Deported for lazy lawyering in Vietnam? But I'm not a lawyer!

I have just been told by a lawyer in Vietnam that she has reported me to the US Consulate, the US Embassy and the Vietnamese Immigration Authority and is suing me because she does not like me. Let me get this straight? Lawyers in Vietnam sue clients? Shitty lawyers maybe. Hmm. Hope I get deported. Good book in that.

My, my, my. I called her lazy, yes - she said that insults cost more than lawyer malfeasance in Vietnamese court and now she wants to sue me and deport me. Shit. It's better than not working at all. If she continues on this rant, I could actually make money.

Here's the story:

I wanted to hire a lawyer to help me on a contract case a month old. Not a big case at all - but important to me. She proceeded to lead me on for 4 weeks, do nothing and then loose documents of mine and blame me for not having documents. Her office is a shambles of old desks with broken drawers and piles of paper but I am not on a large budget at all so I simply regarded that as part of her working scheme. She does seem intelligent. I write this blog to my Embassy, anybody who actually gives a shit about tiny matters and the Vietnamese Immigration authority. I don't like this woman very much at all because she has been summarily unprofessional.

I think she wasted four weeks on my case, was lazy, disorganized, lost documents and has been a complete sham. I've been told that she can sue me in Vietnamese court for insulting her. And well I did. I have called her a terrible lawyer, disorganized and a basic mess. And then she wanted to charge me money! Sue me girl. I have insulted you.

Big Dreams, Big Plans, Small Money, No Commitment - How Not To Market in Asia III

Watching someone's dreams go up in smoke is never easy, especially in business. It makes you wonder why they were dreaming such things in the first place. This happens often, especially in developing markets. People dream things that are beyond their grasp, usually because they don't like the grasp they are already in. It was conveyed recently to me that all Vietnamese are controlled by somebody; a parent, a marriage partner, a business relationship and so in response to this relationship, they seek to control somebody else, a friend, a lover, a supplier - maybe employees - and in so doing this, seemingly release the pressure they are already feeling from the situation they are already in - and thus, compounding the situation they are already in. What you don't want to be is the last man on that totem pole, because when things go wrong, you or your company will be blamed for all of it, and used as the scapegoat for why the whole deal went sour in the first place.

I've seen it countless of times in Asia. From Korea to Vietnam to Singapore and China, so the syndrome is not just uniquely Vietnamese - it stems from the family business model that is so prevalent in all of Asia.

As many of you will recall, this series started with a patently ludicrous request from a client looking to bring in a blimp in to Vietnam for advertising purposes, just before the Miss Universe competition in Vietnam, last summer. Even before any plan had been written it didn't seem to have dawned on anyone that blimp shots of a beauty pageant were not a particularly saleable commodity. But I dutifully plodded through an 8 page checklist of questions for the client to ask the people who had purported said hot air, just to get the ball rolling - and then I asked for my standard fee. Ball stops rolling. Blimp implosion ensues.

Probably the quickest way to kill a bad deal is to ask for money up front, which means, to get all your expenses covered, before you even get on to the playing field. For even writing plans in Vietnam, that fee could be as little as $500 just for doing a basic proposal, to much, much more should you need to expend cash, or risk life and limb to enter the deal. I was recently told of a business deal involving the shipping of tons of wood to the United States. The business owner was now complaining that the shipping company was now holding them accountable for freight charges because the shipment had been declined by the purchaser in the US (Global financial crisis blamed for causing drop in furniture sales). "But wait a minute", said I, a man with an art degree, to the MBA close to the deal, "Shouldn't all expenses have been covered first in the contract", before anything was shipped? Of course they should have. Standard logistics company contracts require that all the money for a purchase of this nature be deposited in a secure account in the country of the purchaser and then released to the supplier upon customs clearance of the shipment. Essentially, the shipment docking pays the bill - thereby keeping skinflint buyers from balking in the middle of a deal. Looking just in a cursory fashion at someone who allowed this to happen, makes you wonder about all sorts of things.

