to spend their time reading about trivial things that are irrelevant to their lives. Hence, the key to this strategy is ‘relevant’. I believe that if the pieces are relevant, writing could be one of the best strategies you could use to approach your customers or potential customers in this time and age, in various industries. We’ve been preaching about writing for quite sometimes now. It’s not like we are asking for a novel; anecdotes would suffice. It’s definitely not academic or expert opinions but having your brand stories written post-event, and save them somewhere, at the end of the day you have your brand history written in sequence. With the availability of the social media that could help you spread your news viral, why not?

You would never remember that time if you don't start writing about it!
We launched our Beyond Biometrics early this year and so far we have distributed close to 10 thousands to our clients and during exhibitions. Many are worried about who’s going to read, whether the pieces are newsworthy, I would say, don’t think too much. As long as the stories are not damaging and it represents what your brand/company is doing, go ahead and write some.

Why is it important for us to tell our stories? It’s simple, because people could relate better with the brand. By reading that we had a birthday party, you know that humans work in FingerTec.

Again, less worry about whose gonna read what you write. Concentrate on producing informative, fun and cool articles and trust me, nobody is gonna grade you.

And if you have stories to tell us, click here! We are thrilled to hear from you. 

by Norana Johar, COO, FingerTec HQ