SEALNet, a non-profit organization founded by students at Stanford University in 2004 to improve the well-being of people in Southeast Asia, has successfully completed a comprehensive programme of water sanitation and conservation at the Ban Nong Thong Lim School in Buriram.

The project’s objective was to solve the immediate water hygiene problems and to provide a framework for long-term maintenance and sustainability. The team started working on site on 31 August 2008, and their work was completed on recently 12 September 2008. Read the rest of this entry »

By: Matthew Smith

Featured in Bangkok Post on November, 2006

Good corporate citizenship is one of the marketing objectives to surface in the last half a century. It, like celebrity endorsement or a groomed spokesperson, is a humanizer for the invisible entities of the global economy. If a spokesperson is a company’s face, good corporate citizenship is its good deeds. And like an individual, a corporate citizen that behaves well is respected by society. Being good is noticed and rewarded.

But corporate citizenship is often a misguided task. However, a properly developed corporate citizenship activity has impact well beyond the capabilities of standard marketing activities. It’s worthwhile to note that GCC as we’re discussing it here is separate from corporate social responsibility. CSR extends beyond positive activities and covers areas where a business has the potential to have a negative impact on a community by, for example, polluting or putting competing companies out of business. Read the rest of this entry »

By: Matthew Smith

Featured in Bangkok Post on March, 2008

Public relations is often attacked for skewing the truth in favor of its clients. As the goal of public relations is to build and maintain reputation, PR practitioners are always walking a fine line between presenting a client accurately and positively. That does not mean the two are necessarily contradictory – the vast majority of clients have little or nothing to hide – but as a professional, the PR practitioner is always trying to paint a positive picture while staying accurate enough to maintain credibility.

This, in a sense, is ethical issue number one in the industry. Most agree that lying to the media is professional suicide. And most would likely agree that an accurate picture has much more traction than a flowery, over-hyped one. Ethical issue number two is much deeper and more complex, although this complexity is somewhat offset by its rarity. Read the rest of this entry »

By: Kelvin Rugg

“Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, members of the media, I am proud and feel especially privileged to be standing before you today on the historic occasion of the launch of the very latest addition to the CoolTaste family of melt-in-the mouth ice creams.

The result of many months of dedicated research by our team of highly qualified food scientists, the new chilli flavoured choc-ice has already created something of a sensation in the industry. And I can tell you, we at CoolTaste are tremendously excited with its potential to become a true market leader and a pioneer in a whole new range of tanatalising ice cream flavours and taste sensations.” Read the rest of this entry »