Image Boost

By Ashley Sutherland-Winch

American In Macau

Published in Macau Business Daily Newspaper on July 28, 2016

http://macaubusinessdaily.com/opinion/Image-Boost

Last week, Macau’s Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau issued an order to the Macao (Yut Yuen) Canidrome Co Ltd; it must either relocate or shut its operations within two years.  There has been exhaustive news coverage over the past months regarding the fate of the greyhound race track, and I fear that there will be more to come. The Bureau said it had carried out an “exhaustive analysis” of the impact the Canidrome had in helping “diversify the city’s gaming industry” and “position Macau as a world centre of tourism and leisure” while taking into consideration the “social expectations”, but there was no elaboration on how social expectations would be defined.
Two years is a long time in dog years, and in a time when negative press can land in each 24-hour news cycle, this decision term could be lengthy. In two long years, I wonder what the continued impact on our city will be considering the immense amount of “bad press” we are getting right now. Animal rights groups and celebrities world-wide rally against the track and their voices only grow louder. Is it possible that they could take steps to improve their reputation immediately?

With the recent decision to ban greyhound racing in both New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, the spotlight on Macau is growing brighter. The Canidrome is in need of a huge public relations revamp to calm the public and ensure better treatment of the greyhounds.  At a time when we are working to re-brand our city, the Canidrome could use some help. The Hong Kong Jockey Club (HKJC) is now engaging the 20 to 30 something crowd with “Happy Wednesdays”, with the slogan “I’m a happy racing fan.” The HKJC offers staff who are on-hand to teach the new racing fans how to place bets; they discuss the horses, and even offer virtual reality headsets at the racecourse to take the new generation behind the scenes.
The virtual reality tours show the horse stables to give an up close look at the horses. It may not be a great time for the Canidrome to invest in such high tech marketing, but they could demonstrate to the public that they are making strides to improve their image and visually prove that the dogs are being treated well.
For now, we wait, but an image boost is needed to help the track and Macau. Otherwise, two years is a very long time for results and sad for the “racers” that do not meet the tracks’ expectations.

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What’s our slogan?

By Ashley Sutherland-Winch

American In Macau

Published in the Macau Business Daily Newspaper on April 21, 2016

http://macaubusinessdaily.com/opinion/Whats-our-slogan

Macau should not only be the glob­al destination for tourists desiring world class en­tertainment, dining and shopping but a cultural infusion experience; and not limit itself to being just the helmsman of Asian gaming. The call to visit our city is not reaching the Western Hemisphere like it could in the future. For the past decade Western travellers desire what Macau can offer them, but they travel to Las Vegas, Monaco, and Atlantic City anyway. Macau is not on the radar outside of Asia and it should be. Tourists travel to Las Vegas from all over the globe to watch a live show on the Strip, conduct business, and visit famous restaurants and nightclubs. Interestingly, some tourists will spend an entire week in Las Vegas and barely put one coin in a slot machine. Macau can absolutely have this niche in the tourism market but the question is: ‘How do we make them come to us?’
I believe that the marketing strategies of the Macau casinos and Tourism Office have focused solely on the Asian market and historically this has made sense. Now, however; with the Macau Government and the community’s fervent desire to change the Macau brand I think our fine city is missing the boat.
In 2003, the Las Vegas Tourism Board launched the iconic ‘What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas’ line, the brainchild of R&R Partners who, after an extensive case study, identified that ‘the emotional bond between Las Vegas and its customers was freedom. Freedom to do things, see things, eat things, wear things, feel things. In short, the freedom to be someone we couldn’t be at home… And freedom from whatever we wanted to leave behind in our daily lives.’
Isn’t this what we want for our city?
To provide tourists with an emotional connection to visit our city once, and then frequently for the rest of their lives? We want our city to be the destination for Western and Asian tourists alike, dazzling visitors with our rich culture infused with Chinese and Portuguese traditions paired with the excitement and fantasy that our gaming establishments promise.
I think it’s time that we, Macau, call the world to our city through a major citywide marketing campaign that promotes all of what our city has to offer – and I think we should start today.