The "How Not to Market in Asia" series continued with a story of a man who thought he had sold a TV show, but just needed me to write a demographic profile for him over the weekend to seal the deal. "What?" I asked myself. "This is a potential $20,000 initial pilot program and you think you've sold it but it lacks a demographic profile?" Bullshit. Having not been able to get any sort of plan or PowerPoint on the deal thus far, I simply asked for the $500 and the ball stopped rolling. Unfortunately I was barraged by a bizarre negotiation that went all the way down to $50 at one point and shots of me rolling around on the floor laughing during the protracted telephone conversations. I have no idea what ever happened to that deal but since it involved a bank sponsorship right at the media height of the global financial crisis, earlier this year, I suspect that nothing is the correct answer.

And so to the current meltdown. A deal this week, valued at just under $10,000 went south just because a $292 contingency cost couldn't be met? Bollocks. The basic plan was $1500 over budget before leaving the starting gate and had far more risk in it (99.9% for me) than $292 dollars. That small cost was just my red flag warning as to what might happen should things have gotten rolling to much further down the line. A fair call for avoiding possibly massive pain in the future.

I was once told to avoid at all cost, second generation Asians from seemingly wealthy families. Their parents worked hard, planted rice, ran green grocers, built buildings or whatever and then sold off the family fields or store to wealthy Taiwanese real estate developers or just socked it away, day by day dollar by dollar, making maybe millions. Then they sent their children to Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford or some other prestigious International university, thus producing offspring who have no idea at all of all the hard work it took to have made the money in the first place. So I've learned to watch out for this. When you see a person who's sending out all the outward signs of being well tended and well educated, look carefully and make sure they have the go-to spirit that made their parents so successful - or have they just learned to rely on others to do all the real work while they go on maintaining the face that is ever so important in these societies.

Hugh Macleod, in his book "Ignore Everybody" puts it this way "Put the hours in - Doing anything worthwhile takes forever. 90% of what separates successful people and failed people is time, effort, and stamina. Stamina is utterly important. And stamina is only possible if it's managed well. People think all they need to do is endure one crazy, intense, job-free creative burst and their dreams will come true. They are wrong, they are stupidly wrong. Put the hours in, do it for long enough and magical, life-transforming things happen eventually." When evaluating any potential business deal with another party, simply ask yourself, "Yes, but are they willing to put in the hours like I do?" That will tell you more than any contract, budget, pedigreed degree or business plan ever will.

This week, with the help of a friend, I was able to get my book proposal to a more than relevant agent in New York. "A Rock Star" agent, as she was described to me. And what made the week for me, was that - not the idea that I might ever actually get to publish the thing, but that one more small link in the chain had been set in what might be the longest chain I have ever tried to assemble. I've done the work. I've publicized the work. I've put in the hours. And continue to do so with every letter I type on these pages. It all adds up, in little ways, sometimes.

A few weeks ago, the person with the ten thousand dollar deal had dismissed this blog and the Wild Wild East book as, not realistic - a long shot. And probably, from an outside reviewer's standpoint that's partially true. But you not only have to believe that long shots can happen - you have to put in the hours to make them happen. Dream real. And do the work. That's my Infinite Wisdom for today.

The road to total enlightenment takes time...

Hi all. For the next few days I'll be working on the business plan for Infinite Wisdom, so I will not be posting quite as regular for a few days.

In my post "How Not to Market in Asia: The importance of time, money, quality and knowing how much of each you need to succeed" I waxed philosophically about the idea that even in the best of circumstances, you are only allowed to have two of those attributes - the third - you must be flexible with. ie: If you want something high quality and fast, you need money. If you want something high quality and cheap, you need time - and so on.

What Infinite Wisdom has in abundance right now is quality, but a distinct lack of start-up cash. So what we need is time. I'm taking that time now, so that we don't have troubles later.

