At the WIT Conference last year in Singapore, we recognised 10 individuals whom we felt have had the most influence on the development of online travel in Asia Pacific. This is the seventh article in a series of interviews profiling the WIT Warriors.
Morris Sim came out of Microsoft to start up a social media agency, Circos Brand Karma, with co-founders Mario Jobbe and George Mitchell. They were among the first to recognise the impact social media would have on travel, and they decided to focus their business on hospitality, and Asia. As an outsider, he brought fresh thinking and marketing smarts to the hotel industry and in the last decade, he’s dedicated his time and energy towards helping hoteliers maximise profitability through social/digital commerce. Today he’s turned his sights onto Virtual/Augmented Reality, believing this is the next level in travel content.
Morris Sim on stage at WIT 2014: Social media was the big game changer in giving consumers powerful insights into reality.
Q: Tell us your first memory of the Internet and what your thinking was at the time.
Bulletin board system (BBS)! I remember using these when I was at Stanford, and how cool it was to play games and talk to people through these text screens. One of my first responsibilities at Microsoft was to use CompuServe to manage our database developer community – and that was sometimes very stressful when they revolted. So I guess both good and bad.
Q: Do you recall your first email? Who was it to?
Probably using my university email address to thank someone for giving me a job.
Q: What was the first thing you bought online?
An English/Chinese USB keyboard from Amazon in 2006. And I just checked, it’s not available anymore.
Q: What was the first thing you sold online?
As the CTO for Polo.com (now RalphLauren.com), lots of clothes!
Q: How did you venture into online travel as an industry? What motivated you?
10 years ago when we started Brand Karma, I had no clue about the online travel industry at all. We thought we were going into the new media business, and we wanted to start in a vertical that we were passionate about but outside where we just came from, which was tech, and that was how we got into hotels.
Q: What was behind the thinking of the company you founded?
The three of us, Mario, George, and I, have distinct but overlapping skills and background. So I think we just naturally gravitated towards forming a company that provided services combining marketing, technology, and commerce. The East-West fusion became the DNA of the company culture – hopefully we fused the best attributes, not the worst!
Q: How did the name come about?
Circos graph is a circular graph that shows relationships between objects or positions, which we thought was very relevant to visualize influencer marketing (and where we thought the future of marketing was), so that’s how we got the company name.
Brand Karma, which is the first product we commercialized and what most people know us as, was a name I came up with to characterize the idea that what you do good for your customers comes back in the form of positive word-of-mouth. We go by Brand Karma these days because that product was our first hit.
Q: What were the earlier challenges you faced and how did you overcome them? (Cite 3 challenges)
- Lack of a sales background and too poor to hire salespeople – so we had to overcome our own fears towards selling. Day 1 was when we called 10 hotels in Singapore and got 4 meetings and no takers. Day 60 was better.
- Cease and desist letter – On Christmas Eve of an earlier year, when we had launched Brand Karma but had no customers yet, a very large travel player sent a cease and desist letter. We overcame this challenge by staying under the radar until we had a contract, but it was tough dealing with the fear and uncertainty.
- Cashflow – An unsexy yet real challenge – thankfully we had friends and family who believed in us and helped us along the way. But every entrepreneur should be made to understand the difference between revenue, profit, and cash.
Q: What was the first major milestone/success achieved? How did you celebrate?
Our first sale – the contracts for Novotel Clarke Quay in Singapore and Movenpick Phuket came in on the same day. And Hilton APAC was our first chain signup shortly after. We celebrated by making payroll from our own revenue. It was major.
Q: What’s been the biggest change in the online travel world in the last decade?
User generated content/social media. I really think this was a game changer in giving consumers powerful insights into reality. But too much of a good thing becomes a bad thing, and my concern is that in the next five years, so much social media causes its usefulness to reach a limit and it won’t be able to move beyond that limit.
Q: What do you forsee will be the biggest change to come in the next decade?
Virtual/Augmented Reality (AR/VR), which is something we are now investing heavily in. I had thought for many years that this was a niche technology (for gamers) looking for a commercial application, but now having built experiences and seeing how they viscerally evoke reactions in people, I’m a total believer. It’s the next best thing to actually being somewhere, and provides an incredible storytelling medium for brands.
Q: Do you think online travel is a force for good? How does it make travel better? How does it make the world better?
I do believe fundamentally the outcome of online travel is good for mankind because online travel breaks down barriers for people of all type to discover the world and connect with others. I just hope that the travel industry doesn’t get too greedy like some in the financial industry have, and consequently taking the romance out of travel or working in the travel industry.
Q: Businesses are built by teams. Every team has a rock star and a steward. If you are the rock star, who’s your steward, the one who’s often behind the scenes making things happen?
Brand Karma is a family and just about everyone who has worked in the company has been a steward. But my co-founders, Mario and George, they are the rock stars.
Q: If you could give an award, what award would it be and to whom would you give it?
I would give it to my mom – and it would be a double award, for being the best mother and the best grandmother in the world – taking care of my son, Winston, when I’m on the road, which is often.
Q: Who were your earliest influencers?
I was very lucky that in the first 10 years of my career I had 2 really great Microsoft executives, Richard McAniff and Eric Rudder, who taught me everything I knew about management and technology. And in the 2nd 10 years of my career, Maggie Wilderotter, who taught me everything I knew about marketing and business strategy.
Q: Who are your current influencers?
I continue to be inspired by Bill Gates and everything he does: thinker, philanthropist, human being – I guess that’s no surprise given my Microsoft background. I’m also a huge fan of Tim Cook; he may not be as larger-than-life as Steve Jobs, but he has succeeded in leading in his own style and delivering great results when many people doubted him. Also, Interstellar really moved me – so Christopher Nolan, as a storyteller, director, producer, and massive creative talent.
Q: One thing you feel you have influenced in the business
I’d like to think that we have made new media less risky, starting with the use of social media. So I hope the impact I have made and will continue to make is to accelerate the industry’s use of the right new media to provide better customer experience.
Q: Who and what do you wish to influence in the next five years?
On a personal level, I want to be a great dad. I don’t know if it’s about influencing Winston, who is turning 7 soon and already very sure of his choices, but I do know that I want to be someone who he can always talk to.
On a business level, we want to be the leader in VR/AR in the same way we led in social media and social commerce for the last 5 years. VR/AR has tremendous impact to planning, purchase, education, entertainment, social causes… the list goes on and on. We want to be the expert at turning this into a new way to bring brands and customers closer together.
