Verztec Blog | Global Content Consulting Company

The severity of a misinterpreted message

Posted on October 13, 2010 by admin

We have seen how some brands have suffered severe consequences due to translation errors. Today, let’s look at how such mistakes can also affect the entertainment world, costing celebrities their career.

This was what happened when ex-2PM member Jay Park had his comments on MySpace leaked out to the Korean media. His comments went “Korea is gay. I hate Koreans. I wanna come back… Korea is whack, but everyone thinks I’m like the illest rapper wen i suck nuts at rappin.”

The comments was actually posted 5 years back when Park was still a teenager studying in America, in which he admitted was due to his immaturity at that point of time, and the words used in the comments are phases that are commonly used in American rap songs.

However due to the lack of understanding of the American culture coupled with a message that was totally taken out of context, the Korean media misinterpreted his comments and sensationalized the entire incident. This resulted in an outrage within the Korean entertainment scene. In the 3 days after the leak, Park was bombarded by personal attacks in which caused him to leave his band 2PM.

If the Korean press had cross-examined the comments in its culture and context, Jay Park might still be with 2PM

Through this incident, we can see that when it comes to getting a message translated, not only must it be bought across in a grammatically correct form, factors such as culture and context must also be carefully cross-examined.

Posted in Global Content Management | Tagged 2PM, celebrity, culture, Korean Pop Star, misinterpretation, Translation | 1 Comment

The Importance of a Holistic Global Education

Posted on October 11, 2010 by admin

Going into the 21th century, education can no longer be encompassed within the boundaries of a classroom learning experience.

In his recent speech at the International education Summit in Toronto, Education Minister Dr Ng Eng Hen said “We believe that students will need 21st century skills – knowledge, skills and a value system. Students need new skills today, such as the ability to handle information. They also need the requisite language skills and a more expansive world-view, coupled with the ability to work in diverse teams. And finally, knowledge and skills must be anchored by values and strong character development – the aptitude for lifelong learning, resilience, integrity and compassion.”

Dr.Ng Eng Hen also reiterated that Singapore’s education system is well in its next phase, having progressed from a well-oiled and extremely efficient machine from the early 1990s, one key pillar of the next phase in Singapore’s education system would be having a global outlook.

The advantages of an overseas experience will help students achieve an expansive world-view and by getting them out of their comfort zone and experiencing other cultures, this will not only enrich their life experiences but also go a long way in terms of their personal development.

an out of the classroom experience

For this article, we interviewed Joel Fong, a final year student from the National University of Singapore (NUS). He will be sharing with us some of his invaluable experiences during his one year stay in Shanghai. This trip was part of NUS Business School’s Entrepreneurship programme.

Verztec: What is one thing you found that you appreciate about Singapore when you were there in Shanghai?
Joel: I can say that Singapore is a really safe place and my things are safe, one simple example is that I can leave my belongings at the table while I leave to order my food at a coffee shop and still expect my things to be there. However in places such as Shanghai or any other parts of the world, we definitely can’t take such things for granted, I experienced it first hand when my money was stolen while I was not paying attention.

Verztec: Did you experience culture shock when you there initially?
Joel: Yes definitely, language was a huge barrier for me, and when I was first there, I felt that there was a huge lack of information as I had too many options and limited ways of finding things out. An example would be issues such as buying stationery, in Singapore we would usually just go over to Popular or any neighborhood stationary store and prices for such stuff are usually around the same. But over there in Shanghai, there are simply too many places that sell the same things and the problem is, the prices vary so much, you wouldn’t know where is the best place and when you make a purchase you will start to ponder if the shop owner has actually ripped you off.

Verztec: After spending about a year in Shanghai, what do you think has changed in you?
Joel: I learned to be a lot more independent. Initially I did feel lost without my family around. A lot of things which I had depended on them previously, I had to learn to do it myself. For example, things like planning my own finances. I had also understood the importance of networking, being alone in a foreign land, I had to learn how to to leverage on my network of contacts.