Please take your time to stroll around the site and look at some of the almost 200 older posts we have here. You can search any topic you like in the search bar - you may be surprised!

See you in a few days.

David.

Detri-viral Marketing: When Web 2.0 works against a brand - How Not To Market in Asia III

Inspi (red), or just ti (red)? I recently saw an entire campaign for a local marketing agency that takes this concept directly and uses the word admi (red) instead of inspi (red) to invoke the name of the company, which happens to be the last three letters of the word and a primary colour that is not blue or yellow. You do the math - and that will lead you to the following equation - did the company come up with this copy/graphic idea themselves, or take it from the more than famous campaign you see here? Go figure. The "Product Red" charity campaign has run globally for nearly a decade as an effort to brand red products with a certain percentage of the proceeds going to help eliminate Aids in Africa. Microsoft, The Gap, Starbucks, Apple iPod and the band U2 have participated and it has probably occupied more public service media space than any other campaign in the world over the last decade. But maybe not in Vietnam. So does that make it fair game for ripping? Or just a last little portion of a diminishing market for stealing stuff and not getting made, almost immediately? I'm betting on the latter.


Recently my friend, Hugh MacLeod, put up a post on his blog, Gapingvoid.com, that fit in perfectly with a concept I've been working on of late, the concept of "Detri-viral Marketing". Detri-viral marketing is what happens when the collectivity and social nature of Web 2.0 go against a brand or service to send a negative message about what the parent company is doing. It is, essentially, when brands get busted - maybe for stealing an idea, or telling a lie, or just being generally duplicitous in their messages or their message sending. Two-faced as it would be. But one person never makes it happen. A lot of people make it happen. It's a snowball effect. The concept of viral marketing has been well documented over the last decade or so but the concept of detri-viral marketing hasn't really been defined, because probably, in real life, companies would just like this shit to go away. McDonald's has certainly dealt with a ton of it, in Europe primarily, in a consumer effort to illuminate the contents of their food - the "Supersize This" effect, if you will - and McDonald's has been a client of mine - a damn good one I must say - so I must tell you that a lot of the flack they have received is complete and total bunk. If you weren't a fat, stoopid, slovenly, couch potato, looser, you'd know better than to eat what they serve more than a few times week. But hey, these days, even those bums have a computer... so look out brands. These people have a lot of extra fucking time on their hands. They're like the people who don't like smoking - they don't have the time, commitment or gonads to join a real protest group, so they just find errant time in their day to accost smokers on city street corners and be asses because it makes them feel as if they stand for something. (I smoke too.)

But that's not the kind of detri-viral marketing I want to look at today.

Today, I want to look at people who feel they can get something good done, or right some wrong, or change the world just a tiny little bit by joining something and adding their voice to an effort in the hopes that the whole movement will somehow add up to be greater than the sum of its parts. But let's stick to advertising today. That's enough world changing to get done in just one blog post.

Rewind to 2003. Wieden and Kennedy, the advertising agency in London had just returned from the Cannes Film Festival with the Palm d'Or for the best television commercial of the year for Honda. The spot, called "Cog" was rumoured to have been the most expensive TVC ever made and reputedly took over 600 takes to get right - and in it's own right is an absolute technical and conceptual masterpiece. I was showing it to everyone I could in 2003 because I thought it was just such a great goddamn idea. See it below.



And then, the shit hit the fan. Two Swiss artists immediately protested the idea that they had sold their artistic concept for commercial purpose but at the same time complained that Honda had "appropriated" the idea from their artwork.

