Quick “thoughts-before-the-review”: RM 50 actually feels a little steep for what amounts to a printed plastic ball and about 50gms of plastic. You get the feeling you’re really paying a premium because they are: 1) Lego, 2) Star Wars and 3) Collectible. The figures aren’t the most iconic Star Wars figures, leaving the Death Star as the most iconic piece of plastic Lego you’ll get. In fact, by the time I went to Toys R’ Us, there were only 4 pieces of the Death Star left.

A thought that struck me as I felt my hand reaching to my wallet as if possessed by some unnatural force, was that it’s products like this that best demonstrate the power and amazing value of a brand. Quite literally, making plastic, worth its weight in gold.

Obviously, this led to a horde of people posting, sharing and commenting on the issue of KFC’s poor customer service and how action needs to be taken over this incident.

To KFC’s credit, I believe they responded as quickly as they could and owned up to the incident telling everyone that they would investigate the issue as quickly as they could.

Responses on KFC's Facebook Fanpage

PR practices and crisis management aside, the thing that struck me about this entire incident is that this is the way it’s going to be for us communications professionals from now on.

Now that everyone and their parents are armed with a camera, a Twitter account, and in (many) cases, an internet connection, they are going to be recording things they see anywhere and everywhere. Stuff like this will simply become the norm.

Now think about the poor KFC communications team. There’s no way they could have expected this crisis to sneak up behind them and hit them on the head. No way. It just happened because a KFC employee decided to hit a customer while someone else was filming.

On the click of a button (okay, maybe a couple) the video was then uploaded and shared. More importantly, shared on KFC Malaysia’s own Facebook fanpage where you’d expect most of the people who’d care about anything KFC would be. This resulted in a chain-reaction and mass-sharing ensued, with KFC Malaysia right in the thick of it.

All because of the kind of technology we have today.

I think there’s some reflection worth doing here for us in the communications business. Most poignantly, our jobs don’t exist in a vacuum. This was true then, it’s tru-er now. Gone are the days when your communications programme was a promotions programme, where you pushed your press releases with impunity. Today, the whole brand experience is the communications, which means one low-level employee stuck in an outlet no one ever visits can cause a storm critical proportions.

How do we react to this? Well, if bad customer service is going to create more negative stories that are louder than your positive ones, shouldn’t you be spending more time ensuring customers get only the very best experience? From a traditional Corporate Communications perspective, this means you can’t just say “that isn’t my job” and shuffle along. It means you need to work more closely with whoever’s job customer service is, or find some way to.

Take KFC’s example. The immediate response is to launch an investigation and be transparent about the process, which they’ve done. But they say prevention is better than cure, and the real solution will be to ensure no staff ever does this again. So perhaps it’s time to take a look at the culture of the company and see if more work can be done to make KFC workers proud to work at KFC.

One thing’s clear – your brand, and how people perceive it, isn’t going to be

Having read books 1 – 4 already, I found the entire Season 1 (10 episodes) to be a faithful adaptation. Choice lines plucked out from the books translated well onto the screen, and if you’ve read the books, you’ll get a vivid re-creation of the scenes you’ve played out before in your mind. Only, this time, there’s live actors acting it out.

For the uninitiated, A Game of Thrones is a Medieval Fantasy-type drama set in against a backdrop of War and Politics. And more politics. The tale starts off with King Robert Baratheon of the Seven Kingdoms heading north to invite his war buddy and old friend Lord Eddard Stark (played by Sean Bean!) to be his Hand (which is to say – Prime Minister). Lord Eddard is reluctant at first, but eventually consents and heads south.

Only, the words echo as he departs. “None who have gone south have ever come back.”

The interesting thing about these “good guys” is that they were actually rebels who had dethroned the previous king. A “mad” king called Aerys Targaryen. But unbeknownst them, the daughter and son of Mad King Aerys had escaped to the East and are also hatching a plan to come back with an army to reclaim “their” kingdom.

And if that weren’t enough. Far in the north, zombies are about to come back and attack and kill everyone. This sets the stage for A Game of Thrones, a tale that spans many locations, and equally as many characters.