Verztec: What are some things you loved about being in a place like Shanghai?
Joel: Not only is Shanghai a very beautiful place, it presents plenty of opportunities for entrepreneurship, as there is so much more you can do. Another thing I love about Shanghai is the night life, it’s much more vibrant as compared to Singapore, i.e. there are much more options there, and not to mention, beer is cheap over there!

Verztec: To conclude this interview, tell us some of the important events that have defined this overseas experience as a whole.
Joel : It would have to be the chance to work with the company which I was attached to during the course of the trip, from which I really learnt a lot from my colleagues there, their corporate culture and the way business is done there. The fact that I’m so far away from home and having to live away from my family would also be another thing that defined my overseas experience. All in all, this overseas experience has certainly pushed me beyond my comfort zone and I believe this sort of experiences can never be replicated in a classroom or campus.

Posted in Current Affairs, Global Citizenship | Tagged China, classroom, education, entrepreneurship, global, learning | 2 Comments

Marketing Your Brand Effectively on Social Media

Posted on October 7, 2010 by admin

Article Written by Catherine Cheong, Copywriter at Verztec Consulting

Now that the internet has become a permanent fixture of modern life, companies can no longer market their products and services in the same way as they used to. The internet has changed how information is received and how people expect to communicate with other individuals and groups. It follows that the way that promotional messages are disseminated has to adapt accordingly.

To start with, information flow is no longer one way. We are no longer passive recipients of advertisements and other marketing materials. If we do not like a product or service, we can inform the whole world through the World Wide Web. Instead of telling people what to expect or prefer, companies now have to interact with potential customers and respond to them.

Therefore, new tactics have to be deployed to ensure your company is reaching out effectively to its target market.

Personal Communication
On the Internet, people want to talk to another person, not a company. Marriott CEO Bill Marriott has an entertaining blog in which he posts regular updates and stories from his travels to Marriott properties around the world.

IBM did not create just one blog. The company created an entire network of blogs by getting its employees to write about what interests them, what they are working on and any other random topic. In this way, IBM provided insight on what happens behind the scene by picking the brains of its employees. Consumers were not only able to feel more involved with the company, they were also given a direct connection with IBM employees. In turn, the employees were able to feel the importance and relevancy of their work and to understand what customers want and value.

Transparency
With direct and personal access to company personnel come expectations of transparency. If consumers are connecting to real people, they also want the real story, not some marketing speak manufactured for them.

Sun Microsoft CEO, Jonathan Schwartz has a blog that receives 400,000 hits a month. One of the reasons why it was successful was because it was open. Negative comments are allowed along with positive ones. Even the most inane ones were approved. The transparency shown by Schwartz built trust among visitors of his blog and they responded by becoming loyal followers.

Ford was able to leverage on transparency on social media to avert a potential public relations disaster. When the company’s legal department sent out letters to forum owners to request them to stop using Ford trademarks in the materials posted on their website, it caused misunderstandings and ill-feelings towards the company. Fortunately, Ford’s Community Manager Scott Monty was quick to detect these sentiments and manage the issues. He presented Ford’s side of the story and let everyone know what was happening every step of the way as agreements and compromises were ironed out. Despite the internal gaffe, Monty was able to rally the online community around Ford rather than against it.

Showing You Care
Starbucks showed that its customers truly know best with its My Starbucks Idea website.

Suggestions can be submitted to this website for voting by Starbucks consumers. The most popular ones are reviewed by the staff. This is an idea that almost every company has. But Starbucks introduced a fresh spin to it by adding an “Ideas in Action” blog that provides updates on the status of the changes suggested. The blog showed that Starbucks recognized how savvy their consumers are. It exemplified the company’s commitment to continual innovation and to delivering what their customers want.

Comcast was able to show their customers how much they matter through their @comcastcares Twitter account. Run by the affable Bill Gerth instead of a nameless faceless customer service rep, the account provides help and advice to users in need. What Comcast does particularly well is the way it manages customer dissatisfaction through Twitter. Complain about the company and you can be sure you will hear from Gerth and his team immediately, and with warmth and empathy. The comcastcares team presents itself not as a company, but friends who exchange messages regularly with other Twitter users, sometimes with details of their personal life.