To understand the world appropriated from the world of artistic criticism let's just be a bit more blunt. It means stolen. Ripped-off. Filched. Pilfered. Nicked. Hi-jacked and just pretty much the idea that the artist, or commercial artist in this case, used another piece of work to base yet another execution on a core concept that they in fact, did not conceive. Thievery. Robbery. An illegal act. But by the rule of law? Well that's going to depend on a whole lot of judges. Watch just the first few seconds of the Swiss artist's work, below and you tell me how you would rule:



Tony Davidson, creative director at Wieden & Kennedy, said the film carried various cultural references. He told Creative Review: "Advertising references culture and always has done. Part of our job is to be aware of what is going on in society. There is a difference between copying and being inspired by." Mr. Davidson has just recently been made a partner in the agency, based in Portland, Oregon USA and most well known for their Nike work for well more than 20 years. One could do a whole lot worse in the business than working at Wieden and Kennedy and this guy was just made partner. Go figure.

But did they do wrong? Trust me, if the access of Web 2.0 had been present in 2003 they would have taken a complete shit bath for this one. It's pretty much impossible to have watched the Swiss artist's film and not have figured, at least, that the guys who did the Honda spot saw the film. But where's the evidence? And what was the crime?

Did I have sex with that woman? Prove it, baby.

I of course, am not a lawyer, but I've seen my share on TV and I can tell you that the legal clarifications on this kind of thing are indeed fuzzy, and fuzzier from country to country - but I have worked in this business for nearly 30 years and am well schooled in copyright law. Here's basically, how it works: You can copyright what is considered "copy" - that's where the legal terminology comes from - meaning words. And you can copyright imagery - a picture, a film sequence, a visual representation of a concept that is unique. But you can not copyright an "idea", ie: "We should put air into rubber tubes and then put the tubes into rubber casings to make tyres which can then be put on bikes, cars, tractors, etc.". It's possible you could "patent" that idea, but that's a different legal concept entirely. The are also ideas that have become part of what is called the "public domain", meaning that the copyright or patent status has run out and the idea now belongs to the people as a whole - like Aspirin. Anybody can make Aspirin now. Or the Bible. Anybody can print and alter any version of the Bible they want. Or DaVinci. Now we have to watch wretched films about a code he never wrote. Oh, dear, revisionist history. Wouldn't we all love one of his ancestors to have some right to stop production of this dreck? Or is our desire to retain our suspension of disbelief greater than our desire for the truth? And when somebody can tell me what the fucking truth is, then I will die a happy man. But that's gotta wait.

Today' finale is much less dramatic than that.

Welcome Dr. Thanh. The good doctor, for lack of an idea that accurately emphasized his advertising concept, decided that the Chinese had already done that for him and commissioned a few local artisians to just flat-assed copy a new commercial for him - all he had to do, was change the logo - and Voi la! Vietnamese don't watch Chinese TV - they'll never know! Watch the two following commercials in tandem together. Pay special attention to the almost frame by frame replication of the production in addition to wardrobe and modeling/action choices. Honestly, this is corporately embarrassing.

Somebody oughta have their Marketing MBA revolked! Aren't we dealing in enough global shennanigans to have this still happening? Can I find a class in business ethics in Vietnam?

And I'm not introducing this to anyone. This thing had 1000 YouTube hits when I got it and it's well over 4000 today. Detri-viral marketing in action - a lot of people, aside from me, don't like it - and a few crafty editors created it - way inside the production I suppose.

The real Maguffin here (An Alfred Hitchcock term that refers to the element that draws viewers and characters into a drama) is when you go to the parent company's website and they wax on and on about their dedication to "intellectual ownership" - that means the ownership of an idea.

They're very proud of the intellectual capital they own in Vietnam, Singapore and Australia and act like they might be willing to spend the resources to sue anyone who might infringe upon that. But they have no compunction whatsoever about just copying artistic stuff from a Chinese manufacturer that I was told they felt was, "Best practice knowledge in the category". Rubbish. Geez. The problem, as I see it here, is not legal. It's ethical. And I can tell you that no creative person worth his/her salt would dare do this low-ball stuff. Why? Because if you ever want to engender a career in the business the last thing you want is to be accused of is copying another person's idea. Or much worse, copying a shitty idea - and that's what's happened here.

