k r i s a n d r o

Thanks to Ahjay of Porter Novelli for the pic above!

KuKuNehNeh (KKNN) and myself were invited by Estee Teo for a Bloggers Event by Gillette. First up was a nice brunch spread from Serenity@Vivocity and were given a goodie bag each that consisted of a Gillette Power Fusion Atom, Gillette Fusion Hydra Gel and a media kit. To top it all off, we were given a pair of tickets to watch the latest James Bond flick with Gold Class tickets from Golden Village @ Vivocity.

KKNN and I are not fans of Bond but who would pass up on tickets to watch a blockbuster in $30 seats?

Many bloggers have already covered their experience on the event of the brunch and the movie but I will like to touch on something else. After attending quite a bit of blogger events so far, I am most impressed and most intrigued by this particular one. Not because Xiaxue was there, not because of the good food and not because of the freebies. Er… okay. I do admit that I love the Gillette Power Fusion Phantom to death and it is THAT GOOD even though I cannot grow any form of respectable facial hair.

I remember reading about Uniquefrequency’s post titled “Don’t Be The Insurance Salesman At The Party - Doing It Right“, which was on a Samsung event in which I had the privilege to attend. The article that Uniquefrequency wrote is about Daniel Goh who ‘did it right’ by working on relations with the bloggers for some time before organizing an event which in itself, was very nicely organized with no ‘in-your-face’ branding that one might expect.

Now, if the Samsung event was being mild on the branding, the Gillette event’s branding was almost non-existant!

There was no presentation. No contest and nothing to be won. Besides the media kit that is sitting in the goodie bag and the Gillette commercials that were running on TVs during the brunch, there was no mention of Gillette at all by the people from P&G and Porter Novelli! In fact, the ONLY time when Gillette was brought up during the event was when I was conversing with Edwin from P&G and it was me who brought up the topic of the differences between the battery powered Gillette Fusion and the non battery ones.

I really appreciate the team from P&G and Porter Novelli for organizing such a non-pushy event. If there are looking to work long term with the bloggers, this is definitely a great start to a good blogger-brand relationship.

Gillette is also holding an exciting contest! Details below!

Oh! As for the picture of me and Xiaxue..

Here it is….

Fidelis, Me & Xiaxue

=P

“Social Media Breakfast (Singapore) co-founded by Derrick Kwa and Daryl Tay with the aim to build up the social media community in Singapore, regardless of individual usages, be it personal, work, school or play.”

This is the 4th time that Social Media Breakfast (SMB) has been held and my 2nd time attending after breaking my SMB cherry at SMB2. Truth to be told, I was quite confused on what SMB is all about during my 1st attendance but SMB4 has certainly shaped to be of a more structured event with the presence of topics and a panel to guide the discussions. Being the 1st time this has been done, there were definitely downsides to this structure as the audience had minimal participation in the discussions and despite it being very interesting with the witty and experienced panel, it felt a little one-sided.

One other point is that even though some of the panelists were bloggers themselves, they spoke more for the PR agencies and the corporate companies that are engaging in social media and I hope to see a blogger without such affiliation or experience in such companies to be a voice in the panel.

A point that is raised by the panellists briefly about engaging bloggers is ‘Credibility VS Popularity’ and the importance of not engaging in bloggers that are popular but not credible. Apart from morals, credible bloggers are deemed by most people as those who blog about niche stuffs. Bloggers who concentrate their blogs on certain topics such as technology, photography, food, social media and if you think about it, sex as well. Popular bloggers in the local scene are usually not the niche bloggers. Just look at the reigning blogging queen, Xiaxue and you will know what I mean. These bloggers treat their blogs as avenues to talk about anything that is in their lives. I am one such blogger and one of my posts can be about an amazing new website that gets you from point A to point B or about making fun of perverts on mIRC and the next can be about how much I love to fart in my hand and smell my fingers. I am not saying I really do but my point is that bloggers of my genre just blog about almost anything that happens in our lives.

We are Life Bloggers.

Many make fun and frown upon such bloggers such as myself but I like to see that we deserve recognition. Niche blogs may be relevant to companies and products but Life Bloggers are relevant as well! We may not all be able to tell a bit from a byte or may not be able to take a picture that will wow your panties off and won’t be able to tell you that the Char Kway Teow at KuKuBird Street is 0.26 marks better than the Char Kway Teow at Cheesepie Avenue. We may not have the grammar and finesse of a drunk Oxford English Professor but we still draw in readers that come back and read the content that we spew from our lives and perspective.

I know it’s hard to draw relevance to products and services for us Life Bloggers but if PR/Ad agencies do a little more homework and engage the right popular Life Bloggers that adore your products, I can ensure you that we do great jobs in convincing our readers that the KuKuBird Street’s Char Kway Teow is much nicer.

I once said that carelessness is one of the biggest drawbacks of me as a person as I am one who can sometimes be so deep in thought that without realizing it, I have already crossed the road. Countless number of times when this happens and I will suddenly be aware of my body and go,

“Eh?!?!?! I DON’T REMEMBER CROSSING THE ROAD!!!”

It’s sometimes pretty scary to think that I am on ‘auto-mode’ when doing things like crossing the road but it’s a good skill to have provided that it is fail safe. I don’t want to be roadkill.

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One of the biggest problems I have as a blogger would be my memory. I have such bad memory. Some who know me personally might say otherwise but I think I have ’selective memory’. My brain registers infomation ‘permanently’ on certain subjects and the rest goes into my ‘RAM’ which gets cleared every 3 seconds or so. For example, if it’s the first time I meet you and you tell me your name, I will forget almost instantanously. I will only remember the conversation and especially if you tell me interesting things like how you like to dig your nose… with your thumb.

I am not implying that anybody I’ve met at the HP TouchSmart PC Event that I went to yesterday likes to dig their nose with their thumb. But if it JUST SO HAPPENS that I met you yesterday and you REALLY like to use your thumb. Well… erm… do reconsider your other options.

While I am on that anyway, I will like to extend my gratitude to Waggener Edstrom for organizing and Daryl a.k.a UniqueFrequency for inviting me to the event.

[Screenshot from here]

The TouchSmart PC looks great and I shall have another entry of it when I find more time. It’s great to also meet up with more bloggers at the event like…

er….

…like…

YOU SEE LAR!

I DON’T REMEMBER THE NAMES OF EVERYONE I MET!!!

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I do remember the conversations that I had with each of you guys though. I think I got to either improve my memory or make it a habit to jot down everything I want to remember. If I jotted down stuffs yesterday, some of the things I would have written down were…

1. I took a picture with Jacelyn a.k.a daintyflair and apparently, I look humsup (lecherous). I never looked at the picture properly but maybe I was drooling or something.
2. Claudia has a humsup twit for the HP TouchSmart PC.
3. Juzzywuzzy has his humsup goatee back.
4. Hillary couldn’t recognize who I was and probably thought I was a humsup trying to pick her up.
5. I helped Daphne take a picture with two other ladies and the camera auto-focused on her left boob. The camera was humsup. If the picture turned out shaky, I am sorry. I was trying to contain my laughter.

WAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAAHAAHA!!!