People not Products
With the shift from the impersonal to the personal, communications now have to be built around people rather than products. Companies are becoming increasingly sophisticated in engaging and adding value to customers through online communities. On top of a variety of social media platforms, Dell has an island in Second Life. Through the HSBC Business Network, HSBC put entrepreneurs in touch with each other via blogs, videos and online forums.

Making It Fun and Interesting
Blendtec’s “Will It Blend?” series on Youtube is legendary. In these videos, the CEO Tom Dickson attempts to blend all kinds of objects in the food processors the company sells. With the fresh and original idea behind the campaign, the low cost videos were a huge hit. They eventually led to a five-fold increase in sales.

At the end of the day, branding is all about creating and maintaining a consistent feeling of familiarity, trust, reliability and confidence with the targeted public. With the paradigm shift in how people use and interact with technology, the rules on how to nurture these feelings have also changed. Will your company be a winner or loser in the Social Media Age? It all depends on how well you continue to engage your customers in your branding.

Posted in Social Media | Tagged Blendtec, branding, Comcast, IBM, marketing, social media, Starbucks, Sun Microsoft | 16 Comments

5 Tips on Creating Effective and Sustainable Marketing Brochures

Posted on October 4, 2010 by admin

Written by Carrie Chen, Marketing Manager at at Verztec Consulting Pte Ltd

The rise of globalization opens up more markets and opportunities. On the flipside, it establishes the pressing need to speak in your customers’ language to get their attention amidst the clutter of ads. Presenting a localized set of marketing collaterals to your prospects or customers has become almost mandatory in today’s marketplace.

It is important to ensure your marketing materials are designed with localization in mind during the conceptualizing stage, so that the same marketing brochure can be localized swiftly and effectively thereafter. Otherwise, more time and effort will be spent on re-creation of the design or localization process, making little economic sense.

Here are five quick tips you can utilize in the creation of marketing brochures intended for localization, without compromising on your corporate identity in the long run.

1. Space matters
Chinese and English are generally more compact in text length. Thus, the translation derived from these languages will often be longer than the source text. Translations may also end up longer because translators sometimes use more words to describe and bring out the nuances and meaning.

The rule of thumb is: Set aside 40% of extra space in your brochure design for the translated content which may take up more text space. You would not want your typesetter to take drastic measures like adding new pages, re-positioning the images, adjusting the line spacing or reducing the font sizes and diverting away from your corporate branding guidelines.

2. Avoid having narrow columns
The Thai language does not use punctuation and has no spaces between words. Breaks only occur between sentences. If you have narrow columns for languages like Thai, Tamil and Burmese, you risk cutting the sentence and conveying a different meaning should the line breaks be made inappropriately.

Languages like Hungarian, Finnish and German use single long words to represent a sequence of shorter words in other languages. For instance, the English phrase “user information for using the escalator” may be translated as “rolltreppenbenutzungshinweise” in German. Having several long words will pose a challenge for layouts with narrow columns. A text with numerous hyphens is also not aesthetically pleasing.

3. Do not capitalize on capitalization
In alphabets with a case distinction i.e. upper case and lower case letters are used, capitalization can be used in the design to emphasize a point. However, it would not work for languages like Arabic, Hebrew, Korean and Japanese which do not use the Roman alphabet. Similarly, the first letters of all German nouns are capitalized so capitalizing German words will not make much of an impact.

Italicizing is not recommended in Asian languages like Korean and Japanese as it may not look pleasing to the eye. Alternatively, you may want to consider BOLDING certain words or use a stronger font colour to highlight the important phrases and points.

4. Avoid country specific information
Different countries have different preferences and formats for presenting dates, addresses, numbers and other figures. For instance, decimal separators are used differently in different locales. Three million dollars is symbolized in different ways as illustrated in the table below.

English	French	Spanish
$3,000,000	$3 000 000	3.000.00,00$

As shown in the table below, Japanese and Thai are examples of two cultures where the dates are expressed in significantly different ways from the English format.

