This Week in Asia #43#: - A rally in Malaysian glove stocks - Casio drops -14% on a stronger yen - SoftBank hit by OpenAI IPO delay - Major Cineplex retires 10% of its shares - Write-up on Applied Co

What happens after the sale can say a lot about how much a customer trusts a brand. In this interview, Mike Begala, General Manager of Service North America at @Casio_USA, shares how Casio approaches the post-sale experience. Read more:

It has emerged that Jason Arday was the real writer and original performer of Glenn Medeiros' 1987 hit, Nothing's Gonna Change My Love for You. Arday allegedly wrote the song aged just six, composing the entire melody on a Casio keyboard he found in a skip before recording the original vocal in one take. Unfortunately, record executives told him the world “wasn't ready for Jason” and the song eventually found its way to Glenn Medeiros, who received all the fame. The record became an international smash hit, while Arday received £3.40, a complimentary Smash Hits pencil case and a signed photograph of Sinitta. Recently uncovered documents reveal the injustice went even further. In 1988, Arday apparently won the coveted Smash Hits Poll Winners' Party award for Best Male Singer, Best Newcomer, Best Hair, Best Song, Most Fanciable Male and Best International Act, despite being British, six years old and not actually appearing on the record. The awards were quietly handed to other artists. He later went on to secretly write Careless Whisper, Take On Me and the theme tune to Thomas the Tank Engine, but once again received absolutely no recognition. Another extraordinary talent erased from musical history.

Customer trust is earned through every service interaction. In the latest CX Insight KIA Spotlight, Mike Begala of @Casio_USA shares how his team strengthens customer trust through service excellence. Read the full interview: #CX# #ExecsInTheKnow#

personalisation will be the biggest story in finance & trading - for the next 5 years: 1) why? - today, finance lacks personalization because txns are mostly context-free eg. a credit card txn is just: amount + time + counterparty/merchant (too little signal for true personalisation) - one can argue merchant/category helps, but it’s still shallow eg. the same $500 nike txn could mean marathon training, flipping a drop, or buying your girl a gift. amount + category can’t distinguish them and the data is expensive & available only to select hedge funds who use it to predict consumer trends 2) so, how to solve? - many fintechs tried in 2010s to build “personal finance” or even “robo-advisor” apps but they all failed as txns hardly had any context - they all gave generic market advice (based on hardcoded user risk preferences) while social media (tiktok/insta/X) got hugely personalised as content already has context built-in and you can have profiling based on that context - and that led to whole dopamine loops (initially caption & hashtags were used as context) - real personalization comes from ‘why’ the txn happened, not just ‘what’ happened if you think every trade or payment has a context i.e there’s always a story (eg. leo’s salp longed mu because they believe in memory shortage story or i bought this black casio to signal lowkey cool) 3) why now? - finance (both payments & trading) is becoming increasingly a socio-cultural phenomenon eg. streamers or tiktoks influence majority of our spending or trading decisions + we like to share every trade/purchase with our friends - ai agents can natively attach intent, goals, and context to every txn and ai is increasingly getting better at ‘personalising’ once it has enough context (eg. how hermes or chatgpt keeps remembering what you talk to them or research and your gmails/calendar also serves as context) every finance app would have an ai attached which is constantly gathering and mapping ‘context’ (and no, ai won’t control your finances but it’d be in the loop to gather your context) 4) how it's happening? - once txns become context-rich, finance becomes truly personalized eg, @fomo or @Pumpfun allows someone to make a memecoin trade contextual by attaching a thesis and broadcasting to followers and @tryramp captures context for a payment txn from SaaS interactions like emails, calendars and past behaviours. while @Plaid is building a txn foundation model to capture ‘why’ of a payment - all txns on crypto are open in nature: there’s a huge graph already getting built on our wallets from the last 10 years wallets are right now unlabelled context - we just need to make them contextual 'invisibly' and yeah, crypto apps will need to add context and that’ll be their moat we’re witnessing a glimpse via social trading - where a trader doesn’t even realise they’re adding the ‘context’ to their trades (using thesis or callouts) 5) once we have context on txns: - we'll see more personalised investing experiences (eg. you bought Apple for the iPhone cycle but sales didn't turn out to be good - your app flags the broken thesis and you sell) - i feel there’s a tremendous social x ai unlock waiting to happen in finance let’s build the next wave of contextual finance apps! 🫡

CASTOR OIL HEALS TISSUE DEEPER THAN ANY CREAM — BUT 95% APPLY IT WRONG 1. Castor oil penetrates 3 inches into tissue within 20 minutes — but only cold-pressed, hexane-free oil, never processed. 2. Apply castor oil at 9 PM (bedtime) — your skin absorption rates triple during sleep when pores are most open. 3. Never apply castor oil on broken skin — it pulls toxins into the bloodstream too fast and causes flu-like symptoms. 4. Castor oil packs are for liver detox; castor oil rubs are for joint pain — different application methods, different results. 5. Pair castor oil with a heating pad — heat increases penetration depth by 70% compared to cold application. 6. Castor oil works best on the lower right abdomen (liver area) — that’s where lymphatic drainage is most concentrated.

Castoreum is a fascinating substance produced by beavers and historically used in perfumes and food But honestly, who was the first person to discover that it smelled like vanilla or raspberries? Because I have questions 😭