Please introduce yourself to your classmates! Show the real you!

Hi Guys,

I am impressed by the effort you put into our opening essay overall.

I could read your hearts and minds, and your passion about this course.

I just want to share some thoughts for your better engagement with readers, for instance, you might have to write this kind of essay to demonstrate your interests to concerned parties in a real-life business or academic project.

I have seen a lot of overlap in your essays—that is some boilerplate quotes and conventional stances regarding social media.

These are some examples below,

  • Social media can empower us in many ways…
  • I will like to be able to gain more in-depth knowledge on social media to help individuals and organizations to achieve their goals….
  • We need to embrace social media revolution….

Other than just stating about the change in the WORLD, please say something more on yourself and go straight to the points as your reader/audience would be able to pay only limited time to read your content as they’re bound to have been bombarded with content.

 

 

Another issue I saw in a lot of essays across the board is that your personal connection to or investment in the issue was not explained.

For example, many students seemed to pick F&B as their choice of organization as this business category appears to be most affected by the social media engagement and digital marketing.

But F&B is a hard sell, and you need to invest more time and effort as to questions—why F&B? and in what ways do you think you are relevant to this issue and capable of the problem solving, if any? Other than just stating a dry fact that F&B need social media, please expand on why YOU are interested in and why it is important to YOU.

 

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Be personal and unique! Just be yourself and be real. In that way you will be the most creative and interesting person you can be.

 

One way to show more of your personal investment and unique critical thinking is to raise questions about things you find confusing or troubling regarding the issue.

Or you can state your personal history and experiences where you’ve realized the importance or value of your social media.

Or you could simply confess that you don’t fully understand or agree with a general consensus, such as “social media is increasingly important in our lives!”

If you want to confront conventional beliefs, you’ll have to think through your reasoning to convince yourself and others, right? That can be a great way to show personal engagement with the issue and find concerns worth exploring.

This courses might provide you some insights and rationale why or why NOT social media is important or might NOT be that effective way to your business and personal goals thus things should be turned around.

To me, social media is an effective communication tool to understand the “change” in society, “changes” in the way people think and behave. I have seen social media empower us as it provides a personal broadcasting channel, so people now tend to think in a more “self-centric” way than ever.

Also as we are more connected. We are responding to social issues more timely manner. However, issues can be volatile, and thus it is very hard to create sustainable relationship with one another.

So I continue to update this course with more diverse real-life cases, and more in-class activities and assignments will be given to create engagement and connect your personal interests with the class content. The readings are more of a classic framework or baseline, as fundamental and critical questions remained unsolved, but my in-class lecture materials are updated with more diverse and current real-life issues and cases.

Also, I updated my lecture slides with more text than previous ones to help your easy understanding about the content. Yet, visual aids also will be provided to draw quick attentions and intuitions to the content. And this approach is aligned with how infographics serve these days.

 

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Infographics make complex information eye catching, shareable and easily digestible.

 

My aim for this class is to help students to be more STRATEGIC on social media, to be both “fascinating content makers” as well as “strategic relationship managers” simultaneously.

I believe we could be and should be both attractive and wise with our social media strategies… and we can learn through examining a diverse range of previous cases and principles and frameworks.

What were the initial questions that opened social media era, what were the issues and concerns society had to face with the advent of social media, and what are still ongoing and unsolved issues?

Please introduce yourself with regards to your “interest” and personal “history” regarding this class’ main topics encompassing MNC’s global marketing, political comm, crisis comm. and small and medium-sized enterprises and so forth.

There is no right or wrong way to express yourself on social media, but we all know there always attractive things and boring things in the eyes of social media audience. Similarly, keep your audience in mind as you introduce yourself.

Don’t waste your space and words just to portray really obvious and general things about social media. Don’t be too unnecessarily lengthy. Keep it simple and to the points in accordance to your audiences’ attention span.

Do be genuine and sincere, which will help your audience connect with you.

Kyu

 

23 responses to “Please introduce yourself to your classmates! Show the real you!”

  1. For your self-introduction. you can simply reply to this posting, or you can write up some posting about anyting you’d like at any time!

