We were looking for a redesign for our website when I happen to come across 99designs.com. The Australia-based site allowed me to post a brief for our website redesign, select a prize, and then wait for designs from various freelancers around the world. Lo and behold, 7 days later, we have a design that we liked!

The cost of it? Precisely US$662. US$500 was the prize money for the winning design, US $162 was for 99designs.com for being the platform for the service and certain upselling services (e.g. putting my contest at tha top of the list  making the contest entry font bold and red in colour, that kind of thing)

It was US$662 well spent. It saved me time from hunting for word of mouth references, giving individual briefs,  I never really had a good web design experience in the past (my user interface demands are too stringent for most designers), but out of the 10 entries (there were actually 40 but the rest were variations of the same design) 6 were mediocre, 3 were worth considering, and one was absolutely outstanding.

I am duly humbled by the power of internet to disemminate and get responses for such an endeavour.

2. The wonders of Opensource

From a technology perspective, it is a wonderful time to be running a start-up. Our website content management system (CMS) (and what I am using right now to write this blog) would have cost us in excess of US$1 million 10 years ago, but now it's free. OpenOffice for spreadsheets, word-processing and presentations allow us to have everyday office functionality without the expensive licence fees. Vtiger customer relationship management software allows us to have a web-based CRM system, also for free (we have not utilised v-tiger to its fullest potential yet but that's next on the agenda). And there's always Google Docs and wikis for our collaborative projects. Sure, it will take time to weave together some of these off-the-shelf systems so that we have one integrated software for all aspects of our business (CRM + accounting + CMS + collaboration tools), but with our access to these cutting-edge tools, we start-ups are all the better for it.

A heartfelt thank you to all opensource programmers out there for making this happen!

When I had a spare moment that afternoon, I sat down at the Bloomberg terminal and started looking for the help line to get a replacement keyboard. I was initially looking for a phone number, but the the help menu did not have one, instead it had a help "chat" icon, a Messenger help-line if you like.

"Hmm, let's try this...", I thought. I had seen some of these Messenger-type help lines before and had once contacted Salesforce.com on one of their products using this method. So I typed in "Hi, I have a problem with your keyboard" and explained the problem briefly. After an 8-10 seconds interval, an acknowledgment blinked on the terminal :"Bloomberg Helpdesk: We'll be with you in a moment...".The moment lasted a minute or so, and then the next question was, is this your address (they got it on file), followed by, is this the serial number of your keyboard (I looked underneath the keyboard and yes, it was), and then, "one moment please....". another couple of minutes passed, and then it was "we'll be sending you a replacement keyboard". I asked when and the helpdesk replied "by tomorrow".

Friday came and less than 20 hours after our first contact, a Bloomberg technician turned up to replace the keyboard.

If I'm not mistaken, Bloomberg operates a centralised helpdesk out of New York. So here was an example of superb customer service for you, served from 10,000 miles away, to our humble doorstep here in suburban Petaling Jaya.

Has any Malaysian company done that for you lately?

One thing led to another, and when we got back to the office the following week, we decided to down tools for a moment and have a bit of fun with the ad, Here it is!

Starring, front to back, the Raffique Hashim (the idea originator), yours truly, Patrick Michael (our sports producer/presenter) and Christopher Shewin (one of our account managers). Video recorded and produced by Shefah Szetu, our weekend producer.

Errr, big caveat here for any BFM advertiser reading this - video skits are not normally part of our advertising services!

We decided to turn the table on ourselves that day. Instead of BFMers doing the interviewing, we decided for BFMers to be interviewed instead.

The mandate to Shazmin, the organiser for our anniversary programming, was to create something through which listeners can get to know us better. Only one condition - it must not be perceived as us being "syok sendiri".

Shazmin did a wonderful job with the day's programming. From our news teams, through to our tech ops teams, pretty much everyone at BFM were interviewed.

My favourite interview was that of Crystal Ch'ng, our office administrator.

She was absolutely frank - when asked which was her favourite radio station, she blurted Lite FM, as she does not like our rock music!

I learnt a few things I did not know before about some members of the BFM team. Like we may have a SEA games Malaysian athlete in our midst.

I too, did not escape. The Morning Run team put me through the paces on the Breakfast Grille.

The only thing I wished I had done differently during the Breakfast Grille was to be more unequivocal about the need to remove NEP, and to replace it with something that helps all Malaysians, "Leave no Malaysian behind" was perhaps the message I wanted to put across. But there we are, that's live radio for you.

Thanks for all your birthday wishes on Facebook and Twitter, we are so grateful for your support.

What is BFM's position on this?

Normally, I would rather our guests and interviewees venture the opinion, as they're the experts, we're merely the platform to disseminate their views, so that listeners have all the information to make up their own minds

However, given that one of BFM's key objectives is raise the competitiveness of Malaysian business community in a globalised world, we cannot but have a definite position on this issue.

