I HAVE been a great campaigner for Malaysia as a country and Kuala Lumpur as a city.
Lately, however, I have found myself at a loss to tell my friends why they should visit KL, especially if they have already been here once in the last 10 years.
While Singapore, Hong Kong and Macau have invested in new stories with the opening of Universal theme park, lavish casinos, Formula 1 Night Race, and integrated resorts, China and India continue to attract interest for their sheer economic momentum.
Despite the reinvigorated Asian flourish, the KL story has remained quite unchanged. Even the tourism commercials, once famed for capturing the fancy of the world with its charming jingle and appealing visuals -- my mom was a fan – seem to have run out of imagination.
The only reprieve comes from the fact that even though there’s not much that’s new in KL, we are being discovered by new segments – more Gulf tourists traveling to somewhere modern, yet green and halal, or middle-class Indian tourists travelling abroad for the first time, somewhere close and relatively inexpensive.
There are, of course, the predictable choices, like getting our own theme parks or spanking new clubs. But that will be just ticking the checklist. And then we don’t want to look “kiasu” to Singaporeans, do we?
So, what’s our next story, really? The question is quite fundamental as it relates not merely to the next tourism attraction, but to our economic positioning in the global market and our own evolving self-perception.
It needs an audacious vision and belief, the same kind that spurred our government to green-light the building of the Twin Towers, the Sepang circuit, and Putrajaya. When it comes to inspiring the world’s imagination, accountants and bureaucrats shouldn’t be the ones taking the calls.
You can’t start from what is practical, but what will blow the mind away. Let’s admit it: practical is boring and by definition predictable. More significantly, practical can be woefully myopic, and may only focus on that small measurable part of the full picture, which is, ah well, measurable.
Back to the drawing board. To make a deep impression, any project must emanate from imagination. Then we have to work backwards to make it happen – and make it economically worthwhile.
Singapore has, in recent years, worked overtime to attract the most creative, brightest, and innovative talents by enticing them with global educational facilities, world-class R&D centres, and internationally recognised productive industries.
It has gone the whole nine yards to attract the best and the brightest talent by baiting them with generous PR and citizenship laws and enviable tax incentives. Try to figure this one: Singapore’s GDP is estimated to level out at 13% this year!
The tough question needs to be asked: Where will the money come from if KL, or Malaysia, on a much wider scale, had to revamp itself? I am not a public finance expert, so I will give the details a pass albeit with a few thoughts.
When we set out on the ‘first surge’ more than a decade ago, we had very few deep-pocket entities and much less expertise. Today, Malaysia has a galaxy of new homegrown multinationals – CIMB Bank, Axiata, Astro, Maxis, and Petronas, among others. They all need global stature, iconic branding, and a world-class identity. They need to stand for global class, but with a differentiating unique local soul.
We also now have a fairly world-class construction industry with a global footprint. The new affluent mass Malays offer a great local market, as well as millions of rich bored people across the strait. There is also a huge Chinese and Indian economically-enriched mass market right next door, something that didn’t exist 10 years ago. These could be the fuel for the ‘second surge’.
So, here are a few action cues. First, we need to brand KL city – just as New York (“The Big Apple”) is a brand. In fact, Penang and Malacca probably have more character than KL. The brand needs to exist within the framework of brand Malaysia – but it needs to be more focused, contemporary, fluid, and energetic.
Second, the brand must be communicated as much internally to KL citizens as to people outside to ensure that we can believe in and live the brand. Brand cultures can manifest as objects, embodiments, or institutions, and they must be developed to give the new brand deeper credibility and momentum. This template can be replicated for other key tourism hubs in Malaysia, each with their own unique identity under the umbrella.
There are some hygiene factors to be considered, too. It needs to be in sync with our multicultural identity: who we are and what we want to be as a people. It shouldn’t be an all-out assault on our beautiful green ecology and social values. It shouldn’t probably be too materialistic, too decadent, and too transient.
In other words, it should be sort of halal, in its broader interpretation as humane, holistic and harmonious, without being boring.
Also, the global patience with cheating cabbies, dirty toilets, and snatch thieves is fast running out. A blanket uncompromising stance is needed against these negatives. We need to understand that high quality talent is the rarest commodity in today’s world.
Malaysia with its limited population may never have all the talent that it needs to catalyse its future. A few hundred thousand of them in a country of 27 million are not going to hijack its social or cultural make-up. On that front, we need more openness.
The exact shape of the ‘what and how’ should ideally be a crowd-sourced creation of KL citizens themselves – the intellectuals, the creative community, and the common folks.
This needs to be one brand whose soul emanates from the hearts of the four million denizens who call KL their home. And that includes expats like me.
·Prashant Kumar is the CEO of Universal McCann, a media and marketing consultancy. He is also a passionate advocate of Malaysia and its people. He wonders if KL was a person, would it be a ‘he’ or ‘she’.
By PRASHANT KUMAR
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