“The scenario of a lot of funds buying out owners in 2008 is not going to repeat itself this year,” Stone Forest M&A director Tay Woon Teck said in a seminar jointly organized by Chio Lim Stone Forest and law firm Colin Ng & Partners.

He also advised executives of Catalist-listed companies to be more realistic and temper their expectations on valuations given the current economic conditions.

“Before, a lot of euphoria went into the valuation of firms,” said Lars Barslev, head of valuation at Stone Forest Corporate Advisory. “But now, firms are using the net tangible asset (NTA) method as a basis for valuation, which is more realistic and the premium paid on the top of NTA value are not as high any more.”

There’s more at stake for these smaller companies. By comparison, the market capitalization of the Main Board-listed companies has declined 46% compared to the Catalist companies of 69% - falling from $7.63 billion to $3.15 billion for the period of January 2008 to February this year.

What’s more, Catalist companies have long been considered small candidates for mergers and acquisitions (M&A). The average catalist company is only 4% of the market value of an average Main Board company.

“About 66 percent of Catalist companies have revenue of less than $50 million,” Woon Teck cites. “In today’s global economy, without scale and size, it is hard to compete for business and continue to attract serious bluechip investors.”

Despite the fledging economy and the lack of funds, there are still some bright spots – non-cash deals like share swaps are still viable options.

Further echoing enthusiasm for M&A opportunities, he still believes that small companies should continue to seek out merger opportunities with stronger players that have the propensity to open doors to new opportunities when the world economy recovers.

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That kind of blog.

It turns out that in Singapore, food and blogging goes hand in hand. A quick search at Ping.sg yields 8975 posts on the term ‘food’ alone. In addition, the more prolific food-centric blogs, both commercial and non-commercial, tend to rack up a decent amount of press mentions.

Sure, there are tons of hype revolving around the idea of connecting consumers and forging communities around brands through leveraging on blogging and other forms of social marketing, but for a food franchise, let’s be honest - the consumer is more interested in what is being served on their platter than the business implications behind.

There are however, much more compelling motivations for franchisers to engage in blogging - Let me try to give a more realistic view. When integrated with your traditional website, the blog can serve as a low-cost online tool where you can add a personal touch to humanize your franchise and might make the reader more interested in your business.

You can start by sharing the story of your franchise concept and documenting the incremental growth of your business – to showcasing your knowledge and expertise by providing vital information to prospective franchisees of your system. Better yet, you can offer tips on anything from guides to staff training and how-to-guides on selecting the right franchise.

But why should these matter? By relating to and connecting with potential and existing franchisees, your blog can serve as the platform for sharing experiences amongst franchisees and help generate the much needed point of differentiation in the saturated food franchise arena – a point to which prospects can set your franchise apart from others.

That said, blogging may not always yield immediate results but according to Debbie Weil, a corporate blogging consultant and author of “The Corporate Blogging Book”, they can be part of a “halo effect” that ultimately gives businesses a bigger online presence.

The bottom line is that a blog is a great way to differentiate yourself from the multinational franchises and can greatly enhance your ability to communicate with your market and find new sources of leads. It also offers one of the greatest opportunities around to cultivate relationships with your franchisees.

Kind of makes you want to start blogging, doesn’t it?

(published in Optimum Magazine, Astreem, January 2009)

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No wonder marketers are confused.

And to some extent, every offering is plausible. Your marketing mix would be dependent on what you are trying to achieve and the key is to continuously measure what works best for your industry, your market and the audience you are trying to target. The problem is to figure out what to do and where to start – In other words, you need a strategy.

Secondly, a set of KPIs is mandatory to determine the value of your marketing mix. Through web analytics, you can measure the effectiveness of individual campaigns by translating these web metrics against business results such as ROI, sales figures and leads generation etc. The truth is, no longer should companies simply accept intangible qualities such as branding as the primary driver or deliverable of a campaign. Accountability for the marketing process is crucial and the last thing you need is to spend more good money going after the bad.

The good news is that these tools are now a fraction of the cost compared to a few years back and the values and rules of online marketing success is becoming more concrete. In other words, while online marketing has not been around as long as say, television advertisement, the nature of the medium has allowed the online marketing industry to mature far beyond these traditional channels.

The challenge now is not deciding on the channels but rather developing a cohesive strategy and establishing meaningful KPIs.

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Nothing says Christmas more than neon lights and whimsical animations set to the tunes of Nat King Cole. Be sure to check out the unofficial video for the Super Furry Animals song ‘drygioni’, illustrated in the same delightful style. (via drawn!)

Also, take a look at these 60 charming ideas for an UnGrinchy Christmas at the office, at home and more. And for you last minute shoppers, some gift ideas heading your way as Christmas traditions continues with Uncle Mark 2009 Gift Guide and Almanac, now available for download.

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rssHugger is a unique website that aims to bring bloggers and readers together. rssHugger aims to provide blog owners with a unique easy-to-use way to promote their blogs by sending them traffic, building backlinks for search engine optimization, as well as attracting new rss subscribers if the content is interesting to the reader. rssHugger aims to help visitors be able to easily find blogs that write about subjects they are interested in.

The service is all free, for now.

Go on. Give it a try.

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The reason why comic writing is perhaps even a greater cause for concern than comic book drawing is that writing comes at the very start of the process. If the thinking behind the writing is inadequate, the script is inadequate. Consequently, even in the hands of the best artists in the world, the finished comic will lack something that no amount of flashy coloring or printing can hope to compensate for.

… By thinking about a basic general process that affects the wide spectrum of human beings rather than whether a specific notion or idea will adversely affect a specific hypothetical reader, it is thus possible to reach an understanding of one of the mechanisms fundamental to human response. It’s possible to look very closely at one’s own reaction and responses and make some helpful deductions about the broad responses of your readership…

- Alan Moore on writing for comics, Comics Journal #119

There’s some really interesting stuff, and especially so since it was written in 1988. If you manage to get a hold of the original article it’s more than well worth it.

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‘The Brand Gap’ by Marty Neumeier

Key Takeaways

• If you can’t tell who’s talking when the trademark is covered, then the brand’s voice is not distinctive.
• If your audience can’t verbalize your concept, you’ve failed to communicate it.

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I wanted to take a different approach - to create awareness, to educate the public. The recent event involving the 10,700 investors of the credit linked notes show how bad things can be - that the government can just ignore the call to do the right thing and enforce the law.

If more people come forward to voice their views, it may wake up the current leaders and create the change that is desirable and good for the country. An important change is to recognize that the elected leaders should represent the people, and that a free contest is for the good of the country.

Many people said that an alternative party needs more than one person. How do you expect other people to come forward? They are not willing to sacrifice their career. They will be subject to discrimination. Maybe 100,000 signatures will change their mind.

There has got to be an easier way to creating awareness. (via tomorrow.sg)

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“Ya, it is”, I replied and went back to my reading - What I should have done was to say something.

‘I’m an avid fan.’

‘Did you know he has a new book?’

Replaying the situation now in my head, the only negative outcome would be that I’ll appear like a complete dork. But does that really matter? The problem with Singaporeans - or rather myself - is the struggle to express ourselves in an articulate fashion. We also tend to consume blogs purely on the sidelines as spectators.

I remember a lecturer, an American, mentioned once that Singaporeans just have no opinions. At that point I begged to differ - We do, but we prefer to keep our opinions to ourselves. But I just kept quiet.

It’s easy to just remain silent. Tempting, but looking back, it’s just not worth it.

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To answer this question, I think you have to consider your primary business model. Do you have actual products and services that you sell? Or are you trying to make money by selling advertising?

Thank you.

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