I've been having a discussion recently with a company who wants to mount a business idea based on a "model from San Francisco". What the hell does "Model" mean. It means a business plan. But these people seem to have missed the idea that you can't take models from just about anywhere you can find them and have them work in Vietnam without adding value and uniqueness particular to the reapplication. Will pine cones grow pine trees in Saigon just because they work well in Canada?

Artists, MBAs and others. Twitter didn't steal Twitter from anybody. Microsoft probably did steal the Graphical User Interface (GUI) from Apple, but that's history and we're finally seeing the comeuppance. If you want to have a big business success, try having a big idea. Simple? I don't think so. The world is full of small ideas and small thinkers of those ideas. But the world is well fewer with true visionaries who are well paid, well slept and well shagged. Keep that in mind. Detri-viral marketing is now a concept and I didn't invent it, I just coined the term. The world invented it. So let's get to work boys and girls. Let's create something honestly good today.

For more in the "How Not To Market In Asia" series, click below:

I) The Importance of Time, Money, Quality and Knowing How Much of Each You Need to Succeed

II) What's Wrong With the Vietnam Advertising Association?

For more on time bandit idea & business concept filching, para-normal plagiarism, and all out spooky behaviour, check below:

New York Magazine Steals AsiaLife cover from the future!
Dr. Thanh robbed by Chinese Time Bandits!
SDM:Saigon Digital Marketing victim of para-normal plagiarism!
Bono and international do-gooders caught (Red)handed in idea heist!
Saigon Brand Provocateur steals idea from himself!

For more on digital marketing and social networking see:

Xing vs. LinkedIn: Round II
Trial and Error: The New Normal
What's Wrong With My Social Networking? Xing vs. LinkedIn I
Low Tech Germany. Who Knew?
Advertising People and Blogs
How to Write the Best Blog in the World
What If Gutenberg Had a Blog?
If Blogs Are Free Does That Make Them Worthless?
Detri-Viral Marketing II: The Top 10 Social Media Blunders
Bright Lights, Big Internet and the WWED
Saigon Digital Marketing Conference Successfully Avoids Plumbers Convention
A Tale of Many Marketing Conferences
Detri-Viral Marketing I: How Web 2.0 Can Go Against A Brand
Marketing Predictions for 2009
Barcamp Saigon 2008
"Ignore Everybody" is Born: A Plug for Hugh MacLeod
Are the Bloggerati Missing the Market? Asia has Risen,
Into the Gapinvoid - Web 2.0 Social Networking Born 20 Years Ago

How Not To Market In Asia - The Importance of Time, Money, Quality and Knowing How Much of Each You Need to Succeed

Recently I had another request from yet another potential client to do something that didn't seem realistic within the time-frame and budget. You may remember a post I did last year regarding a different potential client who needed an entire business and advertising plan for bringing a blimp to Vietnam. In that case, I submitted a six page outline with essentially questions for the agency to ask the client so that we could begin to get a handle on whether it was a good idea for the client to proceed with his (pun intended) somewhat overblown idea. Suffice to say, no one has yet to see a blimp floating the skies of Vietnam as a giant Heineken bottle, condom or sausage company promotion. It never happened - and it never happened for one particularly very good reason. The client had absolutely no business plan - and wanted the agency, along with my assistance, to create one for free - stop wait, reverse that: He wanted us to actually pay for the privilege of planning and selling his media - a scenario I had seen already in Vietnam and documented in my "Pay to Pitch" post. Don't do it.

And so, having had this happen, at least once a quarter since I've been in Asia, I've decided that although I may not be the self-help business guru that many people may be looking for in this still wild wild east, I may be able to more than competently offer another kind of assistance. Aside from the successes I've enjoyed with British American Tobacco, Samsung LG and others, I may have learnt far more from the businesses I chose not to do business with - the broken startups, the never-been contenders, the people with no plan whatsoever or the companies who just simply had their heads up their asses - than the ones I have. There is indeed an art to choosing who not to work for, at least as much as there may be in deciding who to work for. Only after that, the not always easy choices of how much you are to be paid, and when and on what terms may progress.