English	Japanese	Thai
2000	Heisei 12	2543

Japan employs the Heisei date system. The year 2000, which is the 12^th year of the current emperor’s reign is expressed as “Heisei 12”. Thais adopt the Buddhist calendar way of expressing the date, denoting the year 2000 as “2543”.

We may be familiar with using 8/9 to indicate a date. However, this may prove confusing. It could mean 8^th September or 9^th August, depending on different culture conventions.

That is why for the main body content, it is best to spell out entire words and avoid the use of abbreviations. A one-size fits all approach is hardly applicable in this respect.

5. Support from design applications and fonts
If you intend to utilize in-house resources for design and typesetting of the foreign languages, you have to ensure your design application supports the languages you require for localization. Old programs like Freehand might not support other languages well.

Some languages like Arabic, Hebrew and Urdu read from right-to-left. If you are localizing into these languages, you have to make sure that the software you use can support these languages too.

It is also advisable to research on the font choices when creating the design template. Select fonts that support special characters as some fancy font families do not have this function. If you want to gauge the final design in a foreign language, you can test it out by pasting dummy text (with your selected font and font size) which can be easily obtained by going to websites in that language.

While these guidelines can get you started with localization, you might want to consider working alongside an experienced global content management and localization company instead of mitigating problems later on, which often proves to be costly.

A well-established global content management and localization partner can fully understand your content and localization needs, proactively identify potential issues and provide efficient, cost-effective solutions.

Posted in Marketing Communication | Tagged effective, Globalization, marketing, Sustainability | 2 Comments

Fine-tuning Your Brand for Foreign Markets

Posted on October 1, 2010 by admin

Article Written by Catherine Cheong, Copywriter at Verztec Consulting

As we have established in our previous blog post “Pitfalls to avoid when localizing your brand“, localization is a complex process and companies need to adopt the right strategies to communicate effectively with foreign markets. But what are the key areas you need to take note of when localizing your brand? Let us take a look:

Brand name
Examples abound of companies who performed poorly in another market because of the wrong choice of name. One of them is General Motors. When it launched the Chevrolet Nova in South America, it was unaware that “no va” means “it won’t go”. After the company figured out why its cars were not selling, the vehicle was renamed “Caribe” in Spanish markets.

Brand values
What one culture values may not be held in high regard by another. To succeed in a particular market, it is imperative that the brand value of a product or service is in sync with the cultural values of the population. When BMW presented images of status or success in its marketing campaigns in New Zealand, it found that these generated little to no interest in its cars. The company realized that this is because New Zealand has a highly egalitarian society where the pursuit of status holds little appeal. On shifting the focus to the quality of its engineering, BMW was able to generate more sales in this market.

Brand presentation
Cultural conventions will determine how your market responds to messages. The color of a logo may have positive connotations in one market and negative ones in another. The same applies to symbols used and the tagline that accompanies the logo. Furthermore, a more informal communication style works better in some markets.

Montblanc for instance customizes its letterheads and invitation cards in different states in India. They not only translate the text into the local language but also vary the colors and amount of decoration used. This is because consumers in northern states like Punjab expect a more lively tone and lavish presentation as compared to their counterparts in the south. In making such adjustments, Montblanc ensured that it was connecting more closely to each market in India.

Writing the right copy
There is a good reason why the literati applaud whenever a new, improved translation of a great foreign novel is released. The work of maintaining the nuance, connotation and mood of the original language takes knowledge and skill.

Therefore, direct translations of brand messaging are often ineffective, if not downright disastrous. Kentucky Fried Chicken’s “finger-lickin’ good” slogan was so poorly translated in China that it came out as “eat your fingers off”.

To communicate effectively in a new market, a brand has to first find the right words to best convey who it is, what it does and why customers should care. Therefore, keyword selection should be the first step in localizing any marketing content.