There is no doubt in our minds that to participate, let alone compete, in the global economy, one needs to be able to understand the global language of commerce. When the Chinese government has made the clarion call for its billion and a half citizens to be proficient in English, who are we, a puny nation of a mere 25 million inhabitants, to resist the inevitable?

But as always with these things, the devil in in the details, or as is typical in Malaysian policymaking, in the implementation. Ask any management consultant or project manager worth her salt, and she will say that to do this properly, there needs to be a phased, a multi-year process involving resourcing the programme with capable teachers, create some initial pilot schools to prove the concept, learn from any mistakes, fine-tune, allow detractors to cristicise and so that we can revise, fine-tune, then roll-out to more schools more resourcing, then a final push to cover the rest of the schools.

Interestingly, I wrote an article that was published in The Edge in May 2000, recommending the use of English as the medium of instruction for science and maths subjects. The article is reproduced below.

Imagine my surprise, when 2 years later (April 2002), there was actually a policy change in education to do exactly that (by sheer coincidence).

Note, however, in my article, the emphasis on implementation details that were required to accompany such a policy change. That was never addressed by the Mahathir and Badawi administrations.

Now we have U-turned, and the education of our children is again in limbo.

The Edge article:

The Way Forward - An Action Plan for Malaysian Primary Schools

A response to the editor of the Edge requesting  feedback on a commentary on the sad state of Malaysian primary schools. Published in the Edge in May 2000.

Agree on most points. However, as with a lot of commentaries, it's short on an action plan, though there were hints at 2 elements - raising rewards for primary school teachers and raising entry standards. Here is an attempt to follow through your article with an concrete action plan:

1. Decide on the objective of our primary education system. I propose that the objective is a good general base of the 3Rs (reading, 'riting, 'rithmetic), and a solid basic conversational and written skills in at 2 languages - English and Bahasa Malaysia. A third language is an option e.g. Mandarin or Tamil.The secondary school will be able to build on this when it comes to more functional subjects at the secondary level.

2. Design a national curriculum for the national schools incorporating these objectives. It's not difficult. Look back at the national curriculum of say 25 years ago - they had these basic 3R objectives in mind.

3. Keeping in mind that English is the lingua franca of commerce and technology, for the present and in the forseeable future, incorporate English not as a subject, but as a medium of instruction in mathematics and science-based subjects. Bahasa Malaysia can remain the medium of instruction for History, Geography and other arts-based subjects. Mandarin and Tamil will be options at national schools.

4. Do not implement the national school curriculum immediately. Select 1-2 urban national schools in each of Kuala Lumpur, Pulau Pinang and Johor Bahru to pilot this new national curriculum. Call them vision schools if you like. Devote high quality teaching resources to this schools. Select the most motivated and high quality teachers among the disillusioned group we have now. Give them new pay scales (so that they do not have to peddle Amway products). Give them performance criteria upfront, including surveys by parents in terms of their child development, in addition to things like exam results of their class. If they beat the criteria, give them a bonus. If they don't, fire them. As a carrot, this core group of talented, motivated teachers, if they succeed, should be offered the role of trainers of teachers of future schools.

5. Hire expert primary school educationists, from abroad if necessary, to train the pilot school teachers. Recognise that money is not the only motivating factor for people to join a particular profesion - it is also the ability to develop oneself in terms of skills and careers. Investing in training for these pilot teachers is critical. A one year course training course including a spell in a benchmark primary school overseas is the minimum. (they don't have to go far, you can find many of these south of the border)

6. Let the process begin. Attract students and win support of their parents by demonstrating the amount of investment in terms of teacher training into these pilot schools. (Persuading parents from the alternative national schools will not be hard - it will be harder to persuade parents from Chinese schools).

7. Document and publicise the early successes of students of these pilot schools.Actively involve parents in gauging their children's development. If they see successes, you can bet your bottom dollar they will be the strongest advocates of the new schools and curriculum

8. After the pilot, which should last at least 2 or 3 years, prepare the roll out of this new national curriculum together with attendant teacher resources to 2-3 more urban schools in each major city in Malaysia, and major towns. Also select selected rural schools that are receptive to such schools. Focus on existing national schools. Teachers from the original pilot schools should be stationed in each of these schools, to help the transition from the old curriculum to the new curriculum. again, upgrade pay scales in return for a new performnance based contracts.

9. After 5-6 years, the first results of a full complete primary education system based on new curriculum will be available. If this is a success, we then have proof that the new curriculum supported by adequate teaching resources has worked. Publicise and propagate the success - implement wider roll-out.

10. Invite, don't coerce, the Chinese and Tamil language schools to adopt the new national curriculum. If they refuse, fine, it's their loss. If they coopt in, support them with the same resources as with national schools. The whole reason that they are resisting vision schools today is that there is no demonstrable proof that the new vision schools will improve educational and teaching standards. Would you buy an untested product from someone whose current product does not work, just based on his promises? Certainly not.