And so with the combination of my successes, and avoidences of other, almost certain, failures, I have become an unequivocal expert on:

"How Not To Market In Asia".

To give you an idea of how I arrived at this writing premise, let me go through just a few of the details of this last week's scenario. For good sportsmanship, I'm not going to name any of the companies, specific programs or people involved, aside from myself, but I'll just give you a basic idea of the facts I had on hand:

I was contacted early last week by a gentleman who had found this blog, as well as my profiles on Facebook and LinkedIn. If you Google the words "Advertising", "Marketing", and "Vietnam" in a Boolean fashion, you'll more than likely hit me on page one, giving me a more than fair web presence in Vietnam - with credit given also to my significant postings on the previous subjects.

The gentleman proceeded to ask a number of questions related to my business via Google chat and I directed him to my LinkedIn profile to get a handle on my previous experiences. After another day or so of chat inquiries I deduced that he was looking for someone to do sales work on a commission basis. He had a TV show with a sponsorship package he wanted to sell to a large foreign bank in town, and assured me that the sale was almost closed - save for the fact that the bank had questioned his company's lack of "Demographic Profile" for their show - which he needed in less than a week. I was immediately taken aback. How do you get to almost closing a deal on sponsorship of a TV program without a Demographic Profile of your product? It's almost slide #1 in your Powerpoint intro, isn't it? Apparently it wasn't. My immediate feeling was that if they had missed this, that their pitch probably had quite a few more holes - and that basically, they were a long way from selling anything.

I looked at the company's website, read the show description, watched the demo and read the bios of all of the Directors of the company. The project, as it exists on the Internet looked good by local standards, but that's a far cry from getting a bank director, in these currently murky financial waters, to sign off on what I was told was a US $20,000 sponsorship deal - and with the Demographic Profile being the only thing standing in the way? I didn't see it.

After more and more questions and fewer and fewer answers - hours worth - over the Internet and phone, it was obvious, that I could no more guarantee a sale based on only one small part of the plan, no matter what I wrote, than I could pull rabbits out of hats or coerce Genies out of bottles. Quite simply, I felt there was far more work in the job than the gentleman was claiming. And convincing him of that, was not going to be easy. It was time to cut to the chase.

I made it abundantly clear that I worked on a fee only basis and was not interested in any sort of success based pay structure. How could I be confident of any success when I was only being asked to fill one hole in a dike that was obviously full of them, and on very short notice? We then began the dance that begins all negotiations and that's pretty much where the whole deal hit the wall. This company simply had no money, or from the numbers bandied about, reasonably less than would excite the profit motives of a convenience store clerk in Toronto - and they were rapidly running out of time. I turned the work down and hung up my phone.

Over the weekend, I sent the man a mail that more fully explained why I had turned down the work. I explained that in every job there are the three elements of Time, Quality and Money. Each of us are allowed to choose two. If you have no money, time may buy you quality. If you have no quality, money and time could produce that, but not always. But if you have no time, only money and quality can get you where you need to be. This man was running out of both time and money. There was now, truly nothing I could do to help him unless we could come to some sort of budget.

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The next few days, leading up to his deadline were almost humourous. Various messages on my phone and Google chats claiming things like "marketing is easy" and "I'm going to start my own marketing company" and such, letting me know that he was doing the work himself.

Here is the final message about his client meeting:

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me:.........You close your deal?
client:......yes we got some closure
me:.........what does "some" mean?
.............."closing" a deal means getting a contract on paper...

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End of conversation. I've not heard anything from him since. Why do I think he did not get his deal signed and will probably be crossing "T"s and dotting "I"s for quite some time? With no ill feelings towards this guy or his company (it's only business, right?), our introductory work together pretty much told me that we wouldn't be doing any more work together in the future. And it's not totally about the money. In the end it became about respect. He didn't respect my (or anyone else in my position's) participation in the process enough to allow enough time or money to get the job done properly in the first place, and then in the end, when he was out of time, decided to declare he could do it better himself.