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Lost Opportunities

By Ashley Sutherland-Winch

American In Macau

Published in the Macau Business Daily Newspaper on May 5, 2016

http://macaubusinessdaily.com/opinion/Lost-Opportunities

In today’s commercial market the immediate impulse of the consumer is to search for a company online. As we become more and more mobile, search enquiries on smartphones can define a company’s continued success by its ability to be ‘found’ by the consumer. Local search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial on mobile devices and many Macau businesses appear to be missing out. Digital maps in Macau are often incomplete and inconsistent. Residents and tourists alike are unable to visit many businesses because the name or address of the company is missing from their favourite map application like Apple, Google Maps or Bing Local.
As a resident of Macau, transplanted from the United States, I’m puzzled when I hear of a new restaurant or I require a business service and I cannot find their presence on the Internet. My online searches begin with one of the big three: Google, Yahoo or Bing. If my intended business does not appear in my search, I will attempt again but this time I will translate the company name or service into Cantonese or Portuguese. Frequently, I am unsuccessful in my searches, leading me to then identify another company with an SEO presence who will ultimately get my business.
Are many Macau businesses not taking search engine optimization seriously? Are they not registering their company names and addresses in English, Portuguese and Cantonese? What is the disconnect? Ideally, in today’s marketplace, companies should complete keyword optimization in at least English or Cantonese to ensure that their enterprise can easily be identified by local consumer online searches in Macau. Social media can also assist with increasing Internet presence but must be executed correctly. For instance, if you create a Facebook or WeChat page for your company and include a physical address, the function of the address URL link is only adequate if it corresponds with digital map applications.
There is a famous American sports film ‘Field of Dreams’ in which the quote, ‘if you build it, they will come’ features. I can associate this quotation with Macau businesses, ‘If you register your company on major websites and connect with their digital maps, we, the consumer, can come!’ I encourage all Macau businesses to check both their online presence and their company’s existence on smartphone map applications. Are you popping up on searches or are you losing opportunities?

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Out of the Box

By Ashley Sutherland-Winch

American In Macau

Published in the Macau Business Daily Newspaper on May 12, 2016

The technology world and social media internationally are very excited about the recent release of the Microsoft HoloLens that started shipping this week. This device joins the Google Glass and other smart wearable devices in the market offering Augmented Reality (AR). AR is a blending of virtual reality and real life allowing users to be able to interact with virtual content in the real world and be able to distinguish between the two where Virtual Reality (VR) is about the creation of a completely fabricated world designed in a way that the user cannot tell what is real and what is not. The goal of each technology is to immerse the user but both systems complete this task in different ways. AR allows users to continue to be in touch with the real world while interacting with virtual objects around them and in opposition VR isolates the user in a made up world.

Macau offers visitors the ability to explore fantasy worlds in our casinos and offering a break from the real world and in a sense a new reality during their time in our city. I am eager to see how the growing interest in Augmented Reality will affect our city and how it can ultimately benefit business in a very neat new way.

Imagine the ability to walk into a restaurant and use an AR device that allows you to choose a menu item and then make additions or deletions as you please or enter a hotel room with blank walls and use an AR device that adds a wall size tv, art masterpieces and even a flawless view of Macau out of the window on a foggy day. The possibilities are endless for our technology savvy businesses to cater to the growing interest of the consumer. AR also offers opportunities to companies to provide high-tech step by step instructions and tutorials for employees, and even to the customer in some extent if they provide service or support in their store. Ultimately, AR allows companies to present engaging content to their target market which can result in higher sales and reach.

Augmented Reality is going to be an exciting new trend to watch in our market that can only enhance our already magical city and I am looking forward to seeing how our companies start using this out of the box technology in Macau.

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Where are you from?