As analogies are often used to confer certain qualities to a brand, it is also worth investigating whether the concept or entity being compared is understood or valued in the same way in the new market. In the US for example, “capitalist” is a widely accepted word, even a way of life. However, Forbes magazine’s effort to promote its “Capitalist Tool” credit cards was met with a negative response in Indonesia. This was because capitalism was an alien, even taboo, concept in this country.

Ideally, the translator of the content is not only an expert linguist but also a subject matter expert. This is because the translation of marketing materials involves an interpretation of the essence of the message. On top of distilling the message, the translator has to identify the key elements and present them in a manner that the target market will respond to. Without an understanding of the industry, it would be difficult if not impossible for the translator to achieve this.

Translating the images
If a picture is worth a thousand words, whatever it says has to be translated as well. Like words, photos can contain a host of political, social and economic landmines. Compaq was ordered by the authorities to redo an ad campaign in China because the map on its posters did not show Hong Kong and Taiwan as part of China. Pepsi was sued in India for glorifying child labor when it ran a television ad showing a young boy serving its drink to the Indian cricket team.

Images often reflect social hierarchy and relationships between people, groups, and entities. Given that these vary from country-to-country, the content of the images must therefore be adapted accordingly.

Posted in Global Content Management | Tagged branding, copy, foreign markets, Translation, values | Leave a comment

Pitfalls to avoid when localizing your brand

Posted on September 30, 2010 by admin

Article Written by Catherine Cheong, Copywriter at Verztec Consulting

In this age of Internet advancement, it is easy to acquire expertise in a broad range of subjects. Whatever information we are looking for is literally available at our fingertips with an online search.

With the availability of translation engines on the internet, does this mean we can now communicate effectively in a new language with the click of a button?

As the companies below have found out the hard way, localization projects not only require proficiency in the target language but also a thorough understanding of the culture. Here are some pitfalls to look out for:

1. Slang
Matsushita Electric was promoting a new PC for internet users and commissioned Panasonic to produce an online guide for this purpose. A huge marketing campaign was built around the cartoon character Woody Woodpecker after license to use it was granted. However, the launch had to be cancelled at the last minute.

The reason? The ads featured the slogan, “Touch Woody – The Internet Pecker”. An American at the internal product launch had explained to the stunned and embarrassed Japanese what “touch woody” and “pecker” meant in American slang.

2. Pronunciation of names and abbreviations
When General Electric Company (GEC) and Plessey combined to create a new telecommunications giant in the 1980s, it decided on using GPT (the short form of GEC-Plessey Telecommunications) as the new name. Unfortunately, this branding proved to be a big disaster in Europe. GPT is “Jay-Pay-Tay” when pronounced in French. This sounds like “J’ai pete”, which means “I have farted”.

In a similar case, Wang, the American computer company, could not understand at first why its British branches were refusing to use its latest motto “Wang Cares”. To British ears, this sounds too close to “wankers”. Of course, it is of no surprise that the staff did not want to be identified in this manner!

3. Cultural associations
Mazda introduced a minivan called Laputa in the Japanese market in 1991. Because of the popular Japanese animated film “Laputa: Castle in the Sky”, the name had a positive association here. However, Spanish speakers would immediately think of “puta”, the word for prostitute. In this light, advertisements claims that “Laputa is designed to deliver maximum utility in a minimum space while providing a smooth, comfortable ride” and possesses “a lightweight, impact-absorbing body” are humorous, if not inappropriate.

The vehicle was subsequently renamed when it was sold in Latin America.

4. Using the wrong term
When Parker Pen launched a ballpoint pen in Mexico, its ads were supposed to say “it won’t leak in your pocket and embarrass you”. However, the Spanish word “embarazar” was mistakenly used to mean embarrass. The ads actually said “it won’t leak in your pocket and make you pregnant”.

5. Double meanings
Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux entered the American market with the slogan, “Nothing sucks like an Electrolux”. With the poor choice of verb, its advertisements were more effective in driving away customers than attracting them.

