DIY Marketing "Going Dark" While I Teach in Vietnam

DIY Marketing is going to take a brief respite while I teach and travel in Vietnam. I was there last year and found the experience both enjoyable and unsettling. The people were wonderful and I enjoyed the teaching experience, but I was taken aback by the state of the marketing infrastructure there.

Before I left, I tried to do my due diligence and was surprised that the only really in depth information I could find was in the CIA Factbook. It has a good section on the economics of the country but information on the business infrastructure seemed almost non-existent. My friends at eMarketer found a few charts that included Vietnam, but nothing of any depth.What I didn’t realize was that Vietnam had been essentially closed to outside investment and businesses until about six years ago. That means they had a lot of catching up to do in many ways. I found the marketing infrastructure, as I’m accustomed to it in the US and Europe, almost nonexistent. That made teaching Direct Marketing and CRM something of a challenge, but nothing compared to the challenge of conducting marketing operations there.

I leave tomorrow to teach CRM and Advertising and Promotion with a much better idea of what to expect. But I also look forward to finding out about positive advancements that have been made in the past year.

When I return I’ll diverge from the social media theme of this blog for some of the first few posts. I want to get down what I see and hear about the marketing environment there and if I can encourage participation from a few of the executives in my classes there, that will be a real plus.

I’ll look forward to picking up on January 21!
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