By Ashley Sutherland-Winch

American In Macau

Published in the Macau Business Daily Newspaper on May 19, 2016

http://macaubusinessdaily.com/opinion/Where-are-you-from

“Don’t ask where I’m from, ask where I’m a local” was the advice presented by Taiye Selasi when she spoke at TEDGlobal in 2014. I recently had the opportunity of watching her talk and I was incredibly moved with how important and valid this statement is to Macau in 2016. Of Nigerian and Ghanaian origin, Selasi describes herself as a “local” of Accra, Berlin, New York, and Rome. Her major point in her twelve-minute speech was highlighting the concept of “We are local where we carry out our rituals and relationships but how we experience our locality depends on our restrictions; meaning, where we are allowed to reside based on passport, politics and government.” What I found interesting in relating her statements to Macau is that in a time of economic distress and financial concern, there has been a recent explosion of digital expression of love and pride for Macau causing me to consider our community’s rituals and relationships.
Walking down our streets, you can immediately see that Macau is made up of a diverse population of cultures from China, the Philippines, Europe, Australia, and North America and all groups carry their own rituals and relationships from their places of origin. What you cannot tell from glancing at a person is how long they have lived in Macau and, specifically, whether they are local. When you ask someone where they are from, it isn’t the specificity of the answer it’s the intention of your question and when replacing the language of nationality with the question of locality that makes us truly question where our lives take place. “Human experience is notoriously and gloriously a disorderly affair” said Selasi in her TED Talk.
Currently, the hashtag #Macau is sitting at just under 2 million posts on Instagram, the popular social media site having grown exponentially in the past six months following the growing interest of people, both locals and tourists, to tag Macau on their social media. Macau locals are also found to be promoting Macau with new websites and social media campaigns like LiveLoveMacau.com and AmericanInMacau.com that seek to attract attention as they attempt to brand Macau as their home that deserves international attention. So with our mixing pot of cultures here in Macau, with our rich history of Chinese and Portuguese customs, should we take the advice of Selasi? Should we be changing our question from “Where are you from?” to “Where are you local?”

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Do You Snap?

By Ashley Sutherland-Winch

American In Macau

Published in the Macau Business Daily Newspaper on May 19, 2016

http://macaubusinessdaily.com/opinion/Do-You-Snap

You may have heard it back in 2011, a cumulative groan heard around the world as people exclaimed, “More social media?!” It’s possible, however, that you may not have really paid attention until 2015 because you thought of it as an app that was a plaything for teenagers; but unless you’ve literally been living under a rock you have heard of Snapchat.
Now, Snapchat is the fastest growing form of social media for people aged 18-34, the demographic of the ‘movers and the shakers’, the consumers, and possibly the most important customer that you have right now. It’s now time for you to start taking Snapchat seriously for your business.
To summarise, the image messaging application software product that exists in twenty languages, including simplified Chinese, allows users to send and receive photos and videos with content or even ads, with statistics reporting that of the 100 million Snapchat users currently on record, 400 million ‘snaps’ or messages are sent per day.
Whether or not you cared in the past, now it’s time to get your business excited about utilising Snapchat for your brand.
Here are a few of the areas that international businesses have started to maximise exposure with the popular app: provide access to live events, deliver private or premier content, offer contests, perks or promotions, take people behind the scenes, and even partner with influencers.
Global brands and content creators are using Snapchat to produce daily stories that engage and excite their audiences. Snapchat stories, a timeline of sorts that only has a life of twenty-four hours, are a string of snaps used to create a video narrative. To date, there are over 1 billion views of Snapchat stories each day and companies are scrambling to build snaps so that their audiences can discover a new and innovative side of their brand with the use of the platform’s tools and features by adding filters, geofilters, text, emojis, music and more, all from within the app.
To be relevant in today’s social media, in a new world where Facebook is now considered ‘social media for grandparents’, Snapchat accounts should be a major part of your brand. I’m really looking forward to seeing more businesses in Macau joining the Snapchat revolution or I fear that just like a Snapchat story your brand’s relevance could quickly become irrelevant in twenty-four hours or – like a snap – gone in ten seconds or less.