6. False language pairs
Though some words are used across different languages, their meaning often varies in each language. An example of such false language pairs is the word “mist”. In German, it refers to manure. Whisky company Irish Mist was apparently unaware of this when it marketed its product with the semi-Germanized name Irischer Mist in Germany. Sales for the product was expectedly poor, because few of the locals wanted to drink Irish dung.

7. Unfortunate word combinations
No, www.powergenitalia.com is not a porn website. It’s the website of Powergen Italia, an Italian maker of battery chargers. On the World Wide Web, whatever that sounds normal in one language does not necessarily translate well into another.

In short, it is not enough for translators to ensure grammatical accuracy and stylistic and syntactical appropriateness. A cross cultural analysis is also required in customizing a product, documentation or advertising to suit the conventions and market requirements of the target country.

Posted in Global Content Management | Tagged branding, culture, localization, pitfalls | Leave a comment

The Similarities between a Successful Website and a Thriving Restaurant

Posted on September 27, 2010 by admin

Starting up a website is very much similar to building up a restaurant. In this article we will discuss about several factors that are pivotal when it comes to starting a successful website and a thriving restaurant.

Location and Accessibility
When first starting up a restaurant business, the location and accessibility of a restaurant is one key factor to its success. Generally, restaurants that are located in areas nearer to town and with higher accessibility are more likely to get visitors as compared to restaurants that are located in secluded and remote areas which are harder to get to.

Translating into web terms, the amount of traffic that is being driven to the website depends largely on how easy it is to remember the web address, and how well it is Search Engine Optimized (SEO), i.e. how well it ranks on popular search engines like Google or Yahoo when keying in the relevant keywords.

Ambience and Aesthetics
The restaurant’s ambience and aesthetics play an important role in the overall experience when dining at the restaurant, how pleasing the environment is would usually determine the frequency of revisits and the duration of a patron’s stay in a restaurant.

Upon visiting a website, it is usually the aesthetics of the website that will determine if the visitor ventures further into other sections of the website, i.e. how pleasing the website is to the viewer’s eyes.

Content – The Main Course
Certainly, the most important factor for success is the Main Course that the restaurant serves. This would ultimately determine the overall branding process of the restaurant and what people would remember the restaurant for, i.e. the restaurant can brand itself as one which serves the best Fish & Chips or one which serves the best variety of authentic Mediterranean cuisine.

Similarly on the World Wide Web, content is king, be it the best source for stock exchange tips or the best place to go for the latest celebrity news, the kind of content offering that a website brings would largely determine the demographic of visitors that are being attracted to the site.

Feedback
Upon concluding the dining experience, it would be wise for the restaurant management to get feedback from their patrons. This is not only to improve on themselves but also to use it as a measure on how well they are doing in terms of their food and services.

Getting feedback from website visitors is important as it comes in handy when evaluating the service offering of the website as well as awareness to issues that might affect the website’s reputation in the long-term.

Staying in Touch
Last but not least would be staying in touch. Many restaurants would place their name cards at the restaurant counter for patrons to take away after dining. In this way patrons could easily refer to the name card when deciding to do a future visit or when it comes to recommending their friends to the restaurant.

It is also essential that website visitors are be able to stay connected to the webmaster, in this way they would be able to keep updated on the latest happenings and offerings of the website. For more information on how to stay connected with visitors to your website, do read up on our previous post titled Staying connected with the visitors to your website

Posted in Web and Technology | Tagged content, feedback, restaurant, SEO, website | 2 Comments

Staying connected with the visitors to your website

Posted on September 23, 2010 by admin

Imagine this, you have done up a great website for your business. Firstly, it is very well-designed and you have also provided great resources for your visitors. All these would have ensured a great user experience, however you left out the capability to stay connected with your website visitors.

If you had managed to create a great web experience, chances are, visitors would want to revisit the site, but problems arise when they do not know when will be the next update, and in time when they revisit the website to find that it’s not updated; they might eventually lose interest in your website.

The most viable way would be by putting up a notification on the main page of the website and that’s also provided that they actually re-visit the website on a regular basis to notice the new update. The worst thing that can happen is a change of web address. In an instance, anyone who has bookmarked or have the website in their browser history would have lost their connection to the site. There are still search engines, but that’s assuming the visitors would go through the extent to search for the site in the first place.

