ThinkNoLimit Marketing Coaching

Want women to fall for you ? Use Trichoderm to grow back your hair ! This claim is made by this magical remedy throughout their various ads. Not 肉麻 enough ? There is a latest version. How about this ? Your daughter jumps into the bathroom and says to you "my classmates are in love with you since you have had your hair back !" Interesting, VERY interesting indeed...

World Cup, an event relevant for promoting TVs and DVD machines. This ad is qualified as a good one in terms of execution. A clean attention-grabbing key visual to attract us to read on, size of product shots in right proportion and copies in right length. How about the creative idea ? It's either you love it or you hate it. A colloquial saying, 上腦, expresses World Cup fever. A brain-shaped football (even with the veins on it) is taken as the key visual. You may be disgusted but it attracts you. Remember there is a creative idea called "Shock Tactics" ?

Vivian Chow is back on stage and her concert is on. Who is the title sponsor ? Goodway Lighting. They have posted a fair quantity of posters at MTR and KCR stations and leveraged the concert to promote their new eye-protecting energy-saving light bulbs. What does light bulb have to do with concert ? I have no idea at all. Then here comes Giormani Sofa. The co-sponsor who wants to have a share of the association. A brand of sofa to associate with a concert ? In sponsorship we always try to own the event. If we are the title or major sponsor, we need to prevent other sponsors from attempting to share the association. If we don't have the money to own it completely, simply don't go into it. In this case of Vivian Chow's concert, who have benefited most ? The concert organizer. The key visual of the concert is everywhere, thanks to the sponsors who try to compete for associations.

It's Sunday today. Just picked a Sunday brunch promotion ad by Intercontinental. A clean simple shot of a lady lying comfortably on a sofa. A provocative headline reads "What is Sunday ?" I read on and tried to find out more. The copies don't give me further details although I can tell they are promoting brunches at their different F&B outlets, vaguely by the logos. What are missing ? Supports, or elaboration of more details. It's cool to have a simple, tidy ad for sure. But we still need to spell out the supports, a right dose of details. Advertising is about selling at the end.

Just come across this Sony Cybershot campaign and they have two versions of print ads and MTR posters. The key selling point is the shock-proof function of the camera where you can shoot clear pictures even with shaky hands. What is the creative idea ? None, just product as the hero. The executions are rather unacceptable too. A black camera on a black background. A grayish camera on a white background. The product, or the hero, is buried.

This is a very creative ad. You just don't expect it is Tak Hing restaurant which would post such an ad. Imagine they wouldn't employ big agency and their management would need a very open mind to approve such a unc0nventional creative. Fortune telling as the analogy to sell a mental benefit of good food. There are creative twists too. The (small) names of the dishes are on the face visual. This creative is really better than many of those produced from bigger agencies. This creative idea is quite handy to borrow to sell, say medical check-up. Change the headline to something like "家宅平安" while the check-up list can be put onto the face visual.

A follow-on from yesterday. I just found out that there is another version in the Pak Fook "Beauty" campaign. When we run a campaign with different ad versions, we are often faced with a common problem : one version is stronger than another in terms of creativity and relevance. The more versions we have, the more difficult it is to get at all versions "as good". Ad agencies hate me if I say this but personally I would try to avoid versioning. The fundamental is that if we have a good creative, we should go out all with all our (limited) media money to build frequency and repeated impressions, rather than spreading out our money on a good one plus a mediocre one. This version from Pak Fook is thought to be weaker. Why ? Analogy between black soy bean and pearl. Pearl is an aged, long-forgotten ingredient for beauty where most people may not be able to associate it with beauty any longer. If this is really the case, the analogy fails and so does the ad.

Facial Mask as an analogy was talked about in the 3M 5-way lubricant ad. Here is an "idea twin" from Pak Fook. Whether it's more creative or not, it's more relevant, matching with the need of the target audience for beauty. It's also qualified as a good ad (again regardless of creativity) where key message is clear and supports are there. Except that I would use another (darker) color background to highlight the focus of attention - the facial mask. BTW, what do we call this creative idea ? "Play of product".

Mother's Day. Who invented it ? I guess it must be some businessman who is good at marketing. Now that Mother's Day has become a big day for consumer spending and everyone wants to share a spoonful of it. We have California Red here. All in a sudden, it has become a place for 親子 with handicraft workshops and XO sauce giveaway. The question is whether you would bring your kids to a typically smoky, stinky drinking place ? There may be a market for 親子 Karaoke. It's just that California Red is not the brand name for it. A brand represents consumer perceptions. Just a print ad or two would not do much.

扭計骰 was once a very popular toy in the long past. It was more than 20 years ago if I'm not wrong. Coincidentally, two brands used the same retro toy idea. In the case of BRAND'S, they used it to send the message of smartening your puzzled brain. On the other hand, Prime Credit used it for selling their balance switching (結餘轉戶) with the benefit of "no more puzzle". Who has used the analogy better ? It depends on the target audience or who they want want to talk to. The target audience need to be old enough (like me) to draw the association with this analogy.

This is an interesting ad for discussion. When I first looked at it, I scratched my head. This is a pretty racist ad. Black background, black dog, black man. Then I tried to analyse it by asking myself what the key message is. Images of BENQ TV is of high clarity. Why ? They have the so called Human Vision Technology of Seneye. What is the creative idea ? A problem-solution approach. Everything is there and supposedly this should be an on-brief ad. But how do we do this better ? I think this ad runs into a RELEVANCE issue. The key visual is a "made-up" image of poor clarity, which we can't really relate it to the problem with a low quality TV. Maybe we can use a more real-life, familar demonstration.