11. In terms of teacher resources, there are plenty of teacher training schools in UK for example who would dearly love to send their teacher trainees to work for a year in a foreign country. Offer one year temporary positions to these teachers to work in Malaysian primary schools  - get them to teach the English curriculum - i.e. the science and mathematics-based subjects. You don;t need to pay them very much - food and lodging plus a small living allownace is fine - it;s the experience they want not the money.

12. Don't just limit reforms to the primary education system. Set up pilot secondary schools based on the same formula - developing medium of instruction in english for science and maths based subjects and Bahasa Malaysia for arts based subjects. Use the same pilot and roll-out techniques outlined above.

It's a 20 year plan. But our children are worth it.

Though definitely welcome, the oddest thing about the pronouncement is that it was the first time I was made aware of the bumi requirement for these sectors. So you mean if I were to set  up a computer repair service, I need a Bumi partner? This rule was probably observed more in its violation that its compliance - I have met countless of "computer or computer-related services" companies who did not have a Bumi partner in sight!

This reminds me of a light but telling moment. During a meeting in the early days, I was showing the licence of this radio station to BFM investors. They were reading intently, going through the various licence conditions one  by one. Towards the last page, one of them suddenly looked up looking a little white.

"Oh no, we need a Bumi shareholder and give him at least 30 per cent!".

I looked around the table at the rest of the investors, who were all by now starting to frown.

Moments passed, and then one of the other investors glanced up and started to smile. I knowingly smiled back.

"Not a problem guys," the smiling investor said, "Malek is a bumi".

The sheepish but relieved looks around the table was really something to remember.

I took that moment as a badge of honour.

A notable point is that I winced twice when I read the articles. First, the Business Times stated me to be the founder of JobStreet (uh-uh, that's Mark Chang; I was only part of his pioneer management team). Second was The Edge stating that our target demographic was 23-60. As any marketing person would know, that's not a target segment at all (it's actually narrower, 28-50, but there will be spillover to the under 28s and over 50s as business interest has no age limits).

Interestingly, some BFMers were a bit concerned about my candour about BFM's funding and burn rate. Karamjit had actually asked me whether this is confidential. Well it is in a way, but if we wanted candour from corporate leaders and entrepreneurs interviewed on our station, the least we can do is to return the candour during an interview about BFM itself. Indeed, my experience at start-ups is that customers want to know your true financial situation, and any opaqueness in this department, would invite the worst conclusion.

Here's the Edge article:

Net Value: No slapstick at BFM89.9

By Aishah Mustapha

1413 words

2 March 2009

The Edge Malaysia (Weekly)

English

© Copyright 2009. The Edge Communications Sdn Bhd. All rights reserved.

It’s hard to miss the black and white advertisements that are cheekily playing with the acronym BFM (89.9 FM), the newest radio station in town. “Bodek Free Minutes”, “Brake Faster Macha” and “Bribe Free Malaysia” are some of the eye-catching phrases emblazoned on Business FM’s (BFM) advertisements. It’s almost odd that a radio station that focuses on business news and issues would market itself so playfully, but after meeting its founder, Malek Ali, one can understand why.

Malek is a man full of ideas, literally: he has a notepad of ideas that he carries everywhere he goes. This habit started early on, and whenever his notepad is filled up, he will transfer the contents to his compilation of ideas and start fresh with a new notepad. So, it is not surprising that the seed to his idea of running a radio station was sown a long time ago.

It all started at Harvard Business School where he took up an MBA from 1993 to 1995. It was the cusp of the dotcom boom in the US where the personal computer (PC) was just making its way into our lives and the Internet was still in its infancy. “Yet, you could already feel a little buzz about it on campus,” Malek recalls. “What really sparked my interest was during an elective class I took in 1994, called Marketing Space, when my professor came in with a desktop loaded with the Mosaic browser. He tapped on it and said that we would be able to hear the radio from it. I mean, it sounded really absurd at that time to listen to radio from your PC, when even the PC was still new! But that got me thinking…Over the years, it (the idea) was always there,” says Malek.

But the radio station market was never right for Malek. In Malaysia , Time Highway radio was the pioneer in private radio stations that started it all in the mid-1990s. But they began to lose their footing when a new giant entered the game. In 1995, Measat Broadcast Network Systems launched six new radio stations. “I know enough that when a deep pocketed corporation launches six new stations, it isn’t the perfect time to start your own radio business,” says Malek.

Trained as a lawyer, he practised in the financial centre of London before arming himself with an MBA. He took a job with the Boston Consulting Group when he got back to Kuala Lumpur . But the entrepreneurial spirit inside him never died, and in early 1997, he started KL Classifieds (another idea that was simmering in his book of ideas), Malaysia ’s first free classified ads newspaper. Unfortunately, the market was also against him. The financial crisis came and he closed the business, incurring a loss of RM300,000. Frustrated, he was about to take up a job offer in Singapore when he was asked by Mark Chang, CEO of JobStreet, to be part of the new Internet venture. Malek met Chang when he was running KL Classifieds.