The good news is there are actually plenty of solutions which could help you effectively stay connected with visitors to your website. Below are some practical examples in which you could explore.

Mailing list
One of the most conventional ways to connect with visitors would be requesting them to register and subscribe to a mailing list. Upon registering with their emails, updates would then be easily sent to them via email.

RSS Feeds
RSS Feeds or “Rich Site Summary” Feeds help to deliver updates to the website visitors. This is especially useful if yours is a website that regularly changes content. So instead of having to revisit the site to check out updates, visitors would just need to subscribe to RSS feeds and they would have the luxury of being automatically notified when there are new updates to the website. Subscribers can choose from a variety of ways to receive their feeds, they can either choose to receive it on a RSS reader such as Google Reader or even have the feeds sent to their emails.

Leverage on Social Networking
Leveraging on social networking would be considered the most robust way in terms of staying connected. Upon creating a profile, it could then be linked to the main website.

This would allow visitors the option to either become a fan on Facebook, follower on Twitter, etc. In recent developments, A Facebook “Like” could even be integrated within the main website and visitors could instantly become fans without having to leave the website.

The advantages of having a social networking profile are that it not only allows gathering and identification of visitors in the form of Fans or Followers (provided if they decide to join your Social Networking group), it also helps to effectively facilitate 2-way communication.

In the case of any new updates, you could easily post them on your social networking profile and moreover it provides a platform in which fans/followers can easily give their feedback or comment and also the chance for you to engage them personally.

Moving forward to a new era in web advancement, it is of utmost importance that your corporate website is capable of two way communication i.e ability to connect with your visitors, failing to do so might result in you trailing behind your competitors.

Posted in Web and Technology | Tagged rss, social networking, web | Leave a comment

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) at Verztec Consulting: August – September

Posted on September 20, 2010 by admin

Supporting and engaging the local community

At Verztec Consulting, we are committed to engagement with the local community. We firmly believe in not just giving donations but more importantly, in active involvement and engagement on a personal level.

In this blog post, we will be highlighting two CSR activities that we as a company were involved in, in the months of August and September. They are namely an outing to Snow City with kids from Life Community Service Society’s (LCSS) Friends of Children (FOC) programme as well as participating in the annual Yellow Ribbon Prison Run.

Making a difference in the lives of children from dysfunctional families

Started in June 2004, the FOC programme seeks to provide care and support for children (7-13 years old) while their parent(s) is/are imprisoned.

On the 26^th August 2010, Verztec Consulting had the chance to work with LCSS by volunteering to bring kids from the FOC programme to Snow City for fun-filled activities.

Besides enjoying the unique winter experience at Snow City, there were also a couple of team building activities that helped us improve bonding and social interactivity with the children from the FOC programme.

Although the activities lasted for only half a day, it was an enriching experience for all of us at Verztec, not only did we have the chance to hone our communication skills. More importantly, we also had the the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of these children.

Sending a message of hope to ex-offenders

The Yellow Ribbon Project seeks to promote a more accepting society, one that is willing to give ex-offenders a second chance at making good.

On 5^th September 2010, a group of us from Verztec Consulting took take part in the Yellow Ribbon Prison Run; despite a day with bad weather for a run, we persevered, braved the rain and eventually completed the 6KM run to collectively send out a message of hope to the ex-offenders.

Completing the yellow ribbon run

Posted in Corporate Social Responsibility | Tagged CSR, LCSS, verztec, yellow ribbon project, yellow ribbon run | Leave a comment

The severity of a misinterpreted message

The Importance of a Holistic Global Education

5 Tips on Creating Effective and Sustainable Marketing Brochures

Fine-tuning Your Brand for Foreign Markets

Pitfalls to avoid when localizing your brand

The Similarities between a Successful Website and a Thriving Restaurant

Verztec Primary Website

Hear from our Customer

Verztec Corporate Video

Articles from our CEO