Sangat Pedas

John Lewis - Best Christmas Advert of 2011

December 4, 2011 by Remco | 1 Comment

Holidays are coming and even though I still prefer to associate Christmas with non-material things, the reality is that it’s big business. This means that the creative minds in this world are pushed to the limit to come up with the best adverts possible so their clients can get the biggest piece of the pie as possible. Some adverts become legendary, some are FUNNY (I don’t want shokz!), some are not, some or a waste of talent and others just disappointing. Not judging the effectivity but more the creativity my choice of 2011 is the John Lewis advert displayed above. Having a daughter myself this ad is obviously totally unrealistic as in “never gonna happen” but just try watching it without getting all sentimental. The ad was created by Adam & Eve which proves good stuff still come from London.

Advertising A Website On TV & Radio: Sense or Non-Sense?

November 5, 2011 by Remco | 2 Comments

Recently Tokobagus launched it’s second TV campaign and being responsible for all marketing in Tokobagus I get a lot of reactions and questions on this topic. Basically the reactions vary from “you’re just burning money” to “awesome” and the questions mostly focus on the results and how we measure the results. Time to give some insights in our reasoning, experiences and how results are measured and analyzed. Does offline advertising of an online product or service make sense?

First off, I would like to say “don’t try this at home” meaning be really careful before starting any kind of big offline campaign on TV or radio. To let it make any sense in terms of impact you’re risking a load of money which in a lot of cases is much better spend in online marketing. Almost without any exception I feel extremely strong about promoting online products and services online. Any online marketing has the advantage of momentum, meaning a click on your ad can immediately lead to a conversion. The success of any online “hard-sales” campaign can also be measured instantly with a high accuracy.

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People, Brands And The Search For The Perfect Wave

October 25, 2011 by Remco | 1 Comment

There isn’t hardly a week that goes by without having at least 3 nightly meetings. I prefer nightly meetings due to the pile of work on my desk and because it enables me to combine it with some nice food and an occasional drink. To be honest, a lot of those meetings are darn right boring and maybe even a waste of time. Sure, the upside is I get to know more and more entrepreneurs and investors in the business. The downside is that lots of times the agenda of my dinner company is to get to know everything about the Indonesian Internet market and Tokobagus in exchange for a polite thank you.

Tonight was refreshingly different when I met with Patrick Searl, a Digital Brand Strategist and a natural in connecting people. (Thanks to Selina for the introduction!) Sceptic as I am, the title Digital Brand Strategist could well be the topic of a nice rant, but not this Time. Someone who’s 26 years old, coming from the UK, mastered Mandarin and has been working for some big brands in China surely has my attention.

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A Reckless Simplification And Uncool Provocation

September 18, 2011 by Remco | 0 comments

Sangat Pedas, a blog that loves the use of exaggeration and sarcasm. We love controversy, provocation, discussions, drama and an occasional confrontation.

Some of you might remember the post in with the snappy title “Social Media Marketing is a HOAX!” in which I personally argued, amongst others, that the value of Social Media is highly over-rated. Well, people got upset, big time!

When waking up with a hangover this morning quickly checking my Twitter there was an unusual amount of mentions. Lucky for me no “Red Square girls” and after quickly disregarding the mentions by the Tokobagus team members fishing for a salary raise (not even when I’m drunk guys) there were 28 MENTIONS left. All came from the same person whom I’ve never heard of before.

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Social Media Marketing is a Hoax!

September 11, 2011 by Remco | 5 Comments

Social media marketingMillions of companies world wide fall victim to Social Media Marketing companies every day #FACT! One of my tweets today that pretty much expresses my feeling about the Social Media Marketing Industry. I also said that the profession Social Media Marketeer is somewhat like a taxi driver, but for the last job you at least need a drivers license and a permit. Pretty bold statements and btw not meant bad towards all the nice taxi drivers.

I realize what I’m getting myself into here, it’s almost impossible to prove the absence of something because just one occurrence will prove me wrong. Obviously I’m talking about successful Social Media Marketing campaigns. And of course there have been successful Social Media campaigns but bear with me to make my point.

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BliBli “Owned” by Tokobagus #GuerillaMarketing

August 16, 2011 by Remco | 1 Comment

Just when I was about to write a praising post about BliBli, their e-commerce platform and the launch of their marketing campaign I received this picture from by partner in crime in Tokobagus Arno. So this is what we call Guerilla Marketing 101. PHOTO!

But on behalf of Tokobagus we really want to congratulate BliBli with the launch of their marketing campaign and we hope that the more players like BliBli enter the market the more e-commerce in general will become successful in Indonesia. Cheers guys!

Marketing tips for Internet startups

March 13, 2011 by Remco | 1 Comment

Before I start I need to make some disclaimers first. First, there is no formula for success, if there was everybody who has the formula would be successful which is clearly not the case, Second, I’m no expert, there are thousands of people out there who read way much more about marketing and know all the terms and theories. Reason why I don’t share a lot of knowledge, expertise and experience is because it simply makes me feel somewhat uncomfortable, it seems somewhat pretentious. However, I can consider myself as a serial startup entrepreneur and with every startup I was directly involved on the marketing side. The numerous tests, failures and occasional successes have finally led to my so far most promising startup in which our marketing strategy seems to pay off. Last disclaimer is that this has been definitely a team effort and I’m lucky to work with some smart and creative people.

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How to build your community!

November 20, 2010 by Remco | 1 Comment

Founder of WordPressAllow me to introduce the man behind SangatPedas: Matt Mullenweg. Well, actually he probably doesn’t know about the existence of this great blog site that will rule the world but he’s the guy that made it all possible. As founder of WordPress Matt Mullenweg has become one the 25 most influential people on the Internet. Ranked #19 in Alexa world wide and even #8 in Indonesia WordPress has become a global leading player.

So the question every Internet (startup) entrepreneur probably wil be asking is “How did he do that?” On the bottom of this post there’s the audio of a presentation Matt gave on the topic how to get from 0 to 100.000 users. Yeah, I know, audio is so 1.0 and 1999, extremely boring when it doesn’t have a big beat. Well, I promise that besides the annoying intro and outro (someone got really creative with wavelab) it will easily keep your attention and give you crucial information on how to grow your community.

The first hundred thousand are always the hardest and in this session Matt Mullenweg will discuss strategies for scaling your community from 1 to 100,000 users and beyond. Matt will describe his 12 rules, including the importance of obsessing about details, doing your own support, blogging every step of the way, and being a painkiller, not a vitamin.

This is must listen material for anyone running anything on the web, listen to the man, he even managed to drag me into it.[jwplayer config="audio" mediaid="3151"]