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Entertainment Capital of Asia

By Ashley Sutherland-Winch

American In Macau

Published in the Macau Business Daily Newspaper on May 26, 2016

http://macaubusinessdaily.com/opinion/Entertainment-Capital-of-Asia

‘The Entertainment Capital of the World’ was an advertising slogan first developed for Los Angeles during the Golden Age of Hollywood but soon after, Las Vegas took the title. Famously, the MGM Grand in Las Vegas was the first casino to bill the slogan on their property. With famous acts performing nightly, Las Vegas had the glitz and glamour with performers from showgirls to the Rat Pack gracing the stages nightly. Now, Las Vegas is an epicentre of live entertainment. Giants like Cirque du Soleil, Celine Dion, Elton John, and Blue Group dominate the present day stage and more innovative and exciting shows are added yearly. Tourists travel from all parts of the globe to be entertained by the performances in Las Vegas.
In recent years, Macau has been called the Entertainment Capital of Asia but I think that we may not have enough live entertainment to hold the title for long. The House of Dancing Water has been a powerhouse show for Melco Crown for many years and Studio City has brought a new vision of entertainment to Macau. Casinos like The Venetian and Galaxy are working to change the image of Macau’s gaming culture but with our declining casino revenue, will adding more shows appeal to the casinos? I’m concerned that if more live shows or at least a few resident entertainers are not added to the Macau marquee, we may lose our grip on our entertainment title. The other question that I ponder is tourist patronage for live entertainment.
In present day Las Vegas, it is not uncommon for tourists to come to the city to indulge in entertainment and not participate in gaming at all. Can Macau offer the same experience and hope to alter the instincts of tourists visiting our city? If the average Macau tourist has gaming on their mind, can we entice them to watch a show for an hour or two? Currently, Studio City is dominating search engines with their meta tag line ‘Asia’s Entertainment Capital’ maximising their new brand message to the world. The promise of new casinos like Wynn Palace and The Parisian also make me hopeful that more forms of entertainment and live shows are on the horizon. Macau seems to be fighting to keep its hold on entertainment in Asia and I look forward to watching our city’s future unfold live and hopefully on stage.

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The visa gamble

By Ashley Sutherland-Winch

American In Macau

Published in the Macau Business Daily Newspaper on June 2, 2016

http://macaubusinessdaily.com/opinion/visa-gamble

With the organisational restructuring of the Labour Affairs Bureau (DSAL), which includes a new division specifically focused on the hiring of non-resident workers, the question must be asked: “If casino upper management job security becomes unstable, will the casinos be able to properly support Macau’s image revamp?”

Our casinos are working quickly to create alternative activities for tourists like entertainment, activities for non-gaming age patrons, and dedicating funds to re-branding the image of gaming in Macau – all in the name of anti-corruption. Just last week lawmaker Ella Lei said in the Legislative Assembly that “there are too many non-resident workers in management positions in the gaming industry”.
While consideration should always be given to local workers, discounting the longevity and experience of international workers in executive level positions within casinos will cause major issues, especially if a work visa renewal denial is sudden. The Human Resources Office of Macau told the Portuguese language Jornal Tribuna de Macau that the bureau can deny requests for renewals of non-resident casino executives’ working visas if “there are local workers that can fulfil the necessary conditions to perform managerial roles”. If this is found to be true those individuals currently working in management positions, all tasked with supporting major image campaigns, will ultimately feel insecurity grow regarding their visa renewals – regardless of their job performance.
At the same time as the DSAL begins their thorough examination of international workers in upper management positions the Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO) estimates that our number of tourists will climb to 40 million visitors in the year 2025. With increases in tourism and new casinos being added to Cotai surely there will be plenty of new jobs on the horizon to employ locals. Do we really need to threaten the security of international workers employed by global brands in the gaming sector? Shouldn’t casinos be allowed to recruit the most innovative, experienced and seasoned executives that are available in the market internationally? Any new hire should be scrutinised with priority consideration to locality but the existing employee should not be penalised due to their non-resident status if they are performing well in their jobs. Casinos should be given the task of evaluating performance and locality without fearing a sudden visa denial. Consideration must also be given to the families of non-resident workers who have bet their livelihood on moving here for work.
Are we now saying that working in Macau is no longer a safe bet?