In the books, George R.R. Martin’s writing spins multiple threads, but manages to bring characters worlds apart into harmony with each other. Sometimes, the threads cross (kind off like how Jar Jar Binks started the Clone Wars in Star Wars) and the actions of one character, triggers consequences for another. Yet, the interplay does not seem forced or too unbelievable to be true. Instead, everything falls in place and seems to make sense.

Reviewers have called A Game of Thrones and the subsequent novels a modern successor to the Lord of the Rings, and I’d agree. The scale is epic. You get the feeling that there’s a lot going on in the world of Westeros at once. And yet, despite the vastness of scope, the tale still contains enough depth for you to identify with the characters.

And in the TV Series, I’ve found the actors have done a marvellous job bringing out the characters they represent. Sean Bean does a wonderful job headlining as Lord Eddard Stark, one of the central characters of the story. However, the winner for me must be Tyrion Lannister,  a dwarf, played by Peter Dinklage, who gets the best lines in the entire series and executes them to perfection.

What works best for A Game of Thrones is that the subject matter is mature. Politics in its most vicious nature is played out, and loyalties are seldom black and white. Almost every episode brings a new surprise, and you won’t be able to wait for what happens next. You’d wish the second season was here already.

And if you can’t wait, you can always get the books from Borders. More on that later.

Yup, what the post says. FOUR spanking invites to Google Music. I’d like to give props to ShamHardy for the original invite.

Have not yet tried adding my own songs onto Google Music, but here are some quick thoughts:

• Love the interface. It’s clean and swish and gets the job done. Particularly love the big icons with album art.
• Best part? It runs entirely inside your Chrome Window. Cloud computing FTW!
• Search is fast and simple. As it should be. The songs that you can add for free into your library are already pre-tagged so you don’t really have to bother organising them into folders. Tags and searching works best.
• I  never use playlists, so Google Music isn’t going to make me start.
•  The Android App syncs up nicely with the account – I had no hiccups. Just selected the Google Account I was running on my Android device, and it syncs over the library. You can “bookmark” songs to be able to download and play them offline too.
• There’s no “real” store – it’s more like a collection of places to buy music from online. Which I didn’t mind. One afternoon of listening to the free music has convinced me that there’s some pretty good stuff out there that music labels don’t pick up.
• The way it’s supposed to work is that you upload your music, Google stores it and matches it to what it knows about the music (album art and tags and all) and you get to play it anytime, anywhere.

Check out the one I created on my Twitter habits below, and create one for yourself too here.

Yup, I gave up then. But lately, a new kind of game has got me back hooked. It doesn’t pretend it’s not a marketing tool – it is. But it seems that in order to trade off for you being marketed to, you’ll also get something that’s closer to an actual game experience. I’m talking about Dragon Age Legends.

Dragon Age Legends extends the Dragon Age experience onto Facebook and mobile by doing 2 things. Firstly, there’s actually a story behind the whole game and it does expand on the Dragon Age universe. The second thing Dragon Age Legend does is that it complements the actual game Electronic Arts is trying to sell – Dragon Age II – in a tangible way. By playing through the quests in Dragon Age Legends, you get to unlock special items for your character in Dragon Age II.

I think this is an interesting mechanic, and definitely one that combines and enhances the game’s universe across a plethora of platforms. There is already a meta-community around most games (think Steam / XBOXLive / PSN achievements, Facebook updates from World of Warcraft) and by tying together two games on distinctly different platforms and allowing them to affect each other, it does put a new spin on that social game and might be the way for social games to actually interest hardcore gamers.

Now, I’m looking forward to more tie-ups. A Mass Effect one perhaps?

It’s a term often attached to describe bloggers – especially the sort companies want to engage. But it’s never been properly defined and this has gotten me thinking… what, really, is an active blogger? I know I’m not, but I’m seeing it popping up in a lot of profiles people use in their blogs.

Thought I’d ask the crowd (since that’s where the wisdom is, isn’t it?) with a simple Twtpoll. If you have the time, do help me out by clicking one of the options below. Comments on definition also welcome!