If I'm not wrong, Double A was the first paper brand that took a consumer marketing approach. In the past paper is limited to marketing in B2B channels of office supplies. Double A was the first paper brand to advertise on TV & magazines, organising events and running consumer promotions. It was a daring move that costs a fair bit of investment. But they have the point. While business use is the biggest market for paper, personal use market should be growing given rising penetration of printers and fax machines at home. I have two printers and I use Double A. And you ? I think they are quite successful in taking a consumer marketing approach to build a brand for a supposedly generic product. Such efforts not only take effect in the biggest business use market but also spill over to the small consumer use market. One stone kills two birds. The ads from Double I posted today is a consecutive page execution. It's combined use of "before and after" and "surreal...

Speaking of using "surreal helpers" as analogy, we had the air-conditioner cleansing robots in yesterday's post and the Techron little helpers who cleanse your engine. Here is yet another example from 3M. I must say this is a pretty good one. The personal care message is very upfront and it attracts readers to read on to find out more. Who doesn't fancy such a comfortable way of working in the office ? BTW can we use this for a stress management workshop ?

An air-conditioner that cleans itself automatically. This is a very interesting and potentially appealing product proposition. I would like to find out more about this latest invention as well. In the ad (and in fact MTR posters as well), AC robot is taken as the analogy with the product function that cleans your air-conditioner automatically. This analogy is unquestionably a valid one. However when I read on and tried to find out more, details about this technology are missing. It's a disappointment for me as a reader indeed. It's learning again that key message (product functional claim in this case) needs to be substantiated with well-elaborated supports.

When I saw the 味千烏賊拉麵 TV ad featuring 吳卓羲, funny dance and Hip Hop music , I thought it was another "3" Muse music phone TV ad . At least in the first 25", I didn't know it was about 拉麵 at all. The execution styles is very similar to the "3" TV ad too. I wonder whether the two companies used the same agency or same director. The strangest thing is that they spent the costs of 吳卓羲, TV production and TV media to promote a bowl of 拉麵 that is priced at HK$36 only. How do they justify that ? Ok we can argue the investment was to build image and create excitement. Then the investment might have gone down to the drain because of the similarity with "3".

"X" = cross-over, I guess this is a buzzword originated from the fashion world where two brands jointly produce shoes, clot hings and so on for image building through excitements and novelty value of the limited editions. Nowadays, it's a popular buzzword that vaguely means joint promotion for synergistic effects of two brands joining together. I'm not here to explore the do's and dont's in joint promotions although many of them in the market failed to create any synergistic effects. Here we have Double Star and Dairy Farm Fruit Yoghurt Drink together. Is this cross-over good for both ? Yes definitely. Through this promotion, Double Star could potentially drive traffic to their outlets with the excitement of new drinks. On the other hand, Dairy Farm can extend the usage of their products. Win-win. So when we execute this, what should the key message be ? I think we should send a big bold call-to action message : "Come to Double Star to enjoy the new drink...

I'm sure that you have seen this thematic TVC from Bank of China. It's quite a good ad that involves the audience and provokes their thoughts. (although I think I have seen such creative in foreign ads before... it's alright... it's creative as long as the audience haven't seen similar ads before). There is yet one key shortfall about this ad. That is, it takes full concentration on the ad to tell what the words are. We know in real life almost none of our audience (except ourselves as marketers) would put their full concentration on an ad. Improvement ? Yes, we can cut down one or two words and grab more attention of audience by using more catchy music. Having said all these, this creative idea is pretty handy for us to borrow. All we need is to pick a right word to send our message and then look for some stock photos.

Does this look similar to the Maggi sauce ad that I posted yesterday ? In the Maggi Sauce one, it used a simple creative to spell out "it brings out the soul of food (shrimp dumpling)". In this 好彩 ad, the visual is sending the message : "it brings seafood (shrimp) alive". It's quite a catchy and interesting visual but the funny part is the headline. It is telling about "value for money" and not matching with what the visual says. Or I have misunderstood the whole thing : if you don't have money, you don't have to imagine good seafood from a picture... come to 好彩....

Great ads can be very simple. This is a brilliant example. Clean & tidy and it says what it want to say. What do you see ? Maggi Sauce can bring out the soul of a shrimp dumpling ! Do anyone know who is their agency ?

I have talked about the Vaio ad before. It used an omission idea to send the message "all you need is a Vaio computer". There is another one from UA Finance using the same idea. The look and feel in terms of execution is pretty similar but the UA one used it to say "have it all today". It's just a more clever use of the omission idea. Do you think so ?

Will buying medical insurance get you free from sickness ? I would say probably not. Medical insurance would only provide financial coverage when you fall sick. I wonder why Bupa make such a claim or key message in their ad although it's relevant and appealing to everyone. Who wants to be sick after all. This creative work however can be utilized, say, to encourage people to attend annual medical check-up, right ?

We often need to put our product as the hero, particularly when we have a new product. We need to maximize the exposure of the product and feature it prominently, making it the focus of attention. We have two examples here for comparison. In the Oral-B one, the product is in blue and the background is blue too. Are we bringing the focus of attention to the toothbrush ? Understandably the brand colour of Oral-B is blue and there is nothing wrong to make the ad more blue dominant. But isn't that too much ?On the other, Puma chose to use a plain white background to highlight its new watch in black. You would see the difference between the two when they are put side-by-side.