But the clincher was the offer by one of the JobStreet founders (not Chang), to pay off RM200,000 of Malek’s debts from the KL Classifieds venture if he joined them. Talk about your signing bonus!

Soon, Malek found himself writing the business plan for JobStreet. He left in 2003 and worked for Maxis and then Yahoo, delving in new media strategy for mobile phones and the Internet. It wasn’t long before he found himself bored with his 9 to 5 job. “I felt stifled working in those jobs. At Yahoo, I was far away from the C-level people who were the decision makers. I mean, I was in Singapore and they were all the way in Sunnyvale , California ,” says Malek.

He needed to get back into the centre of action, which was when his radio station idea started resurfacing in his mind. “It was while I was at Maxis that I realised the radio channels available was either too young or too slapstick for me. And then there is the other end of the scale, which was too old for me too. I felt that there was nothing substantive out there.”

Believing that “content is king” and with his experiences in print, mobile and Internet, Malek sought to offer a new kind of radio station in Malaysia . BFM 89.9 was born in July 2007, and its first broadcasting test was an occasion to remember. “We had to test the 89.9 frequency. We had just a normal MP3 player attached to a transmitter in Ulu Kali, near Genting Highlands. A freelance presenter came in to host. That was it. Funnily, we started getting job applications from people in the radio industry who tuned to our station early on,” says Malek.

Their targeted listeners are business executives, finance professionals and the investing public. While there is no specific age target, BFM 89.9 aims to appeal mostly to audiences ranging from ages 23 to 60, who are concerned about personal wealth, finance and business ventures.

BFM 89.9 officially went on air on Sept 4, 2008, and now has 21 employees. It is backed with funds sourced from successful entrepreneurs, including alumni of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Business School. Malek has raised RM5 million with RM800,000 of that being his own money. One of the investors — surprise, surprise — is Chang from JobStreet. Malek’s family which runs a mercantile business and to whom he credits his entrepreneurial fire, have also invested.

Their burn rate is currently around RM200,000 monthly. “For this year, my first objective is to cover our burn rate. After that, I can sleep easy at night,” says Malek. Right now the pressure is on to convert their sales pipeline of RM3 million into committed advertising. Not easy, considering the present environment.

True to Malek’s original idea, BFM 89.9, is also an online radio station and streams live over the Internet. You can go to www.bfm.my and listen to their guest speakers or receive updates on the latest finance and business news. For those who miss the shows, they have podcasts which are put up within 24 hours on their website. Malek hopes to cut down the lag time to six hours, perfect for listeners to catch at night, in the comfort of their own homes.

This new form of radio delivery is a good example of how new media is converging the analog and digital world. BFM 89.9 is also trying a new marketing strategy by sending emails with links to their hot shows to a targeted audience. “When Martin Sorell (advertising expert) came on our show, we disseminated the links to our podcasts by email. It becomes viral when the recipients start forwarding it too. That really helps us market,” says Malek. He has plans to expand this marketing strategy by providing a more tailored approach, specific to the user’s needs.

Malek is proud of the fact that BFM 89.9 has a positive bias towards supporting start-ups, new technology, ethical business practices and equal opportunities. He believes strongly in creating value and solving problems and also that most start-ups strive to do just this.

“For us, we want to learn more about the value creators out there. I have been there before. You’re trying to get yourself known and you don’t have the credibility yet, and everyone’s asking who your corporate parent is. At least we give them [start-ups] a platform. You don’t need to buy any ads, all you need to do is to tell your story. And through radio, they might find business partners, customers and even some pesky vendors! I’ve had previous guests who told how they have got new employees and customers after our shows,” says Malek.

Adding value is definitely BFM’s 89.9 highest priority, and the feedback has been good. AirAsia Bhd’s group CEO Datuk Seri Tony Fernandes, a previous guest, has said he loved seeing innovation out there and is glad that someone is building something different in the radio space. Malek sums it up best when he says, “The key point for me is for our listeners to learn and take away something from our shows. I’m very, very happy whenever this happens.”

The Edge did a great write up of research house CLSA's Feng Shui Index for the Year of the Cow that I downloaded a copy (note, please use the Explorer browser if you intend to do this too as I was not able to download it with Firefox). There is a month-by-month guide to the Hang Seng index after consulting leading feng shui masters in Hong Kong. Its done with "tongue firmly in cheek", but CLSA remarks that their previous indexes got it right enough times "to make hard-working analysts despair". Given that chartists and bona-fide analysts have called it wrong so much in the Year of the Rat, I thought I'd give it a shot.