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    1. Hi, everyone! I’m Seraphyn, a Year 4 SOSS student, double majoring in Psychology and Marketing. I am intrigued by the influence social media has on the world of Branding and Marketing. I would love to hone my skills in developing effective social media strategies for brands. I also most definitely agree with Prof’s point, where it was stated that one of the most important goals for social media strategies is to turn the brand’s target audience to brand advocates.

      I would like to further discuss on one of the topics that was brought up during class – whether WhatsApp messenger is a social media tool. I used to cancel out the possibility that it can be considered as one, just because of the nature of it is a messaging app, within individuals specifically. It is unlike its rival messaging apps (like Line and Kakao), whereby brands can employ their chat-bots on such platforms and therefore, allowing them to communicate with their audience. Thus, based on that logic, if brands are not able to start a conversation with their target audience, how could they turn their target audience into brand advocates? Hence, I did not think that WhatsApp can be a considered as a social media tool.

      However, it seemed that WhatsApp is changing its strategy – with KLM and Hyatt hotel being one of the first few brands to try out as business accounts on this messaging platform. This platform is a game changer for not only the hospitality industry but the service industry as a whole. This will minimise the gap between brands and the audience, and also serve its purpose in elevating the service provided by such brands. WhatsApp has a double-pronged approach to it – not only does this platform allow brands to hold conversations with the audience, it also improves the services that brands provide to the audience. Thus on that note, I think that WhatsApp can be considered as an effective social media tool one.

      Let me know your thoughts on this?

      By the way, greater details can be found here: https://www.tnooz.com/article/travel-brands-watch-whatsapp-and-facebook-messenger-moves/

      Thank you!

      Liked by 2 people

    2. Hi Guys!

      I’m Emily, Year 4 student in School of Business, majoring in Marketing and Operations Management.

      What sparked off my interest in taking up a digital marketing or social media marketing career was an internship with a SME in the furnishing industry. I assisted in handling the social media accounts of 4 divisions, each division with a different style of furniture, e.g. quirky, luxurious. In the process of generating marketing collateral for them, I found myself enjoying the process of coming up with fresh ideas and analyzing statistics behind them.

      While some may say that anybody can take on a social media job, not many make the best use out of it. According to Social Media Examiner, 97% of marketers are currently participating in social media—but 85% of participants aren’t sure what social media tools are the best to use.

      So I’m taking on this course to learn more practical skills on the social media tools. Classes seem to be insightful so far, thankful for the opportunity to be exposed to Synthesio and looking forward for what’s to come! 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

    3. Hey Peeps!

      My name is Perry. I am a year 5 business student with double majors in marketing and communications. I love to sing and dance hip-hop and I also sing and host for events freelance. Hence I understand how social media can be a very useful tool.

      I have had some good experiences with social media during my everyday life as well as during internships, especially while i was the Brand Management intern for Uber and was tasked with handling their social channels on a daily basis.

      Keeping it short and sweet (just the way i feel all social media channels should be), social media can so powerful when used effectively but so deadly when mishandled. But we love it as humans because it always keeps us on the edge of our seats!

      Liked by 1 person

    4. Hi everyone! Whoops, almost forgot to introduce myself! I am Nurin, a Year 4 Business student. I’m currently majoring in Operations Management an Corporate Communications. I’m interested in this course as it has occurred to me that most PR and marketing crises derive from something going viral on the Internet or through messages.

      That made me realise how powerful social media can be – when people share posts or spread negative WOM, it can affect a firm’s or individual’s reputation in very harmful ways. I’m not very active on my social media platform – my Facebook is bare and I haven’t touched Twitter in ages. Nonetheless, it is an important tool used by businesses to reach their customers.

      Currently, I am working for one of the offices located the SMU Admin Building and helping them manage their social media accounts. Thus, I would really like to understand how to use social media effectively to build a positive brand image and reach a higher number of users.

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    5. Hey everyone! I’m Rui Yuan, or you can call me Ray! I’m a Year 3 Business student majoring in Marketing and Corporate Communications.

