I first met Sim Wong Hoo as a teenager while working at Funan Center, just before he launched the Cubic 99 PC (a failed product, which later inspired the Sound Blaster).
A genuinely down-to-earth person. An engineer’s engineer, somewhat like the Woz. If he had only found his "Steve Jobs", someone who had the vision and marketing savvy, Creative would be have a been major tech player.
When the Ipod launched, Apple sold "U2 Special Edition" ones that had the band's autographs etched to the back.
Guess what Creative did for the launch of their Zen mp3 players (supposed iPod killers)? 10 limited edition ones autographed by CEO Sim Wong Hoo.
Like "Who cares about U2 and other artistes (admittedly there were few famous ones in SG then) right? We've got a special one signed by our CEO!"
The person who thought of this should have been fired and condemned to never work in marketing ever again.
> 10 limited edition ones autographed by CEO Sim Wong Hoo. Like "Who cares about U2 and other artistes (admittedly there were few famous ones in SG then) right? We've got a special one signed by our CEO!" The person who thought of this should have been fired and condemned to never work in marketing ever again.
Honestly, having the decision between a "U2 Special Edition" and "CEO-signed Special Edition", I would without hesitation (all other things equal) choose the latter one.
A great middle finger to all this musical band fandom, and the hypocrisy of lots of insanely commercially successful musicians who claim that they do this all for the love of music instead of love for money (just to be clear: there exist lots of indie bands for which I immediately do believe their love for music, but these bands are nearly always far too unknown to be suitable for being poster children for selling MP3 players).
No need to mention that I love this kind of marketing. I guess I sometimes have a non-mainstream taste. :-)
Worth to note those Creative devices were not sold, they were given away as a prize in a contest.
And it wasn't a total of 10 units, the winner received a collector's package with ALL TEN autographed Creative "Zen Micro" , one in each color available. 2nd~10th place won one "normal" Zen Micro respectively.
Frankly, could be worse. Imagine being a teenager back then and winning 10 MP3 players...
A genuinely down-to-earth person. An engineer’s engineer, somewhat like the Woz. If he had only found his "Steve Jobs", someone who had the vision and marketing savvy, Creative would be have a been major tech player.