I was born in the year of the Horse, and this is what it had to say in terms of money for horses: "Get off to a quick start, settle down to a steady pace and then romp home". Apparently there's plenty of opportunities to make hay, but not after one small financial loss. OK, great to see the word small in that caveat. Health - "make sure you get enough sleep and to eat properly". How true  (just did my annual medical exam - high cholesterol levels precipitated the same advice from my doctor, but add exercise).

Second day back at the office, and Christopher Sherwin, our account manager, happily waved our first sponsorship in his hand. Yes, that was a quick start... and I'm converted.

Last night, after reading a promising article on the arrival of internet radio on mobile phones, I tried to download the software, created by Slacker.com, on my Blackberry (I have separate grouses at Blackberry, but let's leave that for another time). As with many promises made by US website operators, the promised simplicity only applies to US based visitors. Not only did my Blackberry (exactly same model depicted in the article), using a WiFi network out of Singapore fail to download the software (the slacker.com site has been asking me to wait for the last 40 minutes), but I also caught the caveat "internet streaming only available in the U.S.".

Internet streaming is only available in the US. Hmmm. I've seen other variants e.g. "This service is only available to customers based in the United States" or "Shipment only available to residents of the United States". I've seen so many that I sometimes feel that I'm a third class global citizen where the pecking order is: First-class - US residents; second-class - predominantly white Anglo-Saxon countries: United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand (allright, I concede, France and other developed European countries who are not so waspy are also included in this category); third-class: English-speaking Asian countries (where Singapore is usually part of, Malaysia, sometimes yes, mostly not); fourth-class - everyone else who has a functioning economy (to be honest I have not been attentive to the composition of this group, incensed as I was already about being in third class).

This is the current experience with the i-Tunes store. There are so many "forgotten" songs that we would like to download from iTunes to include in BFM as local music stores (what a quaint concept) and KL-based record labels do not carry them anymore. But we have not been successful as none of us possess a US-based or UK-based credit card with a US or UK address. OK, so we have a global product (music), a global delivery and distribution system (the internet) but we need a US residency? (My wife, trying to download music for her new i-Touch, has even gone to the lengths of applying for a credit card via her mum who's based in the UK, and also getting our neighbour to buy an i-tunes prepaid card for her on his next business trip to the UK).

Other examples dot the landscape. Try stream a music video from Yahoo! Music, and a pop up will appear to say something to the effect of, "This video is only available to visitors from United States" (the website detects the country we are surfing from by sniffing our IP address, which is country categorised).

What's the root cause of this country-restriction for music?  The structure for the organization of music rights is based on the technology and infrastructure of the early years i.e. physical  music (LPs, cartridges, tapes, CDs); and mode of delivery (snail mail, then courier servicesl). So in those days, it is possible to subdivide music rights and music organizations in country or regional groups, indeed, there is a huge economic incentive to sub-divide one set of IP rights into various country distribution rights and milk it for what its worth (for expert exponents of this, look no further than FIFA, EPL, UEFA, F1 Grand Prix). Yes, country organizations also might help the development of local music, but that is always the secondary objective. Primary objective: Skin the music rights IP in as many regional and delivery platforms as possible to extract optimum distribution and profits.

But now that there are no physical barriers to global access to music, are country organizations relevant? Does it make sense that access to music, done through the click of a mouse from any corner of the globe, is global, but commercial agreements are done on a country to country basis? I think the answer is most definitely no.

Companies suffer when they try to force fit an internet product into old organizational structures. In my time at Yahoo!, I noticed that the critical difference between Yahoo! Search and Google is that the Google product was designed with the whole world in mind, where companies from all round the globe can apply, get a price and pay for key-word search advertising, for their own "geographical" markets if need b,e without a single physical interaction with a Google sales person. All they needed was a credit card (and not one that was issued out of the US). The Yahoo! search product, in contrast, required at least an email or web-based enquiry with a local country or regional representative, which then required several interactions with that person to determine which keywords are available, and then the use of traditional invoicing systems to pay for the transactions. In other words, Yahoo! search product was designed at the country level, and implemented by a country organization structure. Results speak for themselves -  Google completely dominates search advertising at 70.5% market share as at Dec 2008, up from 36.9% in June 2005, Yahoo!'s declined from 30.4% in June 2005 to 19% today.

Here are some suggestions for the music industry:

-         Disband the distribution function of your country organizations. In its place you have the internet, a much more efficient distribution system.

-         Purge the music rights management function from your country organization. Replace with standard global templates for rights related to music distribution, that takes into account rights related to locally developed music and the different interests of various music right owners.

-         Set one global price structure for songs/music. The i-Tunes pricing is a good template. Recognise that as hard as you try, charging consumers in developing countries more than consumers in developed markets is untenable and will only encourage piracy and parallel importing, whilst artificially and unnecessarily restricting sales volumes.