      To share, I am very much Singaporean but every year, my family takes a 8-hour drive up to the land of Ipoh Hor Fun (Ipoh at Malaysia) to visit my maternal relatives. If you are looking for any recommendations for places to visit, Ipoh is an absolutely gorgeous place with cheap and absolutely sumptuous food offerings. It’s also a very hipster place so it’s definitely worth a one-day trip in case any of you are looking to have a photoshoot to beautify your Instagram profile. You can then make a short trip to Cameron Highlands to stock up on some sweet fruits before heading back to Singapore!

      That said, whenever I visit my relatives, it amazes me how they are equally (if not more) tech-savvy as I am, even though they are almost 14 years older than me!

      It really begs the question – are they tech-savvy or am I lagging behind in this rapidly advancing digital world…?

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  3. Hi everyone! I’m Bryan, a year four student from SOSS. I agree with Prof’s point on how social media has become a channel to express what a person thinks and feels about the world around them and has turned into a “personal broadcasting channel”. I recently came across an article on The Straits Times that talks about how teenagers are now using social media as an avenue to earn extra cash. You can check it out here! http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/young-teens-with-big-followings-on-social-media

    We can see that the advent of social media has –in a way– disrupted influencer marketing. Instead of using expensive celebrities/TV personalities to face their brand, companies are now using social media to identify ordinary people who know how to use the platform to gain followers and hire them to market their products. It has allowed for greater engagement, drives traffic, and help makes the brand more ‘relatable’.

    What do you guys think!

    Liked by 1 person

  4. Hi All,

    I’m Jun Kai, a year three student from SOL. Even though I have little experience with social media, I enjoy being able to hear Prof’s and all of your fascinating views on the subject. I often hear people saying that social media is powerful, but I never really understood that, and I’m starting to. I was very impressed by how many of you have experiences in using social media during your work/internship and are taking this course to further your knowledge.

    @Bryan: Thanks for sharing that article! I think it’s great that companies are starting to look to social media users to market their products. Even though celebrities are famous, some social media users can have an even more extensive network and influence than them. And also, celebrities probably cost more money to hire.

    Liked by 1 person

  5. Hi everyone. I’m Amelia, a year one student from SOSS. Thus far, I have used social media mainly on a personal basis. Unlike many others, I have little experience using social media for work-related purposes but am very interested in finding out how social media revolutionise industries and not just on an individual level.

    In response to Bryan, many of these social media influencers have a ready base of followers for brands to market their products. As such, I believe it is a win-win situation for both influencers, who seek to earn more money, and brands, who are trying to be cost-effective while building a personal connection with every customer.

    Liked by 1 person

  6. Hi all, I’m Roy, a year 3 Pol Sci student. I am interested to see how Politicians have inevitably moved to adopt social media as one the tools for connecting with their people. From Prime Minister Lee to Mr. Donald Trump, politicians have used social media to varying degrees of success. My question is will leaders of Authoritarian regimes see a use for social media as a tool for their regime?

    @Bryan I agree, social media has broken the monopoly on influencer marketing that celebrities controlled. From the perspective of the Companies engaging such marketing services, these “ordinary celebrities” offer more bang for their buck. On one hand, they are relatively cheaper to engage than celebrities yet their influence may prove more substantial as they are more relatable to the everyday folk. This adds to their authenticity and credibility.

    Liked by 1 person

  7. Hello! I am Joyce, a year 3 business student majoring in Marketing. I feel that social media is really a great tool as we are able to learn more about the happenings around us. Personally, I use social media as a platform to get know about how my friends spent their day through Instagram story, and I feel that it is a good way to keep in contact with them through commenting or direct messaging them even though we might not meet often.

    My intern company (a restaurant) has a rather traditional mindset, but we as a group of interns managed to help the company be more active on social media! For example, creating an Instagram account for our head chef/boss so that he can connect to his customers better! 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

  8. Hi everyone! My name is Zenavia Quek, but please call me Zen. I am a third year business student majoring in Marketing and Strategy. I was attached to styleXstyle during my Summer internship. Their only form of revenue comes from native advertising. In response to Bryan’s point, we are the middleman who is communicating with the influencers and celebrities and clients themselves. Many clients actually choose to work with influencers instead of celebrities. These influencers have actually formed a community with the public, making their testimonials more relatable and believable. Social media has definitely morphed the way of digital marketing, paving the paths for budding young talents to carve out a career of their own.

