In today's edition of The Star, it is reported that local businesses only allocate 1% of their ad budget for online media.
Tsk tsk.
Don't they realise the power of the internet yet? It's time for them to reexamine their marketing strategy.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Why Hiring Copywriters From Malaysia Is Ideal
And Yes, I'm tooting my own horn as well as those of my fellow copywriters from Malaysia.
Outsourcing to another country where the labour cost is lower is nothing new - manufacturing to China, because they have overflowing source of manpower; tech support centres to India, because they are notoriously good in IT.
Now, why hire copywriters from Malaysia? Although the cost of services in Malaysia is higher than other developing countries, we have been colonised by the British once upon a time ago and the legacy is a significant, middle class, urban dwelling population who speaks and writes the English Language everyday. Since the language originated from the Queen's land, I'd say that we learnt from the master. And our accents are generally easier to decipher than the Indians from India (am I being politically incorrect in stating so?), although they too have a similar language legacy.
Besides that, we turn our attention to the most used language in the world - Mandarin - the fluency of which has now become an advantage in business. The diaspora of Chinese to Malaysia back in the mining days, coupled with the British influence, has left behind a group of bilingual citizens who speaks and writes both languages. And though many people, both from developing and developed countries, are learning to speak either or both these languages, their grammatically correct and eloquently put proses seldom translate well when they try to write. Somehow, speaking well doesn't equal writing well.
I would never sell our services by saying hiring copywriters from Malaysia is 'cheap'. Good things never come cheap. But we are truly value for money. '50 dollar an hour' for a writer from, say, the US may get you a more experienced, more professional writer from Malaysia. An English-Chinese (or vice versa) translation job will be executed well by someone speaks both languages well, and many of those 'someones' can be found in Malaysia.
And with the communication technology of today - Skype, emails, IM, online sharing tools - it doesn't matter if the client is from China, America or Timbuktu, it's as if our offices are just next to each other.
Outsourcing to another country where the labour cost is lower is nothing new - manufacturing to China, because they have overflowing source of manpower; tech support centres to India, because they are notoriously good in IT.
Now, why hire copywriters from Malaysia? Although the cost of services in Malaysia is higher than other developing countries, we have been colonised by the British once upon a time ago and the legacy is a significant, middle class, urban dwelling population who speaks and writes the English Language everyday. Since the language originated from the Queen's land, I'd say that we learnt from the master. And our accents are generally easier to decipher than the Indians from India (am I being politically incorrect in stating so?), although they too have a similar language legacy.
Besides that, we turn our attention to the most used language in the world - Mandarin - the fluency of which has now become an advantage in business. The diaspora of Chinese to Malaysia back in the mining days, coupled with the British influence, has left behind a group of bilingual citizens who speaks and writes both languages. And though many people, both from developing and developed countries, are learning to speak either or both these languages, their grammatically correct and eloquently put proses seldom translate well when they try to write. Somehow, speaking well doesn't equal writing well.
I would never sell our services by saying hiring copywriters from Malaysia is 'cheap'. Good things never come cheap. But we are truly value for money. '50 dollar an hour' for a writer from, say, the US may get you a more experienced, more professional writer from Malaysia. An English-Chinese (or vice versa) translation job will be executed well by someone speaks both languages well, and many of those 'someones' can be found in Malaysia.
And with the communication technology of today - Skype, emails, IM, online sharing tools - it doesn't matter if the client is from China, America or Timbuktu, it's as if our offices are just next to each other.
Friday, January 6, 2012
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)