Google Malaysia Marketing Briefing

I was fortunate to be invited by Google to the Google Malaysia Marketing Briefing held in Hilton@KL Sentral on the 22nd of October. This event was organized by Google Singapore, which is the HQ of Google for South East Asia and has over 30+ employees. I thought it was a great chance to meet other SEMs (search engine marketers) in my country (and Singapore), and without second thought, I took a trip down to KL in the Monday morning.

I reached KL around 1pm and took the LRT to KL Sentral. As the event started at 2:30pm, I dropped by at Starbucks and used the opportunity to talk to the store manager there about using it as the next venue of our Webmaster Malaysia Gathering. Then, I walked to the main event.

The first scene overwhelmed me. There were around 100 over people, and none of them are familiar to me (because I was kind of a networking guy, well I guessed I’m only limited to penang). Around 10+ Singapore Googlers are there too, and immediately I recognize a few familiar faces: Derek Callow (head of marketing) and a few chick Googlers (haha) I knew from the Global SME Conference. Oh, and Hanson Toh, boy I was glad to see him since he is the only person I know there.

I did not bring my camera along, but this is a group photo of all the Googlers. Courtesy of Hanson.

Scanning through the crowds, I saw another familiar face - Jeff Ooi!. I went up and introduced myself, got his card, and thrilled to know that he read my blog too. Well, nice meeting you Jeff (which made my whole trip worthwhile).

Then, I mingled around before the event started. I realized there weren’t any SEMs or Internet Marketers. Most of attendees there are from the media company - traditional media: newspaper, tv channels, magazines and radio station.

The briefing started. To cut it short, 3 of the presentations are made to deliver a point (well, in my opinion at least):

“The Internet has become a major media in Malaysia (as well as the Asia region), and it is going to become larger for years to come (as broadband penetration keeps going up). It is inevitable that we (Google) are getting your share of cake (advertising budgets).

We just thought of letting you know first (hence the briefing), and we ‘might’ have opportunity to work together (which Googlers mentioned it as ‘integrated marketing‘ in their presentations).”

Again, that’s from my own point of view, which should be neutral because I’m neither from Google nor the traditional media. All in all, I think this is a wake up call to the traditional and mainstream media.

In the closing, they gave away 2 gift (which contains a lot of Google Goodies) to two attendees that have the closest birthday to the 22nd. And guess what, I was borned at the 22nd of October! So there I was, on the stage, receiving more Google stuffs from Darren Keppie (MC of the event), getting a bit pai seh in front of all the media giants. Afterall, I’m just a small search engine marketer, running a small internet marketing company, writing in a small blog. ;)

p/s: Counting from the Google goodies I received from various events and Hanson: a lot of Google pens, couple of handphone straps, a Google pen drive, a few Google bag, a few Google notepad (one with the Google Earth cover), a Google thermal Mug, a Google thermal water bottle, a few Google T-shirts. Well, life aint that bad as a search marketer (I might auction them off in Lelong or Ebay.com.my and make a fortune) ;) .