    Liked by 1 person

  9. maxinegracefoo2013 Avatar
    maxinegracefoo2013

    Hi everyone! I’m Maxine, a final-year student majoring in Psychology and Corporate Communication.

    On the subject of influencer marketing, I recently came across several studies – one by SMU’s Professor Nicholas Harrigan – that have shown that there is a weak correlation between a person‘s popularity and his/her ability to influence others (Romero et al., 2011; Harrigan et al., 2012). That is, that opinion leaders are only slightly better at exercising influence and triggering cascades than anyone else, and no one does it with any regularity (Wu et al., 2011; Watts and Dodds, 2007). How then can we reconcile these studies with the fact that influencer marketing is a thriving billion-dollar industry?

    Another interesting piece I recently read was the latest Digital News Report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. It shows that, as of 2017, mainstream media is now twice as trusted as social media because of the proliferation of ‘fake news’. Could it be possible that we might see a return to reliance on traditional mediums – e.g. news publications – as opposed to social media?

    Would love to hear your thoughts on either of these topics.

    Have a great week ahead!

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Very interesting n insightful question. nowadays important is not about being digital or not. Having a trusted identity could be real game changer.

      Like

  10. Janice Yeo Qi Fang Avatar
    Janice Yeo Qi Fang

    Hi everyone! I am Janice, a final year business student majoring in Marketing and Finance.

    In the past, the main reason for my social media usage was more of connecting with family and friends, and maintaining relationships through these platforms. By knowing what and how they were doing, it provided me with a “topic” to start a conversation easily if I were to meet them some time later. However, social media to me now is far more that just connecting with family and friends. My significant increase in social media consumption is largely attributed to the vast amount of content that can be found on these platforms, and it has even become a “day-to-day activity” now.

    Moving on to a slightly different topic….
    During Year 2 summer break, I did my first Marketing internship with a German B2B company. I had the opportunity to work on marketing collateral, went through the process of planning Corporate Events and helping with other functions occasionally. Comparing to the Banking internship where I did documents preparation for Syndicated Loans, this (long)16 weeks internship was far more enjoyable. Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to manage any social media accounts given the nature of the company, as reaching out to businesses via these platforms was not their priority.

    Lastly, I am quite excited for the group project! Although we chose a brand under the F&B category (like most groups as mentioned by Prof), it’s a brand that my group is very keen in exploring. After going through the Discovery Project, it gave me better insights on the strategies of our chosen company and its competitors. I used to think that their social media outreach was pretty decent but after “digging” deeper, more needs to be done to improve their current standing!

    Hope to share more about our project’s progress in time to come! 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

  11. Great! F&B is one of the most affected industry by social media marketing, so no doubt your effort into it will be the fruitful investment that brings visible impacts on the brand. Looking forward to seeing your strategies!

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  12. Hi all! My name is Mary Knickrehm. I am a third-year student majoring in Marketing. I came to Singapore in June 2016 for a marketing internship at a company called StyleTheory. The internship was supposed to last only 2 months, but I have been in Singapore ever since.

    I am very interested in social media as a means for small businesses to grow their brands, both in terms of awareness & engagement as well as sales. I think social media offers a unique opportunity unlike ever before where brands can have a more comprehensive picture of who their customers are, what they want, and how to sell more effectively to them and engage with them.

    John Wanamaker famously said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”. This was long before the digital age and the emergence of social media. Now digital advertising and social media marketing alike allow marketers to see precise, measurable data from their campaigns, giving them greater insight into what worked and what didn’t, and a greater foundation to start finding the answers to questions like “Why?” and “Why not?”. I think this is the main reason why I am so interested in social media and I really appreciate it as both a science and an art.

    I am looking forward learning in this course how to craft longer-term social media strategies. I am also curious to learn about social media strategies for larger companies, even with regards to activities other than marketing.

