I love the new advertising campaign by Telekom Malaysia to reflect her new identity. Neither are they paying me to write this piece.

The News Straits Times (NST) reported that they are spending RM9million on this re-branding exercise through their advertising campaign. On the inside of the first pull-out cover page of their advert was the picture of many Malaysians, each with their uniqueness recognised individually, personally and some professionally and the words of the advert read, ' You are anything but a number ' in answer to their ad's own question ' Are you treated like a number? '

The final promise to all the readers is ... ' Time for a change '. Their promise to the nation, of change and for change, I suppose. If not to the nation, then at least to the readers of such an advertisement.

Like all other reading Malaysians, I wait to see the change they promise; of themselves and to us, their unique customers. I hope they realise the promise of mass customisation they are making. Don Tapscott has personalised bread delivered to his house of the 'Don Tapscott' brand. Further inside the NST pages is another advert of CEO Malaysia standing proudly with the TM Team of Board Members, managers and workers.

The NST in its news text also quoted the PM as saying that GLCs (government linked companies) have to perform even better in the future by becoming more competitive and trimming excess staff. TM included, I suppose. It was another prod for performance from the Owner of the Khanzanah Group of Companies, as finance minister. My question to TM is: are you truly the Corporate Malaysian Citizen that you propound to be, which will qualify you to ask of me such a question? I mean, do you have a sufficiently Malaysian identity, or in your own language, 'Are you more than an MNC or Multinational Corporation number to me?' Or, are you really already a Malaysian yet? What then is the quality of our relationship - as a Malaysian supplier and another citizen customer, given that you are a GLC?