No no...

Despite having a day of public holiday on Wednesday, it has been a very long week at work. A little background - about 2 moons back, I was asked to take charge of marketing in Nible2. Yes, it was a promotion without any pay increase. I am OK with that but the mess left behind by the previous managers were unbelievable. Many projects were more than two quarters late, mostly were dying and many dead.

So, it's clean up for the last 60 days or so. Started by considering new vendors - which brings the story to this week. We asked a couple of PR companies and advertising companies to make their presentation to us. We needed a consultant to give Nible2 a new image. All in all, the response was good - we had about 6 vendors.

Unfortunately, that was about when the nightmare started. One chap showed up alone, without a laptop, no presentations, nothing. He showed up empty handed and by the looks of it, he was suffering a bad hang-over. Mind you, the bloody meeting was at 4pm.

Most of the others were better prepared for their presentation. I was impress with one or two companies. However, I would say that of the remaining 5 vendors, about 4 of them had one problem. When they presented their corporate CD, I went....OMG, should I really hire you?


Yes, this is how one company provided their corporate CD. They are a PR and advertising agency. Hmmm... would you hire someone who cannot present their own image well? The plastic sleeve reminds me of a RM 5 pirate VCDs from SS2. Then again, even pirated CDs would have monochrome or colour printed CD titles. This one has bad handwriting on it. Not even the printed sticky labels.

This boggles my mind. They are a PR / Advertising company. Surely, they must know better. Blank CD labels and the applicator would be less than RM 50. So, what could cause this oversight? Attitude? Lack of attention to details? Or perhaps it is just unimportant to them? But it is important to me - how can I justify this vendor to my executive directors for a RM 100,000 purchase request?

While there is no clear cut to say that a poorly projected image shall cause the potential vendor to be excluded, I do feel that the vendors should not disadvantage themselves.

Something I've learnt from a footballer - the difference between extra-ordinary and ordinary is just the little bit extra.