That’s the internet usage growth of Vietnam from 2000-2008 for you! Take a look

The original idea came from the Guy. Notice anything interesting?

Let’s start first by asking “Why would we need to hire a comic artist?”

One word: Branding.

Having a comic artist in the team can help you create the following advantages for your business:

Cartoon mascot(s) appearing on your product and website

Mascots are unique and friendly people/figures that can evoke positive reaction, create much stronger lasting impression and make customers/users feel more interested in what you have to offer. Smashing Magazine has a nice article about using cartoon mascots in modern web design here.

Cartoon mascots can be seen everywhere on the internet these days. It’s a strong trend. Miku and Mirai from Vocaloid and DannyChoo are my favorite cartoon mascots .

Cartoon mascots can be found on physical products, like rice!

I definitely think something like that would be a big hit in Vietnam

Some comic strips to entertain online visitors

A ubiquitous type of branding strategy is to show your product/service through as many channels as you can. And besides video, audio, game… comic is another media to think about. Internet users love comics. And if you have something funny and meaningful for the users to read along the way exploring your site, people would appreciate the effort and feel more sympathized with your product/service.

The guys at PennyArcade are masters in terms of making comic strips for the purpose of branding. Their Penny Arcade Presents page is a must check.

My favorite comic strip in that page is definitely this one.

If you want to get a mascot for your site/product, either a graphic designer with a knack for creating comic characters or a comic artist with a knack for graphic designing would do. You can either find a comic artist on DeviantArt or simply purchase the rights for some specific artwork on iStockphoto. But before you move on, there are important thing to consider:

1) Who are your end users?

…and would they be attracted to comic characters? In GoDaddy case, which is an internet domain and service vendor, it happens that the target customers are mostly male grease monkeys, college students and geeky daddies (men, for short). So using human girl mascots for web design is the right strategy.

Otherwise, comic/cartoon/manga/anime style may attract younger audience of both genders and larger audience of female users in general. Of course, there are always male users who would be attracted towards cute 2D girl mascots instead of sexy human girl mascots (i.e. me).

2) Are there competitors already doing the same thing?

If other competitors are doing the same thing, there would be two main options. One is to try making more unique mascot designs. Give your artist longer time and better payment. If you like his style, then have faith that something amazing will come up.

If you want to save time and money, the other solution is to make the same thing, changing a little bit and pray that the customers at your region won’t notice. This would be easier, but the tactic is not highly recommended. For web businesses that would be an impossible mission.

3) How abundant is your budget?

If there is enough money, another tactic we can think of is to do both. Most game companies nowadays have human mascot and digital mascots (based on game characters) at the same time.

For example, Luna Online use YaoYao as a real life mascot and have their cute cartoon mascots drawn based on the game’s characters.

Otherwise, a cartoon mascot would be a more effective and economical investment than a real life mascot.

Everybody knows that India and China are still the biggest players in the outsourcing industry. However, Vietnam is coming fast to become a new hot spot for web development offshoring (also other kinds of outsourcing). I strongly believe so, and in this post I’d like to share with you the top 5 reasons why web businesses, especially in Finland and Europe, should think about offshoring to Vietnam.

Talents

Talented IT employees are in short supply everywhere. Vietnam offers around 80 thousands IT graduates per year in 2007. With an increase of 12% each year, giving some self-study freelancers, there are roughly 100,000 new IT workers/ year now. Most of them live in big cities like Ha Noi and Ho Chi Minh city, or in smaller ones around these regions.

Just like in India or China, there is always high demand for quality knowledge workers. Anyway, things are getting better in Vietnam. Universities, colleges and institutes such as Aptech are churning out thousands of high quality developers each year. Nevertheless, some of the brightest minds can be found “underground”, deep inside self-learning geek communities *grin*.

Culture

Vietnamese culture emphasizes on education and credibility. Business partnerships in Vietnam are established base on the education level and commitment to keeping one’s promise of each side. Also there is a way of self-studying and perfectionism in every Vietnamese. That said, these traits are not promoted heavily due to another aspect of Vietnamese culture: “always keep a humble attitude”. So I can consider myself more boastful than a normal Vietnamese here, since I’m doing all this shameless promotion for Vietnam *big grin*.

Cost

Salary for a web developer in Helsinki region can go from 24000 up to 48000 Euros per year. While in Vietnam 3000 to 6000 Euros is enough an annual salary for someone with the same skill set and IQ. That said, an annual salary for 1 (ONE) developer in Helsinki can sustain a talented team of 8 (EIGHT) developers in Vietnam for a whole year! Roughly speaking, if we take other costs such as traveling, special bonuses and other operational costs into account; outsourcing to Vietnam is still a highly cost-efficient solution that would save you at least 75% of development cost.

While the payment scale in India and China is increasing, Vietnam still offers lower cost of IT salaries. At least, for the next 10 years IT salaries in Vietnam will remain 1.5 to 3 times lower than in India and China.

CC attribution creativesam@flickr

Communication

Even though English is not native language, it is the most popular and widely studied foreign language in Vietnam. Unlike Chinese, Vietnamese is written with alphabet character set, so learning English is easier for Vietnamese people. Hell, we even have “specialized classes for talented students in English/French” in public schools in Vietnam. No joke!

If you are familiar with blogging and think of blog as a better way of communication, then fyi Vietnamese are among the largest market for blogging services. The Yahoo360 community in Vietnam is so large that Yahoo even released a specialized version name Yahoo360 plus only for the Vietnam market. What does this mean? It mean that you can easily find enthusiastic bloggers for your online branding strategies in Vietnam, or technicality writing and community moderation stuffs.

Strategic market

Last but not least, Vietnam is a considerably big market of 86 millions people, with young, tech savvy and web oriented population. Offshoring to Vietnam can also facilitate your market expansion in the South East Asia region. And there are many good opportunities for any type of business, not just for web companies.

Even though I was born in Vietnam, it is not the reason why I’m writing this post. I want to share my point of view as an entrepreneur who’s living here in Finland, building up a web business in Finland, and planning to do so within Europe for at least the next 3 years. Any other perspective is all welcomed.