ThinkNoLimit Marketing Coaching

For those who attended my class before, I said support can be very upfront in an execution. In this case of facial mask, the support is the active ingredient Q10. The key message is obvious : "Regene is an effective facial mask that gets rid of 98% of the fine marks on your face". But the visual gives me the association of "phantom of the opera"..... and the choice of colour, blue and white, and the radiant illustrations give a rather messy feeling. Think execution!

Have you been to an AdEater night ? It's a 4 hours+ show that screens thousands of TV ad from around the world. People join it as a party where you can laugh and cheer with the ads and there are drinks, pop corns, sausages and so on. In the past, they ran it every year in HK but stopped. Now it's back in the Queen's Elizabeth Stadium on Jun 3 and 4. Check it out at www.adeater.com and you can buy tickets at www.urbtix.com

This is a potential great ad. It's a pity that execution was not managed properly. The key message is that they are the most caring choice 窩心in hot pot. So a heart-shaped pot is used to convey the key message. It's a good idea as it would have grabbed people's attention. Yet, the pot is red and the background is also red. Other than that, are there any improvements that can be done ?

I can't say this is a very creative ad but it's definitely an on-brief ad. "You can achieve a slimmer figure faster" is the key message. Why ? "Reductil helps you eat less" What is the creative idea ? It's "before and after". "In the past you ate a dozens plates of Sushi (I guess) and now you only eat 3-4 plates and get full". How do we do it better executionally ? I'll leave it to your imagination.

Seen and tried the fancy chocolate fountain at hotel's buffet before ? Want to have one at home for parties too ? I saw this ad in Next Magazine and I wondered how many people would consider buying one. Few only I think. The ultimate question we need to ask ourselves is "should we advertise ?". Advertising does not do magic. Don't kid ourselves that advertising will create demands. In the very first place, we need to check and think about whether there is a consumer need. Only if yes, we do our marketing communications to let people know.

Wordplay is an interesting creative direction. It's not easy to do it well but it has potential to derive a thought-provoking creative that saves us a lot of production costs. Do you think this one is good ? I would say there is potential to make it better through execution. . In this case, it looks more like a lengthy headline. How about a more catchy one "I snore but my wife loves me" ? We can also use different colours and fonts to grab attention.

What's the key message ? Sandisk is fast. What's the analogy ? It moves so fast that it leaves its label behind. How do we do it better ? First the headline is in grey on a white background. We can choose a font colour that jumps out more. Second, the feeling of high speed is not enough. We can consider having the card travel across the page instead of into the page and adding more illustration to give more speedy feeling. The idea is there and he need to manage our execution to articulate the creative idea. A simple example of how we should use simple logic to manage our communication piece.

I bring this up for share of thoughts. What do you think about this ad ? Well, let's hold back our critics. It's always easier said than done. The question here is how we can do it differently. The key benefit of this product, i.e. smoothen you scar, is not easy to articulate in an ad. Obviously this ad uses a problem & solution idea to depict the key benefit. The key visual represents the problem of not using the product : a scar on a beautiful face. Yes it's subtle visually. But what happens if we make it more obvious ? It could get quite annoying. One suggestion is to use a "before and after" approach. What else ? I just can't think of any. Boring ? Yes it is. But for certain product categories, creativity in advertising can be limited. Then we will need to think of other marketing communications vehicles.

Have you been to an AdEater night ? It's a 4 hours+ show that screens thousands of TV ad from around the world. People join it as a party where you can laugh and cheer with the ads and there are drinks, pop corns, sausages and so on. In the past, they ran it every year in HK but stopped. Now it's back in the Queen's Elizabeth Stadium on Jun 3 and 4. Check it out at www.adeater.com and you can buy tickets at www.urbtix.com

This is a clever ad. Clever in the sense that it attempts to spell out several key messages in a single ad, without having an overcrowded visual. 1. The product is made from fruits and Vitamin C rich. 2. Promotion to give away iPod Nano (but in fact the grand prize is a trip to a European fruit farm). 3. encourage people to consume the product at anytime regularly. Is this an effective ad ? To do an effective ad, we need to try to come up with one single key message to achieve our objective. Single-mindedness is the principle.

What's the guy doing in the ad ? Feeding the fish. Why ? The image of the fish in the TV are so vivid that he mistaken they are real fish. This is the creative idea to send out the key message "Samsung LCD TV provides vivid, high quality images". So where should the focus of attention be ? The action of feeding I suppose. But is it highlighted in this ad ? Not really. The point I try to make is that it's good to have a creative idea to spell out our key message but we still need to manage our execution. In this case, a shot in a different angle or perspective together some good cropping may help.

Are you aware of a TV ad from Wing Wah Mooncake lately ? Perhaps you haven't seen it as the media weight is not too high. Traditionally, mooncake is a festive item during mid-autumn festival but the key message of this ad is "Mooncake is in fact suitable for all seasons, no matter spring, summer, autumn or winter". The intention of extending usage is understandable. Yet will a single TV ad turn around the traditional belief of "mooncake for mid-autumn" ? Chance is slim. Remember we need support to make our key message believable ? In this case, there is none.