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  13. Hey all! My name’s Christel, an penultimate student pursuing a Bachelor of Business Management, majoring in Strategic Management. My personal hobbies includes baking and travelling.

    On a personal level, I am very active on social media, connecting with friends and re-connecting with those I have lost contact with over the years. It is amazing how powerful social media is, from just simple connect with friends to even bringing down a convict.

    However, from a business perspective, I have zero social media experience as I was unable to gain any experience on how the usage of social media strategies is good for businesses. I have seen how small blogshops turn into legit stores, and even have a physical shop in town! I would like to learn and explore how social media can be used in a business perspective, and the appropriate and effective way on how a business can make use of social media to their advantage.

    In response to Bryan, I agree that it influencers makes the product more “relatable”. However, I feel that there are dangers in engaging with influencers as well. For example, the Nuffnang vs. Gushcloud incident. Some influences reported that their blogs have more visitors than what they really have, and one of the companies told their influencers to talk down about other telecomm companies so that they can promote one of telecomm companies. Some turned down this proposal, while some went along with it. When it was exposed, there were many backlashes, and even causing the telecomm company’s name to be somewhat tarnished.

    My question is, if a business were to engage with an influencer, how will they choose which influencer to promote their product? Based on the amount of followers they have, how ethical they are going to promote the product, or how much each influencer are asking to be paid to do this? What are your thoughts? It doesn’t have to be based on what I have typed, just your personal opinion!

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  14. Daphne Dorothea Slingerland Avatar
    Daphne Dorothea Slingerland

    Hi All!

    First of all, I would like to thank you all for being so friendly and welcoming to us as exchange students!

    My name is Daphne Slingerland and I am from the Netherlands. I will be studying at SMU for one semester and my main interests are marketing and finance. In the Netherlands, I am studying at Erasmus University, Rotterdam school of management and I am following the study International Business Administration.

    Why did I decide to follow this course?
    In my opinion, social media is of high importance on the success of companies nowadays. A correct and attractive way of using social media will lead companies to success, a bad and negative way of using social media may lead to negative results and staying behind the competition. Since I am admiring a career in the field of marketing and especially within the field of social media, I got really excited when I saw that SMU was offering this course. I immediately knew that I should follow this course.

    My social media experiences
    As only a few might know, I have been an elite gymnast for 8 years. I had a lot of sponsors and I had to use my social media channels to tell my followers about the collaborations I had with them, the products I was using and I had to keep my followers updated about how my trainings were going and in which competitions I would participate. Because of this, I learned how important social media is on the opinion people create about you as an athlete because of the way you use social media. I had to show appropriate behaviour, otherwise the national team would penalise me or I would lose a lot of followers.

    I was training for the Olympic Games in 2016, but unfortunately I got injured 10 months before the games started and I was obligated to give up my biggest passion. It was a big setback but I got so many support from my followers on social media and I could definitely feel the two-way relationship social media created. However, to tell a story of why social media is so important during an elite career, I will give you an example. During the Olympic Games, there was a gymnast from the Dutch national men team and after he got the qualification competition for the event finals, he went partying in Rio de Janeiro. He posted some pictures of it on his snapchat story, and the next day when the Dutch Gymnastics Federation heard about it, they sent him back to the Netherlands and he was not allowed to participate in the Olympics anymore. He did not show appropriate behaviour for an elite gymnast who needed to perform on the Olympic games.

    Goals
    My goal or expectation for this course is to learn more about the different theories there are about how to use social media. Moreover, I want to learn about the possibilities social media may provide to companies and the correct approaches there are to communicate with your followers. I hope I will go back to Holland as a more knowledgeable but most importantly as a more experienced person.

    I am looking forward to the coming weeks of lectures, readings and assignments!

    See you tomorrow in class!

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  15. Hi everyone!
     
    I’m Joyce, a final year student majoring in Sociology and Corporate Communications.
     
    I decided to take this module because social media is very prevalent in the society and it would be really useful for me to learn strategies on management and content curations.
     