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That's not a decision I will ever make. #1, because I am neither a financial guru, nor a TV producer and #2, because I have a tremendous amount of respect for those who do what I do not - and do it extremely well. So the moral to this entire story, if there is a moral to be expected, is this:

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Understand what it is that you do better than anybody else - and - stick to your guns.

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If you can do both of these things, you'll be about 8 million miles ahead of the other guys, gals or companies who are all trying to do something similar to whatever it is that you are doing. If you can do both of those things you will not be wasting time doing a lot of other things that you should have other people doing. If you can do both of those things, you will have mastered the art of picking your battles and be spending your time doing whatever it is that you really love.

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"The more steps you take to avoid failure, the fewer you will need to achieve success."

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This week, I turned down a job, because it was not a job that was going to ever be a good job in the future. If so many of the marketers in Asia, be they agencies or other, could do that, they'd be a lot further along the curve. I end today's post with item #15 from Hugh MacLeod's upcoming book "Ignore Everybody - How to be creative". "The most important thing a creative person can learn professionally is where to draw the red line that separates what you are willing to do, and what you are not." Hugh is also responsible for the cartoon that begins this post.

For more information on Brand Marketing Training in Vietnam, go here.

For more in the "How Not To Market In Asia" series, click below:

II) What's Wrong With the Vietnam Advertising Association?

III) Detri-viral Marketing: When Web 2.0 works against your brand

I work for myself. Who do you work for?

The subjects of work and economy have been issues of considerable conversation recently, both with people I know here in Vietnam and my email friends back in the US and UK. Inflation rates globally are at 7% with over 4% in the US and UK and 20% here in Vietnam – and salaries are not keeping pace, anywhere – there is truly no place to run. China's not the answer that's for sure. Just read The New York Times story on the problems with construction of the Olympic facilities and realize the headaches of the international architects and low commissions they've accepted – yes, arguably, to build some of the finest examples of contemporary architecture this century has yet to offer – because the opportunity and low labor costs make comparable buildings impossibly unfeasible in any developed economy. Nobody's making any money in China right now but they are just working because that's where the work is. And that beats not working at all.

In Vietnam things are no different. For all the massive construction projects and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) it's hard to see the trickle-down theory in practice aside from providing plenty of jobs for labourers. Conversely milk has gone from 12,000 dong to 18,000 in just six months, affecting every mother in the country, and my rent jumped by 20% in March. As far as employment, things seem to be treading in reverse as well. I spent an hour last Monday at the largest headhunter in Vietnam and was told that only possibly three jobs at my level were placed in the last two years. Honestly, I don't think this person had ever placed an experienced marketing person before – or knew what to do with one. An hour later at Ho Chi Minh Economic University the interviewer just looked at my CV and had a similar reaction – as if there were an elephant in the office and the main job was to figure out how to get rid of it. In terms of marketing, Vietnam has just no history and doesn't understand the values of marketing, branding or advertising. Even the universities have just recently started adding classes. (You can learn about a new "Institute" for advertising here, partially supported by the Vietnamese Advertising Association). What tends to happen currently is that clients come in, demand certain things and the agencies have only the capability of working in a reactionary fashion. There don't seem to be any concepts of pro-activity or market analysis or planning. What history there will be is currently being written. Do you think there might be some work there? I do.

So for my entire time in Vietnam I've focused mainly on client direct work. I supplement that with teaching jobs to pay the rent but just have much more fun and challenge with the mazes and creative metrics of marketing. The challenge then becomes deciding which deals one should take and which deals one should avoid. I read recently a story in Ad Age about "How To Avoid Working For A Jerk" and that really drove home the point:

"Who do I work for?", I asked myself and the answer was oh, so very clear.
"I work for myself", I answered. And I realized that that has always been the case. From my first full-time employment at my first agency after university up through today, my ultimate responsibility has always been to myself. If I don't like the way the boss treats me, or have issues with company policies, it is truly up to me to make the necessary changes – either by employing creative disobedience in relation to inane company or client directives, or by finding other, better work. It is really that simple.

