The Aegis Malaysia Ad that singles out the Philippines

There was much furor yesterday in Social Media when an alleged ad from Aegis Malaysia circulated.  The video commented on the Philippines's business environment, inadequate infrastructure, less security and lack of government support.  According to the video, "...to make things worse, the place could be falling in the Ring of Fire", citing typhoons and cyclones while visibly showing the location of the Philippines on the map.

In my 20 years in the IT industry, I have never seen anything like this.  Not even close.  What the video does is attempt to promote one company country location over another, by practically trashing the latter.  Something you would see in a US softdrink commercial in the 80's.

In 2010, it has been reported the the Philippines overtook India in terms of call center employees.  Late 2013, the Philippines also overtook India in terms of "employee numbers for shared services and Business Process Outsourcing."
http://www.spi-global.com/blog/think-tank/factors-philippines-overtook-india-world-call-center/

In the Overall Outsourcing Destinations ranking published by Tholons in 2013, Bangalore and Mumbai are at #1 and #2, while Manila dislodged Delhi for the #3 spot.  Cebu City also moved up 1 place to #8.  Kuala Lumpur, while at #19 was the outsourcing city destination with the biggest ranking jump.  It moved up 9 spots from #28 in 2012.  Another outsourcing city in Malaysia is Penang at #73.    On the other hand, the Philippines has 8 cities in the Top 100 list.  Apart from Manila and Cebu, Davao is at number #70, Laguna is at #84, IloIlo at #93, and new entrants to list Bacolod and Baguio at #94 and #99 respectively.

http://www.tholons.com/TholonsTop100/pdf/Tholons%20Top%20100%202013_Rankings%20and%20Report%20Overview.pdf

Clearly, there is currently no contest within the South East Asian region in terms of Outsourcing destination.  While it is expected that countries or locations on the #2 and #3 spots will fight for the top spot, Aegis Malaysia's video leaves much to be desired.

The video was point blank in terms of painting a grim picture of the Philippines.  It did not even attempt to mask the name of the country.  One can break down all the items in the video against the Philippines and could find out that some of it may actually be true.  No one can deny that the country indeed falls in the Pacific Rim of Fire, and that really strong typhoons and cyclones hit the country in the last years.

But the criticism on the video is not about whether facts are straight or not.  It it about the intent and the integrity of the video.  It is outright unprofessional for a company to malign not only another company nor a city, but an entire country.  The video said a lot about the Philippines but it said a lot more about Aegis as a company, willing to trash an entire country's outsourcing capability just to promote itself.  Interestingly, Business Mirror reported in 2012, that Aegis has more than 14,000 in the Philippines.  So it is odd that the company may be cannibalizing its presence in the region.

We are expecting that the Call Center Association of the Philippines(CCAP) or the Business Process Association of the Philippines will issue out a statement soon.   And of course, we are expecting that Aegis Malaysia will be speaking soon.  Nevertheless, the video does a lot of damage not to the Philippines, not on Malaysia, but on Aegis as a company whether in Malaysia or in the Philippines.

The video has been removed from the original Aegis link.  But newsgra.ph got a hold of the video and posted it on you tube, it is embedded below.   We feel the link may disappear soon.

What is the Next Hot Game? 2014 version

Back in 2012, we wrote this:
http://darwinstheoryrocks.blogspot.com/search?q=what+is+next+hot+game

We thought that Temple Run would be the next hot game.  Well, we were right and wrong.  Temple Run did enjoy immense popularity.  Actually, up to now, people still play.  But it never reached the levels of PvZ or Angry Birds.

We never thought that it would be Candy Crush which would take over in 2012 and 2013.  Primarily because we thought, we saw both aesthetics and movements in other games, like Bejewelled for example, a PopCap game first made available early 2000.

We also found ourselves addicted to Candy Crush, even reaching level 250+, and sometimes still play.  We attribute it to Candy Crush's innovation and reinvention.  There is always something new.  Plus some levels are really challenging, some taking a week or 2 to finish.  We theorized before that Candy Crush would not be the favorite of Millenials.  It requires a lot of patience, repetition, and resiliency.   Early 2013, it was not surprising that the entire row of a night PAL flight from Cebu to Manila would have almost everyone playing Candy Crush.  It must have appealed to GenXers.


Late 2012, we also saw the emergence of Clash of Clans, at least in iOS.  Clash of Clans(CoC) is an MMO strategy game developed by SuperCell.  MMO stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Game.  We are not sure whether they coined that term or before the reported 8Million daily players.  Without a doubt, CoC is the hot game.  From a business perspective, SuperCell reported earnings of $892 Million, for 2013.  That is more than 2Million dollars a day of revenue!

We will write a separate (special??) blogpost on ClashofClans, as we already started to become addicted to it (now level 71).

Which leads us to our title question, what is the next hot game after Angry Birds, PvZ, Temple Run, Candy Crush, Clash of Clans?   Our answer is we don't know.  lol.

We actually predict (or maybe wish) that CoC would continue until 2015.  And the next Hot Game would start to surface in May/June 2015, which will peak in 2016.

Norte, Hangganan ng Kasaysayan by Lav Diaz showing on Sept 10

Without a doubt, the best film we've seen this year, maybe the past 10 years, actually the past 20 years.  Finally, it will have its regular cinema run.

Yes the movie runs for 4 hours, but
- sometimes we wait for our flights at the airport for more than 4 hours
- watch TV longer than 4 hours
- play video games straight for more than 4 hours
- real Paella cooking takes more than 4 hours
- tambay and do nothing for more than 4 hours

This is 4 hours, well-spent.  We were fortunate to catch it on a special screening at Glorietta a few months ago.  We were first intrigued, mesmerized, confused and enthralled.  At the very end, we were smitten.  There is no other director like Lav Diaz, and there is nothing like Norte, Hangganan ng Kasaysayan.  See Schedule below.