    Like most of you, I use social media to keep up to date with my friends and family especially during school term where I don’t have much time to meet up with them. I am also pretty cautions in terms of my purchases and often read reviews on products before purchasing them. Even in cafes or restaurants, I would google and read reviews on Burpple before ordering because I want to ensure that I am experiencing “the best” rather than ordering something random off the menu and find out that I wasted money and calories in the end.

    Which relates back to what we learnt this week on Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT). I guess having the privilege of reviews makes me compare my experiences with others and cause me to be desirous in terms of wanting to experience the better things. Not sure if that’s a positive or negative change? HAHAHA. Anyone with similar experiences?

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  16. Hi everyone

    First of all, thank you all so much for welcoming us exchange students here in Singapore.
    My name is Le Quynh Huong, but you guys can just call me by the name Mi (since it’s easier to pronounce). I am from Vietnam, but my university is in Japan, so I can also speak Japanese to some extent. I will be studying in SMU for one semester and I hope to learn more about Marketing as it is my major in my home university.

    As my passion involves photography and videography, I have come to realize the importance of social media from an early time. When taking into consideration the fact that “A picture worths a thousand words” and the conveyance power of social media, if one is able to utilize that power, impact can be generated and influence a lot of people through the use of photograph and video. In fact, there has been many cases where photographs, after being posted on social media, managed to raise people’s awareness of problems. Take the case of Omran Daqneesh as an example, among the many photos of Aleppo’s war-torn sites, his photo stood out from the rest and captured the reader’s attention to the complicated problems of Syria (you can read more from this link) https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/19/world/middleeast/omran-daqneesh-syria-aleppo.html?action=click&contentCollection=Times%20Insider&module=RelatedCoverage&region=EndOfArticle&pgtype=article

    Be that as it might, social media can also facilitate various ways of looking at the pictures as well. Whereas in the case of Omran Daqneesh’s photo, viewers generally perceived it with empathy and have their awareness of the Syria problems raised, there are also cases where social media complicates and even misinterpreted the original intention of the photo. The best example to illustrate this is the case of the photo “starving child and the vulture” by the photographer Kevin Carter (http://100photos.time.com/photos/kevin-carter-starving-child-vulture). The photo that helped him reached the pinnacle of his career as a photojournalist was also the cause of his death because of the fiery debate of people on social media about the photo. From that example, it is clear that photo, combined with the conveyance power of the internet, can become both an influential but also deadly thing if misused.

    What are your thoughts on this topic? If you happen to love photography just like me, let’s collaborate and produce artistic works together!

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  17. Hi class,

    Our group’s chosen client is Foodpanda, which is a global online food delivery service that was founded in 2012. They were the first to market in the online food delivery industry in Singapore and enjoyed initial success during its launch.

    Their value proposition, which is almost identical to Grubhub in the US, functions as a bridge between customers who want to place food orders and their desired restaurants in the vicinity. Foodpanda will be the fulfilment arm of the various restaurants and also be in-charge of transmitting the information between customers and restaurants.

    Although they had the first-mover advantage in Singapore, new entrants such as Deliveroo and UberEats are threatening their market share recently. On the social media plane, although Foodpanda has the highest followers count on Facebook (2,921,387) and Instagram (17,600), their engagement percentage are not as good as their two competitors. Therefore, our group decided to work on Foodpanda in a bid to help them restore their competitive advantage in Singapore.

    Our group aim to strengthen the Foodpanda brand to ensure that consumers are always keeping the brand close to their mind when they are ordering food online. With carefully curated content that takes a localized slant, we hope to appeal more to the locals through localized thematic campaigns. Furthermore, we will also be conducting a quantitative study on the previous and current campaigns specifically on their successes and failures. From there, we would have a clearer idea of what to improve on through the insights.

    Do you guys have other ideas that would help Foodpanda improve their brand awareness and differentiate effectively from its competitors? Please feel free to share it here!

    #foodpandaSG #teamwork #convenience #socialmediastrategies #smu

    On behalf of my group:
    Perry Wong, Clara Tay, Jack New, Maxine Foo and Don Yew

    Like

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