ThinkNoLimit Marketing Coaching

This is a rather weird ad. It asks you to enter a competition to guess who has been working to contribute to the good of Hong Kong. There are some clues in the ad and you will be able to win HK$50,000. I have checked out its website but it provides no further clues. The advertiser must be some charitable organization and its intention is obvious : gathering contact information of potential donors for its database for future uses. However, will the database really contain potential donors at the end ? The motivation of the people to enter the competition is primarily the prize money. Would it be too funny to ask them to give their money later ?

Whenever there is a festival or special day, different companies will try to leverage on it or take it as an excuse for doing promotions. California Red has come up with a promotion for 祕書節. It is quite gimmicky and interesting. But I wonder how many people would actually celebrate 祕書節. In the past, every manager had a secretary to help out departmental matters and worked as the personal assistant to the manager. As technologies advance, computers have kind of taken the place of secretary in many administrative matters. Secretary has become a luxury limited to senior management. Or one secretary has to be shared by a number of managers. In this case, their jobs can be tough with the bombardments of multiple demands. If you happen to have a such a secretary in your company, you'd better off to take the opportunity to express your thanks.

In my previous post , I mentioned that 御前之麵 is the own brand of Park'n Shop. As it develops, it seems that Park'n shop really want to use this brand to beat 合味道 by giving 御前之麵 plenty of instore exposures and promotions. I visited Park'n Shop yesterday trying to buy my favourite 合味道海鮮麵. This picture shows what I discovered. At the shelf, 御前之麵 is put at the eye level while 合味道 is now sitting at the bottom. Since the two brands look very similar, I was just confused. It is a demonstration that confusion by imitating the market leader is the trick of private labels. Also you see the bottom left corner of the shelf is empty ? It is the space for 合味道海鮮麵, the fastest moving item and it is running out of stock. This is another trick of how retail chains de-market a brand : allocating less shelf space to the market leader. When the popular item runs out, consumers will consider alternatives, i.e. its private label. If you were 合味道, what would you do ? To defend with push strategy ?...

There are a couple of newly launched TVCs worth discussing, like the latest CX and the ING ones. So I tried to find them at YouTube but with no luck. Instead I discovered that 全智賢 has acted in a couple of Giordano TVCs in Korea. See the first two below. It is a surprise that Giordano invests so heavily in Korea. Both of them are of high production value but interestingly they are banned ads. Seems that Giordano likes shooting controversial TVCs and its image is very different in Korea. The third one below also features 全智賢. It's a 3-minute long TVC advertising a bottled water brand call 2%. I heard about this famous TVC but didn't have a chance to watch it before. It created a big buzz and loads of talkabout on the Internet. Enjoy. After seeing the three TVCs, you would agree with me that 全智賢 is quite a versatile actress. And I wonder if we will be able to see this kind of ambitious, high production value TVCs in HK. Chance is slim. Hong Kong is such a small market.

One student asked me why Giordano re-uses its frog logo from ages ago. I said I know don't know. Really ! Giordano is a value-for-money brand. If it prints its logo onto the T-shirts and jeans, be it the frog or anything that says "Giordano", will sales increase ? Probably not. Giordano is a brand you wear but you don't want to admit. It's not a brand like Nike or LV that can uplift your image after all. So if it puts the frog back onto its product, there may be adverse effect on its sales. I haven't visited its store at the time of writing but according to its website, it hasn't added back the frog to its products. I wouldn't do that either. So what is the point of having the frog back in its print and advertising materials ? To remind us of its good old days ?

Let's make a guess. How old is 譚玉瑛姐姐 ? She must be 40 something. Ageing is something we all want to fight against. For women in particular, it represents a huge market and there are countless beauty houses, big or small. The funny thing is they all advertise pretty much the same way, taking the demonstration approach of some sort, with or without celebrities. Are these ads credible ? Not really as we all know most of the pictures have been computer-retouched. In the past, only big brands or companies could afford computer retouching. Now that the technology is so cheap that everyone can afford it. When the market is flooded with this kind of ads, would consumers believe any one of them ?

We are approaching the 10th anniversary of the handover. The culture of Hong Kong has been changing silently and gradually since the Birts were gone. We are "more Chinese" in a way. The national hymn, the stock market, the traditional Chinese medicines and the panda. At grassroot level, there are more and more cultural exchanges. The media, the government and the businesses alike all are re-educating us about the Chinese cultures like foods, travel, handicrafts, philosophies and so on. Back to this ad, 少林武功醒, 少林武功勁 ! Now we have a chance to experience what 少林武功 is all about in Hong Kong. You can go there for a weekend as a retreat or you can send your kids. It's quite a nice alternative to Bali, Phuket and Tokyo. Let's think about it.

