The Story of The Bally Shoe

When i was in Cebu, Philippines, last year, i have the honour of sitting with the Secretary of CICT Department, Office of the President, Mr Roxas Chua, and as usual i often try to create a blasting first impression by thinking of a joke or something profound to say.

Since Cebu is heavily thinking of becoming a cyber-city like us in Malaysia, i thought of pulling the esteemed guests with a guip,

"I hear that you guys are copying us Malaysians that already has the MSC - MultiMedia Super Corridor and CyberJaya".

The Secretary quipped back,
"Now, now, who is copying who?". Laughter from all around the Filipino controlled dining hall.

Of course i knew i was just making small talk to make the secretary look good. But my smart mouth got the better of me and when i went up to speak at the CEDF-IT (Cebu Education Foundation for IT) annual dinner where i was the distinguished guest of honour, i can't help it but exploited the rostum to continue that small talk,
"It doesn't matter who is copying who, but since i am from Malaysia and knows about the architect behind the MSC which is Dr. Mahathir, i shall tell you of whose idea Dr. Mahathir copied from."

I began to tell them the story of one of Dr. Mahathir's advisors, which is Dr. Keniche Ohmae of McKinsey, Japan. He wrote a book entitled "The Borderless World" in which he forwarded the idea of nation branding. In it he mentions about rubber from Malaysia. Keniche described the story of a branded shoe called Bally, which is madeh in Italy. Now that shoe, a pair of it costs about say RM200++, and its rubber, which comes from Malaysia is only probably peanuts about say RM20- -. Now if we have an issue with the rubber, we can drop Malaysian rubber and go to Indonesia or Brazil or India. But if we have an issue with Bally, we cannot just drop Italy and go to China and take FungKeong.

Now, now, that is the story of branding which Mahathir smelt out from Keniche's story and soon he was summoned to Kuala Lumpur as a distinguished advisor and he did well when Mahathir soon unveiled marvelous branding ideas such as the tallest twin towers, eco-tourism, F1 and of course the Proton car.

Keniche's argument in his book on what a developing country particularly must do is to create brand value and equity more than relying on raw material equity which is dirt cheap and replaceable by another even cheaper contender in the world. By been branded as no. 1 no one can take that brand easily away from you and thus you enjoy receipts of the lion's share when someone purchased your Bally so to speak.

Well, Malaysia, needless to say spent billions to achieve the marvels it has now and even cost Dr. Mahathir such unpopularity that he has to step down soon enough. Nevertheless the lesson of branding has sunk in and that is why i propose to the CEDF-IT for establishing an Open Source ERP Centre in Philippines that shall brand it as a hub in this region if not the world.

I ended my speech with the words, "Madeh in Cebu, The Philippines".