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Password Protected

By Ashley Sutherland-Winch

American In Macau

Published in the Macau Business Daily Newspaper on June 9, 2016

http://macaubusinessdaily.com/opinion/Password-Protected

Mark Zuckerberg had a bad Monday. The billionaire owner of Facebook and Instagram was hacked earlier this week, and for a brief period lost control of his Twitter and Pinterest accounts as a hacker started making posts. It is believed that Zuckerberg’s weakness was re-using his passwords. Personally, I find it slightly calming to know that a media mogul like Zuckerberg, despite running one of the world’s biggest websites, can have the same security glitches as us mere mortals. The fact is however, is that reusing passwords is a terrible idea even if you aren’t a billionaire with a target painted on your back. The only account that should be at risk if Twitter gets hacked is Twitter, not your Facebook, WeChat, or Pinterest accounts in addition to Twitter because all of your passwords are the same. Did you know that 80% of the time, online accounts are compromised by a “hacker” with mediocre skills? The truth is that often passwords are just too easy to guess. Why is it that we are told over and over to not use duplicate passwords and even to change are codes frequently, but we ignore the advice? I know that we like to gamble here in Macau but perhaps we should make efforts to decrease our chances of digital violation and cybercrime. While it is hard enough to remember one password let alone a unique and different password for each of our accounts, it might be time for us to finally take the step. We must remember a more complicated password than our birthday, pets name, or 123456 or our name and birthday. Many security experts now recommend a minimum of 15 characters combining letters, numbers, and symbols. More characters are necessary now because a five-character password can be cracked in a mere five seconds by a savvy hacker. A new popular method for choosing safe passwords is creating a phrase maze. This is done by creating a phrase like “Create a Safe Password” and turning into a complicated password Cre8A$@feP@$$w0rd. Then your task is to think of several new phrases for each of your different accounts. While this task might seem daunting for some, it is a complete necessity to protect ourselves. In a post to users on Monday, LinkedIn stated, “ All members should take care to manage and change passwords across other sites, avoid reuse, leverage advanced security features, and update often.” I think it would be wise for all of us to take this advice.

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Bring On Broadway

By Ashley Sutherland-Winch

American In Macau

Published in the Macau Business Daily Newspaper on June 16, 2016

 http://macaubusinessdaily.com/opinion/Bring-Broadway

 

The Tony Awards, Broadway’s biggest night, is loved around the world. As a theatre lover, I found myself scrambling on Monday morning to find the international broadcast of the awards show, only to find it missing from the television line up. Perhaps it will be played later this week on Macau cable, but thanks to the glorious internet age, I was able to catch most of the show online. Broadway is booming in the United States and West End, and tours around the globe are selling out in record numbers. In Las Vegas, Broadway show performances presented by Steve Wynn and the Sands Corporation were slow to start. Las Vegas tourists were more drawn to the excitement and mystique of circus and showgirls than musical theatre and plays, but after several years of failed productions, Vegas took a long look at the demand. In 2012, the landscape of Broadway theatre changed in Sin City with the opening of the Smith Center for Performing Arts. What analysts identified was that residents of Las Vegas craved theatre, but in a casino environment where long-running resident shows were established, locals would see a show once or twice but they wouldn’t want to keep seeing repeated performances of the same show. They wanted diversity: plays, musicals, revues – and the Smith Center answered the call. The mega theatre paved the way for national and international Broadway tours to find a home in Las Vegas. Now, Las Vegas locals can delight in at least nine or ten different productions per year at the Smith. What Vegas learned was that locals desired theatre and the city needed to find a solution.

Do we have similar desires here in Macau? As the entertainment industry develops in our city, we may see a growing local desire to increase our musical theatre, play and opera options. This summer, the Venetian Theatre is hosting “Shrek the Musical” and “Blue Man Group” and when Wynn Palace opens, perhaps Mr. Wynn will choose to host touring shows as well. Currently, there are 29 Broadway tours in the world, and as locals, we must support the efforts to bring these shows to Macau. We cannot rely on tourists to fill the seats; we must. We want to expose our community to live theatre, and traveling shows are the perfect answer. If we show a demand, the international theatre community will fight for our patronage. I say, “Let’s bring more Broadway to Macau!”

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