Seen the new TVC of Lipton ? No ? It's alright it is very brief. The messages of the TVC are more spelled out in this double-page ad. The intent is quite clear. Tea is mature, saturated market. As the market leader, how do you increase your sales ? Attracting new users is one of the means. Using a Japanese buzzword, Hirameki, it attempts to attract new younger user into the market. Hirameki, as said, means "get inspired". It is claimed that you will get inspired by drinking Lipton because tea has Theanine which promotes brain activity. Look, are all these appealing to the younger generation ? It is questionable. They'd rather drink Red Bull which has similar benefit with a hipper image.

While we can appreciate that small brands lack the resources to come up with good ads, ads of bigger brands sometimes sucks too. I guess the intention of this ad is to say something about the good match of Window Vista and LG notebook. The use of piano as analogy is kind of misleading as it has nothing to do with music in fact. 非凡氣派, 譜奏Vista完美樂章 ? If this is the claim of the ad, it is definitely an empty one. No solid benefit. Why should we buy it ? The only thing of the ad I like is the tagline of Intel : Dual Core, Do more. Isn't that great ?

This is absolutely a hopeless ad. It caught my attention just because I wanted to find out what it is trying to sell. At a glance I thought it was a new camera. The product is black and the background is also black. There is no way for you to see how the product looks like. Take a look at the words at the top of the ad. There are some descriptions about the product but they are sooooooo small. Sigh ... What is it selling ? I'll leave it to you to find out ...

Where do the affluent women go during leisure time ? Yoga is still popular. Yoga business has gone through the expansion stage and now it is at the consolidation stage. Only a few bigger players who can afford the high rents can survive. Looks like mYoga is one of them and you see they are still investing in advertising. Back to this ad, it is a "new" attempt among other yoga house ads while taking the heart strategy. The trouble is that the layout looks quite out-of-proportion. We talk about the "fill-it-out" mentality but this one is an extreme opposite. Things are so small that the ad fails to create a visual impact. Creative people call this cool. I say it's a waste.

The increasing earning power of women has led to the offspring of products and services tailored to them. Many companies tries to tap on the trend of the growing number of capable, rich, single women. Here is a good example of such attempt. The ad is split into two. First there is a blind-date trip for single people where there are different fun activities for making friends. More interested in pampering yourself ? Another option is an all-women beauty trip to Seoul. The execution of ad is not too professional but I guess there may be room for a travel agency to clearly position itself as a travel specialist for this rich single woman segment. Many of my rich single female friends do often complain they can't find good company to holiday with them.

A few weeks or months ago, there was a research reporting a trend that the income level of women is getting higher than that of men. I don't know why exactly but according to my own observation, women can be more hard working than men. And compared with other countries in Asia, Hong Kong could be the best place where women can share equal opportunities and compete with men. The higher spending power of women is driving jewelry companies into a new direction of advertising. In the past, they said men should buy expensive jewels to show their love to women. Now that they said real women should buy their own and they deserve treating themselves with the real good stuff. The growing spending power of women is something that no marketer can afford to ignore.

Speaking of casino advertising and promotion, here is a promotion ad from StarWorld around Easter time. In this promotion, they gave away HK$6M prize money in total in 4 lucky draws. In the final draw, you would have a chance to win a "space adventure" trip in Russia. The size of this promotion was really big and the gimmick was quite new also. Potentially this promotion could have a lot of PR mileage and create quite a bit of noise. However, the promotion ad is a failure. All you see is the handsome face of Tong Leung and it didn't highlight either the excitement of big prize money or the space adventure trip. These two key promotion element are not only masked visually but they are also buried in all the other Easter specials in the copies. It has just turned out to be yet another "greedy" ad.

Long time no see 周潤發 on TVC. Not too many brands or companies could afford him nowadays. When I saw the ad, I was wondering what he is advertising about. I thought it was another residential estate TVC as it does look like one. It only unveils Crown Macau at the end. 賭神 ! It's quite a fit. The overall execution is meant to convey class and style but somehow I find it too dark and gloomy. The hair style of Mr. Chow is a bit funny too. StarWorld uses 梁朝偉 and now Crown uses 周潤發. It seems that Casinos in Macau are competing on the celebrities they use. They actually remind me of the telecom ads in the past. Will other casinos use even bigger celebrities to compete ? Let's see.

In response to the growing popularity of those "premium" burger like MOS and Triple-O, McDonald's has launched this new BIG N' TASTY burger. I tried this twice and it reminds me of the Quarter-Pounder that is no longer in its menu. To me, BIG N' TASTY is more like a "proper" burger in terms of taste and ingredients. Do give it a try if you haven't and it's quite a good value for money too. The launch TVC features Eason Chan. It's not a bad ad as Eason has manage to inject his likable fun personality into the act. Speaking of this print ad, it is very product-oriented. The execution looks very familiar, right ? McDonald's has used this kind of execution for selling its burgers many times, dating back its first launch of the Big Mac.