I mentioned a Trichoderm ad before. This is another one which is 肉麻但有趣. They sell aspirations and again let's put executional details aside this time and look at the key message that this ad is trying to convey. You hair re-grows, you look young again, women admire you and YOU GET THE GIRLS AT THE BAR ! How about that ? I fancy that very much too. The killing part is that they also attach a promotion : "Trichoderm invites you to a all-you-can-drink party in Lan Kwai Fong". Two thumbs up indeed.

Analogy is one of the most popular creative directions in HK. This time, what about drawing an analogy between facial mask and anti-rust lubricant ? f we so choose analogy as the creative direction, there are loads of alternative objects/matters for us to pick. The key is that we need to guide our ad agency or designer to come up with the most relevant one to our target audience. I suppose the target audience target of this product is male consumers.

Yes this is yet another "all you can paste" ad. Copies, copies copies. Let's fill it all up. At a quick glance, could you tell it is about car engine supplement ? Yes and no. Yes, maybe, if this appears in a car magazine. But the trouble is that it appears in the ROP of Easyfinder (the main book). Media buy and execution have made this ad a waste of marketing money.

This is a very unique ad of wordplay. Personally, I really appreciate the Chinese poetic way of spelling out their 16 years' leadership in car body maintenance. The only downside is that something visual is missing to relate to their business and help readers to associate with what they are advertising about. The only clue in the ad is their logo at the bottom. Maybe featuring a shiny body part of a Mercede Benz could help a bit.

The message and objective of this ad are very clear. Creative wise, it catches people's attention and really to-the-point. The problem is about the objective of this promotion. Ok it sounds like a good gimmick to offer free parking for all cars with plate number starting with "4" in April. But I wonder what can be achieved out of such promotion except slashing income. If I'm the "lucky" one who happens to have a car with plate number starting with 4, will I be tempted to go to one of the specific shopping malls ? Just because of the free parking ? And if I'm not the lucky one (9 out of 10), the ad is irrelevant to me. So come to think of it, if the ad is talking to such a limited number of people, is it worthwhile to do an ad in the first place ?

Just bought a new multi-media desktop. Computers nowadays are really brilliant. You can watch TV/DVD/VCD, play music, get connected with people via internet phone, MSN and webcam, etc., on a single computer. Not too long, your computer will rerplace all your "traditional" appliances. This ad exactly tries to spell out such multi-functions. This key message can potentially be conveyed by an "omission" creative idea. However, paper cut-outs are used to convey "replacements" in this ad. It still serves to communicate the key message but is it good enough to generate imaginations of the audience ?

This is an innovative and funny promotion. At the first glance, I was wondering what they were trying to sell. The headline is pretty catchy and really got me to find out more. A multi-purpose printer can keep you warm ? You can only find it out when you get to read the copies. In fact they are givaway a USB mug-warming plate as a promotion in winter. It is a relevant promotion during winter time for sure but is it good to force-fit it with a printer ? There is no argument that it will catch readers’ attention…

The intention of this ad is rather complicated. Supposedly the target audience is women and the objective is to persuade them to buy this shaver as a gift for their love ones. In order to "explain" the USP of 3 ring-cutters, an analogy of wearing 3 diamond rings is used : "shaver with 3 ring-cutters is as good as wearing 3 diamond rings". I wonder if this is a distant analogy.

Promise has been advertising quite heavily recently on TV. What do you think about this TV ad ? I think it's quite catchy. In fact, it provokes my thoughts about the grey areas that we have to face with as marketers. There are no definite balck and white in marketing as our job is to encourage consumption of our marketed products or services. Promise is in money lending business and it's their job to promote borrowing and there is no question about it. In the TV ad : people spend spend spend happily and then become short of money. No problem, Promise is here to help. It is completely relevant to borrowers who ususally run into the same situation like what is spelled out in the ad. The funny thing is that at the end of the ad, it says "you will need to evaluate your ability to pay back before you decide to borrow." Somehow it's a distored logic where people should have thought about whether they could afford to spend before they actually spend in the first place ! ...

Somehow advertiers in HK over-use celebrities. Most of the time, you are just confused about who advertise what and there is a lack of thinking about how celebrities could or could not add value to the advertised products or services. In this one, a mileage program is being promoted but how much value of having 馬德鐘 in the ad ? He's not even in pilot uniform...

This is yet another ad from HSBC, for their travel insurance this time. Contrary to the last one I showed, this is quite a good one. It has used a thought-provoking approach to spell out a benefit-oriented key message of "peace of mind". Again, when we devise our key message, we need to think about how our product/service we are selling can be turned into a relevant benefit to our target audience. Here is a briiliant example.

Do you know that there is a change of new logo and card face of ViSA ? Here is a HSBC ad that announces it. The message is "change to a more elegant look". And this message is kind of subtly represented by putting the new card design pattern onto the clothes and dress of the talents. The new card designs are placed at the right-hand upper corner and you may miss them quite easily. There is a tag-on about an application promotion too. The results is that readers may take it as just another application promotion.

Here is another example of "different perspective" creative idea. Instead of featuring the whole car, a stylish shot is taken on a specific part to generate imagination and motivate people to fin out more. This ad gives me a feeling of mysterious power. As I said, this kind of creative is quite rare in Hong Kong. But somehow it can work well potentially.