-         Refocus country organizations into marketing and talent discovery organizations. Yes, first to decide and execute the myriad of local ways of marketing your stable of (global) music artistes. Second, to discover budding local artistes that can make it to the global or regional stage (Malaysian artistes for the Indonesian market for example)

Not sure if there are enough music industry executives left standing to look into ways of re-structuring  the industry (the Malaysian ones have all gone to the Tune Group). But in and industry which has suffered revenue declines year on year, restructuring the whole music value chain to suit a still highly-demanded global product must be done.

PS. It's been about 2 hours and the Slacker mobile site is still telling my Blackberry that it is in the middle of downloading software. OK, remind me to ignore the next US-centric recommendation.

Alright, what does Balanced Frank Medium mean to you? Here's a very candid outtake from one of our sessions with Joe Hasham. He's the voice you keep hearing on the radio that says all the cool stuff for the sweepers. Even for the ones that are not cool, he makes them sound cool. 

So here's another one of those things that you will never hear on air, but on-line instead.

(Drum roll...)

P/s: you'll need Quicktime to hear the audio clip!

Some fires to fight this month. We were getting feedback at the start of the year  that our broadcast sound quality was degrading. It was interesting to see Michael, our operations honcho, working out frequency mathematical equations before even embarking on any field tests, to eliminate possibilities upfront. Telekom, after a bit of urgent prodding from us, brought their test gear out and did a field test. Test output were these charts with frequency waves. Telekom team looked at it and thought there was nothing wrong, Michael looked at it and saw an odd aberration. (yes, it's not so much how "terror" equipment is, it's about whether one knows how to use it!). The odd signal was traced to a defective exciter in our transmitter. It was replaced, and we're back to normal (on 13 Jan).

We're also doing some housekeeping with respect to presenters and segments. Norina Yahya, will return to the Morning Run. Freda Liu will take over Patrick Michael on Enterprise, which, due to its popularity and following, will extend another hour to 2pm. We will introduce the 2-5 pm show (show name yet to be decided, suggestions welcomed) after Chinese New Year, hosted by Shazmin Shamsuddin. The 2-5pm segment will cover interesting personalities outside the mainstream business scene, e.g. consumer issues, the arts scene, women issues, parenting, education, (You might have heard or seen one of our liners "Business, Finance and More" - well this is the "More" part). Patrick will step into Norina's big shoes in our Late Late Business show, which will now start an hour later at 5pm, and end an hour later to 9pm. News will of course be going on throughout the whole day from 6am to 9pm. The idea is to deliver great programming to the working professional the moment she leaves her home to go to work, all the way until she returns home from work.

A great win - Noelle managed to secure an interview with Sir Martin Sorrell (CEO of world ad giant WPP), which we will air tomorrow.  Well done Noelle! This interview made me realise that I have not taken advantage of my alumni network at all, so that will be my to-do over the next few weeks.

That's all for now. Enjoy the Sorrell interview tomorrow!

ANYWAY, here's the story behind this little gem of a promo that got swept under the rug.

Malek came up with the idea of inserting the song Sexual Healing by Marvin Gaye in between breaks on the Health Is Wealth segment, just to tease everyone and have a little fun. so upon hearing the song, my ears pricked up(no pun intended) and i was struck with the idea of using the song as Professor G's theme song. So instead of bringing Prof G into the studio and just recording him reading out his promo. I decided to take it a step further. after some fine tweaking and editting, a masterpiece was born! The smooth grooves of Marvin Gaye, coupled with Prof G's wit and voice talent... pure heaven...

Unfortunately it was not allowed on air... Let's just say, it was never given a U rating... haha :) 

Tony Fernandes, in his blog, outlined his hopes and aspirations in 9 points. Here are points 1-3 to which I couldn't agree more.

"1) I hope Malaysians will change forever and look at what they can do for the country, instead of relying on the nation to provide everything. We must be positive and see what we can do to make this country a better place. Sitting back and criticising and not changing will just not work anymore. And I do hope that when we speak, we present our views clearly, rationally and with sensitivity instead of doing so anonymously. So many of those who post their views on blogs, for instance, just criticise and do so anonymously. If there is something to be said, say it openly and be prepared to defend your views in open debate.

2) We as a community must demand more from our education system. If our national schools eradicate their deficiencies and all were more like Victoria Institution or St. John’s, for instance, Malaysians of all races will be lining up to send their kids to national schools. There would then be no need to waste time on pointless debates about vernacular schools and such. Get the national schools right, and we will be on our way. It’s about providing the people with palatable choices.

3) We have to improve the standard of English among our kids. If we are to be globally competitive, then you can't run away from the need for a high standard of English. That's not saying we should not also be fluent in our own mother tongues. How I wish I could speak other languages. Imagine if all our kids could fluently speak English, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil or Hindi! How powerful that would be! But we must be masters at English."