There are 55 McDonald's restaurants open for 24 hours and the campaign is still on. At the beginning, there were like a handful of McDonald's open for 24 hours, those at the night spots like Tsim Sha Tsui and Causeway Bay. I wonder why they extend it to that many outlets including some in residential areas. In dollars and cents, I can appreciate there would be added revenues to finance the ever-increasing rents but would it be justified in some of the low traffic outlets in residential areas ? My prediction is that it will go through the expansion-contraction cycle. There are 55 now and may be more in the future. Then we will see fewer over the test of time.

If you are the marketer of a popular brand, you would agree with me that counterfeit products are annoying. Consumers are confused, complaints keep coming in and you don't get the sales you deserve. Come to think of it in a positive way, if your brand is not popular, no one would bother to imitate it. So I suspect Kawai and Kyushin must be good sellers. How to combat against counterfeits ? First selective distribution to reliable outlets with trade incentives. Second consumer education. These are what P&G is practicing too. It can't be wrong but it takes investments of A&P and human resources. Where to get the monies to do all these ? From the profit equation of the company ? No kidding. If I were the owner of a popular brand or the market leader, I would consider it seriously to charge it to the consumers by raising the price. So the ultimate victim of counterfeit is still the consumer. Isn't it sad to be a consumer ?

Just noticed that Po Sum On had sponsored a concert featuring all these aged singers. Po Sum On is a dated brand as we all know and its core users must be from the older generation. One may argue it is a perfect match. However, if a brand is to stay evergreen, it should keep itself up-to-day with the younger generations. And here is the dilemma : the future is with the young but the present volume is with the old. Would you invest your marketing dollars in the old or the young ? The logic is for going for the young but it's not always an easy choice. It takes courage and much greater effort in changing all components of the marketing mix to address the young. We are talking about heavy and long term investments. Would you dare to commit ? Or you would rather hold onto your old loyal consumers ?

Buying, selling and killing of brands are common in telecom. Hutchison sold Orange and it doesn't exist in HK anymore; it is replaced by 3. PCCW sold CSL (1010 and One2Free) and bought back Sunday. Sunday has now been killed and replaced by PCCW mobile. Past investments in brand building have all gone down the drain. It's sad as it's not easy to build a brand. But people, Mr Li's in particular, just treat brands as commodities : buy low and sell high for some good profits. Don't like the name ? No problem, we can always kill it and come up with another one. When will people really treat brands as brands that take vision, commitment and nurturing to build ?

The problem with movie sponsorship is that it is too common. Everybody is literally doing pretty much the same thing. The "standard" practice may include a premiere. some tickets for promotion giveaway and an ad to announce the promotion/sponsorship. Speaking of such promotion ad execution, let's compare these two. You must have seen many movie sponsorship ads like the Cyber Telecom one : the poster visual of the movie plus products visuals on the side or underneath. On the other side, the Hennessy one is smarter. The ad is executed in such a way that 周迅 looks like their product endorser. The contents of both sponsorships may be similar but it is the executional dress-up that makes the difference. BTW, I have already watched both films during the film fest. 明明 is a new attempt and you may either like it or hate it. Arhur and the Minimoys is a good one for both adults and kids (but I would recommend the original English version).

Have a Joyous Easter ! Hope you all an enjoyable holiday. My daily post will resume on April 10.

Why are many ad so poorly executed ? There is usually one reason : greed. A good ad alway start from single-minded objective and message. It is easier said than done. It takes the good understanding of consumers to decide what kind of single-minded message that sells and trigger consumer response. Using one stone to kill several birds ? It's a pure idealistic thought. The advertising scene is so cluttered already and people simply ignore cluttered ads in a cluttered envirnoments. Filling all out may make us feel more comfortable as we are "utilizing" the whole of the expensive advertising space. But in fact an ad ignored by conusmers is a more expensive.

真實, 突破 ! The idea is there : the images are so real, so 3D that it's like breaking out of the wall/screen. Just click on the image of this ad and see it yourself. You will find the visual rather blurred and unreal. No, it's not my scanner. This is it exactly. The execution is so poor and you just don't believe that the ad is actually selling 真實, high resolution and high contrast. I guess they didn't pay enough to their agency to do some decent works. It is de-selling the product in fact.

This is a rather strange ad. It caught my attention simply because I didn't understand what the visual is trying to convey. A guy with a silly facial expression jumping high and holding "something", something like a book or a video tape. It is actually about a tablet PC only when you read on. I guess there must be a creative attempt to express the benefits of this tablet PC. However, it is not as clear as it should be. Maybe we'd better use a simple product-as-the-hero approach. It's boring but look, this ad has wasted 3 quarter of the space without selling anything about the product.