The blimp job this year was a prime example – "Blimps Go Boom". This particular client had an idea to bring a blimp into Vietnam on which to sell advertising space but they had no business plan whatsoever. I gave them a fee for writing that plan, and a good solid outline, and that became the end of that job. If a client doesn't want to pay for planning then it's a good bet you're never going to find a way to get paid for anything.

A few weeks after that I was contacted by an educational service on behalf of an Australian university. The job was 13 weeks at five hours a week but included 3 student evaluations of my performance, 2 from admin by the local service and one by the university, all over the course of thirteen weeks. That's an an evaluation every two weeks! A review of the evaluation criteria and contract revealed that it was essentially designed to provide a plethora of loopholes for the institution to claim the work I was doing was "not good" as was the language in the contract. Schools in Vietnam are notorious for structuring programs that are based on what the students enjoy and not necessarily what needs to be taught because they want to maintain the highest possible enrollment and hence profit. So in escense, students are allowed to vote for their teachers. Translation? If you want students to be happy, make it as easy as possible. But this is simply not possible in a number of marketing and business disciplines. Teaching Philip Kotler's "Principles of Marketing" is no easy course for western kids and becomes doubly difficult when you realize they won't be familiar with half the case study companies and have a significant language barrier added in. So I passed on that opportunity. One clause in the contract stated quite clearly that the school "reserved the right to give the professor three days notice" and release him/her if the performance was deemed "not good". That was probably the biggest red flag in the whole deal.

Next up and finally, was the Japanese internet company that wanted me to provide three 200 word stories per week on marketing trends in Vietnam for an industry audience. Now that's slightly easier than sneaking a blimp into the country but bears it's own hurdles and challenges. It really all comes down to price. Information in Vietnam is not only hard to come by because of the language difference but also because very little is published. The hidden research quotient in this job was about as large as that blimp – but undeterred by a little hard work I carried on a six week discussion with the Japanese company in search of a workable agreement. To give you an idea of writer's rates for this kind of work the Writer's Market gives a good overall breakdown for everything from advertising writing to various journalistic rates including trade journals. Their average rate for trade journal columns is 78 cents per word with a high of $1.25 and a low of 58 cents. Further checking with a writer friend here who has reported for a Hong Kong trade journal revealed that 45 cents per word would be an acceptable rate in Vietnam. The Japanese offer was 15 cents per word – pretty much a huge red flag and a no-go on that deal. I should put them in touch with the blimp people. They could start a business together! Neither one seems to have any money.

The whole point of this is that the one advantage that each of us has over potentially asshole-ish people and bad deals is choice. We get to choose what we do for a living. As the old story goes about the patient who complained to the doctor that "his feet hurt when he jumped up and down" , the doctors response was just blindly logical. "Then stop jumping up and down.", he told the patient.

We all have the ability to stop jumping up and down if that is what is causing us pain. And I don't suggest that we should be lazy or stop working but do suggest that we be more selective in the work we choose to do and make sure that Quality of Life is appropriately accounted for in our negotiations with employers and clients. We don't have to take a bad deal if we can smell it up front. The trick then becomes in our olfactory senses towards business. And that is what I find myself doing more and more of these days; deciding which jobs not to take.

And so my life is blimp-less and Yen-less but not necessarily less in terms of what I am prepared to do for my future. There's an old salesmen's adage that fit's well here –

"Every time a customer turns me away I say Thank You. Thank you for putting me one step closer to a sale."

Once we accept the fact that we are our own ultimate boss, it becomes a lot easier to bear the obstacles that will inevitably come along.

For some more interesting reading on this subject, take a look at this essay from Paul Graham entitled, "You Weren't Meant To Have A Boss".