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Personal "Malaysian entrepreneur thinks secret of success is classified" Baptism By Fire Back to homepage |
| Last revised: 27 June, 2001 |
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| TWICE A WEEK, Malek Ali dons heavy black boots and a black rubber mask with pointy ears, then walks into traffic. Does this sound like an activity for a man with a Harvard MBA ? Mr. Ali thinks so. In fact, it's part of his core strategy for launching his new business, a newspaper. It's certainly getting him noticed. Children see him and yell "Batman!" out of car windows. Lunch-hour drivers honk their horns and give Mr. Ali the thumbs-up. For two hours, Mr. Ali approaches taxis, private cars and any pedestrian willing to pause, and offers them a flier pitching his publication, KL Classifieds, which he started four months ago. His weekly 32-page tabloid publishes classified ads and display ads. To sell such a low-glitz product on a shoestring budget, Mr. Ali is betting on in-your-face, street-level theatrics. The effort in part reflects the fact that a generally affordable marketing method for most products -- putting ads in Kuala Lumpur's dailies -- isn't an option for KL Classifieds, since existing papers aren't enthusiastic about running ads for a competitor. |
| Malaysian Entrepreneur Thinks Secret Of Success Is Classified An off-beat article in the Asian Wall Street Journal in July 1998 on some of the maverick marketing tactics employed in my first entrepreneurial advernture, a classifieds paper By LOUISE LEE |
| The expense is minimal, other than "a little bit of embarrassment and gritting of teeth," says Mr. Ali, a 31-year-old former associate at Boston Consulting Group, a management-consulting firm. Mr. Ali did use more-conventional methods of advertising during last spring's launch of the paper, which sells for about 25 U.S. cents a copy and includes ads for products ranging from household goods to cars to computers. A launch budget of only $65,000 made television out of the question, so he turned to radio and bus banners. One of the radio spots, which were scripted by ad agency Leo Burnett, portrayed a man receiving a birthday gift: a "combination button-sewing machine with double-action propeller ice-crusher." The spot ended with the tagline, "Want to sell something? Get KL Classifieds." Banners on the backs of buses read: "Forget Monday. The week begins on Thursday," a reference to the day the paper reaches newsstands. Mr. Ali believes the ads were effective, but he was itching for more bang for his startup buck. "I get upset when people say, `I haven't heard any of your ads,' " he says. So he ended the radio ads after six weeks. Then, on April Fools' Day, Mr. Ali and a handful of his eight staff members hit the street. One staffer carried a steering wheel and walked down the street making engine noises; his T-shirt read, "Looking for a car?" Mr. Ali carried a dog leash that had been stiffened so that he appeared to be walking an invisible dog. His sign said, "Lost something?" Reactions from passersby ranged from curiosity to sheer fright, recalls Mr. Ali. But the antics worked: they got a burst of attention fast, and the phones lines lit up, he says. "Basically, it was guerrilla warfare," says Huang Ean Hwa, a Leo Burnett ad director who worked on KL Classifieds' marketing effort. In conservative Kuala Lumpur, where button-down shirts and traditional Muslim dress predominate, a man in a Batman costume stands out. Here, people get excited about it, says Mr. Ali, who is Malaysian. He adds that "people are less jaded" here than residents of other cities, and see the novelty of offbeat costumes and cultural icons. ...continued |
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