I can only humbly add, that in my short span of seeing folks come our studios to be interviewed, there are many bright and articulate Malaysians among us. I am actually amazed that we still do generate such quality of people inspite of our education system. Can you imagine if we had an education system that nurtures and harnesses such innate talents and diversity?

Tony's point 8 has special resonance for me in the context of BFM:

"8) I hope Malaysians will take a grip of their own lives and design their own destiny. Don't complain, don't wait for handouts, go out there and make a difference..."

Happy New Year!

It's been a flat out month. 5 new members joined the BFM team, including our first account managers, Christoper Sherwin (ex-Media Prima) and Adzfar Aziz, (ex-AMP), our first set of fresh graduates, Daniel Wong and Grace Ng and another producer, Serina Lim (ex-Dow Jones and CNBC). (Welcome new BFMers!). We also introduced our 4pm to 8pm programming, coined The Late Late Business Show, kicked off our taxi advertising campaign and hosted a credentials presentation for more than 130 people from media planning agencies, PR agencies and potential advertisers.

Throughout this hectic time, however, there was one I did not have to worry about. That was our branding and positioning

I owe this little luxury to Lee Szu-Hung of McCann Erickson. Szu and I had worked together before in his early days at Leo Burnett, when he helped me with the launch campaign for KL Classifieds (to Szu's and the Leo Burnett team's credit, they went on to win Malaysia's first Cannes d'Or with their KL Classifieds outdoor campaign, whereas I went down in infamy in the column reserved for weird people in the Asian Wall Street Journal. What felt like way back in June, I broached the idea of working together again on the BFM project, and to my great relief, Szu accepted.

The are three great things about Szu. First, he's truly a creative talent (I rolled about laughing when I heard our first KL Classifeds radio ad that Szu created). But secondly, and perhaps more importantly, he is not proprietary over his creativity, allowing his clients to contribute to the creative process. Thirdly, in my experience at least, Szu always seems to create a flexible brand base that clients can build on. He did all these with KL Classifieds. And this is what he did again with BFM.

Szu's first creative work was the tagline (The Business Station), and a simple, stark, black and white logo to go with it. But he then did something interesting with it - he started to play around with whimsical expressions to reinforce the letters, 'B', 'F' and 'M'. One of the earlier ones was Boyish Forty-Something Millionaires , and another was Big Fortune Movers, so you see where he was going with this.

So that was the birth of our somewhat whimsical branding campaign that play on the letters BFM. We've now put a business spin on it ("Bankers Flee Mortgages", "Bernanke Funds Mergers", "Bankrupt Fannie Mae"), a political spin ("Barack Foils McCain", [censored Malaysian version]), and a female perspective ("Behind Famous Men"). We also managed to incorporate the essence of BFM's brand ("Best For Money", "Business, Finance and More") and even an anti-corruption message ("Bribe-Free Malaysian"). Then we added the various permutations on air, (and our first set was voiced by Szu himself). and they sounded good, and so, on the radio waves it went, together with visual reinforcements on the back of taxis (see pics above), polo-shirts and car stickers.

Where does our branding go with this? In unpredictable but interesting directions, as its an extremely flexible branding platform that can accommodate contributions by our listeners (and many have done so). So far, it conveys key elements of our brand personality: A sense of humour, hopefully some wit, and the spirit of inclusion (by accommodating customer participation),

Whether its Best Form Marketing from a bunch of Brand-Friendly Marketeers remains to be seen, hopefully we will at least Bring Fresh Meaning to Brand-Focused Marketing.

Suresh Thiru, COO of JobStreet.com, was on The Breakfast Grille yesterday, facing a tougher-than-usual line of questioning from Alan Bligh (a fate we reserve specially for good friends and affiliates). But to Suresh's credit, he moved the discussion to what became the key takeaway of the interview. 

Suresh cited a recent JobStreet.com's survery of Malaysian employers on the employability of fresh graduates, a very vulnerable group during recessionary times. JobStreet.com's  findings? Malaysian employers say that the No. 1 criterion for their decision on whether to hire a fresh graduate: Their command of English. 

In this respect, Malaysian employers are no different from multinationals. I met Kam Raslan for a chat on his visit  from Shanghai a couple of months back. I asked him for his impressions of China. Without hesitation, he said it was the image of hawkers and stallholders huddled over an English dictionary learning the language word by word. English is perceived to be the meal ticket to a great career with a mulitnational.

A nation of 1.2 billion people recognises the importance of the English language as the common language of commerce. And here we are, tiny little Malaysia, quibbling about whether or not we should continue to teach mathematics and sciences in English. That's how parochial we are.

The same afternoon after Suresh's interview, I met Andy Robinson of The Expat Group, publisher of the The Expat magazine. We were talking about the My Second Home programme, and he mentioned about how much Malaysia would stand to benefit if we just allowed people over 55 under the programme to work part-time in Malaysia. Many of them could teach English in local schools and colleges, jumpstarting our revival in the English language arena. 

