Attended a marketing seminar at St Regis

Few weeks ago, I attended a free half-day marketing seminar at St Regis alone. It was a very classy hotel and I guess it must be quite expensive to hold a seminar there. I was surprised to see a comfortable-looking cushioned bench in its lift and hand cream and rolled cotton towels in the restroom. The seminar room looked really spacious with its high ceiling and tall mirrors. Instead of the usual mentos sweets or individually packed mints, they prepared a black box of mini mints for each of the guests.

The seminar started with a presentation on some marketing processes (I tried to copy some notes, but didn't manage to complete my copying as the speaker was too fast). There was a teabreak session and the mini tarts tasted really good... After the teabreak, there was a Q & A session and the speakers commented that we marketing people should go out more often to meet customers and hear from them personally, instead of just relying on data. Data is just data, which is meaningless, unless one could translate it into insights from the information found. The speakers also said that we need to understand customers' experiences to discover ways to improve our product and services.

That reminds me of the "survey" Yi did to find ways to improve her shop "Pet Street". Today, we visited Yi's new pet supplies shop on the third floor of Sun Plaza. It was a really neat shop with many types of pet food and snacks. Yi was really generous and treated us to Pasta Mania. The new mutton spaghetti tasted a bit weird, and I had to add a lot of cheese powder to get rid of the weird taste. All the best to Yi and may her business prosper! I will definitely add your shop website link on my blog when it's ready!

I heard from Xin how London Weight Management pressured her and her friend to sign a package when she accompanied her friend to the trial. (Xin is an average-sized lady who don't have much excessive fats on her, and yet they told her that she needs to lose weight.) The consultant was really persistent and she only allowed them to leave the room after they both signed up for a package. Her experience sounded quite similar to my experience at New York Skin Solution, and these two companies are under the same parent company. I find it really unethical for their consultant to pressure people to sign up for a package on the spot. They should give up after a few rejections and allow consumers to go back to consider, and not repeatedly exaggerate on the problem areas to close the deal.