There are also plenty of teacher training colleges in the UK whose students would love to spend a year teaching English in a foreign country. Japan, Thailand and China welcome them with open arms. And they will work for a small living allowance. It's the experience that matters more to them.

So we have identified an important need, and several solutions.

You bet. It's on the BFM agenda.

 (this post is dedicated to Mr Scarlett and Dr Kilburn, my English teachers during my secondary school days, and to Alvin Heng, an occasional commentator on this blog and the BFM forum, whom, of his own accord, took the trouble of going through the whole BFM webste and correcting our (my) grammar.

I received this in my careers@bfm.my inbox this evening.

Dear Sir/Madam,

Good day to you. I'm writing in with regards to the job advertisment that was aired on Capitol fm for job vacancies at the radio station.

I've attached my resume for your perusal and I look forward to a favourable reply from you soon.

Thank you and have a nice day.

Regards,

(Applicant)

My reply:

Sorry (applicant), wrong radio station, and wrong spelling of wrong radio station.

My first inkling of how the complex the banking world could be came to me as a young undergraduate. Jobs with merchant banks, as they were then known (at least in the UK), was something that undergraduates in-the-know aspired to get. Names like Warburgs, Salomon Brothers, First Boston were the dream jobs, but no one could really give a straight answer as to what exactly they did. All we knew was that they were looking particularly for those reading Physics and Mathematics, and if you were not one of these rocket scientists but were still hired, you're a superstar.

Well, the 1987 Wall Street crash threw my merchant banking career aspirations into the gulley. So it was the traditional route for me, Bar School, and fortunately, an article clerkship (read intern) with a City (UK's equivalent of Wall Street) law firm.That was where I met my first derivative, and my first securitisation.

My first attachment as an intern (we were required to do at least 4 department rotations during the internship) was with the Corporate Trustee unit of the International Capital Markets department. Que? It was this esoteric unit that acted as a trustee to bondholders, looking after their interests, after a basket of mortgages got securitised into bonds. Que? Yes, that's how I felt when looking at the documentation. But my role as an intern was to proof-read these documents and make sure the right people got the right documents, so it was not too difficult. A glorified secretary. That was my first brush with mortgage-backed bonds (prime mortages mind you).

Four years later, I found myself in graduate school in the clinical atmosphere of Burden Hall, where I observed a class on Capital Markets, taught by Nicholas Perelman. I wanted to understand this animal called Capital Markets. Armed with a First in Accounting from my undergrad days (which caused my law tutor to remark that perhaps I should perhaps have chosen accounting as my degree) and a pretty credible performance in my first year MBA accounting paper,  I thought perhaps I will finally understand this beast that flummoxed me as a law intern.

Alas, this was not to be. I dropped out out of the class after about 4 sessions, because in 4 out of 4 sessions, it was completely over my head. All I got out of it was the fact  there are many ways in which to slice and dice a class of assets (e.g. mortgages, credit-card debt) and convert them into all manner of bonds and "collateralised" securities. As to calculating the value of it etc, hmmm, let's just say there's a reason why I chose to observe the class rather than count it as part of my course grade. 

The other thing that I was amazed about whenever I visited the States or talk to my American friends who were considering buying a home,  was how banks there offer mortgages with fairly long term (5-10 years) fixed interest rates. Further, the entry point of these interest rates were steadily declining throughout the nineties and 2000 onwards, so you could lock in a very low interest rate that will be fixed for the next 10 years. In every other jurisdiction I  know e.g. UK, Singapore, Malaysia etc, fixed interest rates were only limited to 1-3 years, afterwhich it becomes a floating rate again. Someone tried to explain that it was because institutions like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would buy these mortgages in the form of securities, and would then arrange for these to be repackaged again, and then sold to institutions who would like these fixed interest rate revenue streams? Really? Which instituion would like a long term low fixed interest rate for their capital? 1 + 1 does not seem to equal to 2, I'm missing the plot somewhere.

But hey, who am I to second guess the 21st century reincarnations of the Masters of the Universe? I decided I did not understand it, and since it was not pertinent to my entrepreneurial interests, to leave it for a future dinner conversation with a close economist friend.

Well no need to wait for that dinner. I guess the implosion of Wall Street, the City and the global financial markets, made folks realise that really, not many people understood them at all, including regulators, rating agencies, and even the practitioners. But lest I sound anti-securitisation, let me say one thing.

Excel spreadsheets, business modelling and databases share one theme with CDO's, mortgage-backed securities and even REITs. I call it the rule of GIGO and RIRO (not to be confused with LIFO and FIFO). You put good stuff in, you get good stuff out.  Your put rubbish in, you get rubbish out.

In the Malaysian context at least, don't say I did not warn you REIT investors out there!

Post blog note: Many have coined the term GIGO and RIRO before me, but confusingly, GIGO also stands for Garbage In Garbage Out. So scrub that rule!