ThinkNoLimit Marketing Coaching

7-Eleven is the leading convenience store in Hong Kong. It has the market-first advantage as the first brand that brought the convenience store concept into Hong Kong. It has the largest store network, 800 stores, through franchising. So Circle-K has to try harder. It renovated its stores with new brand ID and store layouts, added more instore services like ATMs and EPS money withdrawal, extended to bakery in certain stores, trained up its staff and so on. In terms operations and store management, Circle-K is better because unlike 7-Eleven, it owns its stores and has better control. It offers better shopping experience compared with 7-Eleven. With all the infrastructures in place, it's time for advertising to do the job. The TVC is simply asking consumers to "take a new perspective" at the Circle-K and rethink their habitual shopping at 7-Eleven. If you pay attention to the TVC, you would find that something is missing. That is, the support, i.e. the reason why consumers ...

This is an enjoyable TVC with high production value. I bet it has costed a lot of money to produce. It is supposed to tell us that Sun Hung Kai Financial has a long history to help you grow your wealth. The question is about its credibility. We can understand that the wealth management market is blooming and it's logical to come up with a corporate ad of some kind to boost awareness. However, when I saw the ad, it is giving me a feeling like a stranger pretending to be my good old friend. If it were an ad from HSBC, I would be more convinced. The fact is advertising has its limit. If you try to say something too far away from the perception of the consumers, it simply won't work.

I guess the soya milk market is on the rise. If we go to supermarkets, there are more brands and shelf spaces are expanded. If you want to have a share of this growing market, there is no magic. Clear and unique positioning. This Sunrise soya milk does have some potential. Produced in Canada, it is made from glacier water and non-genetically modified soy beans. It can be positioned as the high quality/high price brand of soya milk. In order to do that, its packaging design has to be upgraded. Its ad is rather down market too. It's quite a pity to see brands willingly invest on celebrity but ignore the need for creativity to convey a clear positioning.

This sounds like a self-defeating marketing idea. Netvigator Everywhere offers you a device that searches for the best wireless data service among 3G, HSPDA or WiFi. WiFi, as we know, is location specific. But were we promised that 3G is a high speed network service that allows us to make video calls and connect to an array of multimedia services anytime anywhere ? Apparently PCCW is admitting that its 3G is not covering the whole of HK or the speed is not consistent. A device, that will search for the best networking, as the key selling point is a marketing fallacy too. At the end consumers don't really care about what service they are connected to. They care about whether the speed is good and the price is right. The barrier to the wider use of wireless services is price, price, price ... hope someone will take a look at the price elasticity equation.

Ribena is a brand with long history. It's a blackcurrant syrup with very single-minded selling point : more vitamin C than orange. Sustaining a brand long term is never easy. Once on decline, it has managed to turn around with smart marketing. One turning point was its launch of the squeeze foil pack offering convenience and targeting at the younger generation. Another smart initiative, I must say, is its market extension to the tea meal house market with Ribena with Lemon. It's a marketing initiative that takes insights, commitment from the management and a lot of hard works by the sales people. Originally sold at supermarkets and convenience store, you can imagine the amount of effort and resources that are required to get into a new arena . It's about risk taking and it takes all the guts to go for it. If we ever have a HK FMCG marketing casebook, I think it should be on the top of the list.

Non-alcoholic is a positioning strategy and it's relative. You go to a bar or pub and you look for something non-alcoholic to drink if you don't fancy anything alcoholic. In such situation, the non-alcoholic positioning exists, relative to the alcoholics. There could be a market for non-alcoholics at bars and pubs but it should be relatively small. In fact, there are not too many packaged non-alcoholic drinks that are successful at on premise, particularly bars and pubs. There are Coke, Perrier and maybe Red Bull (but Red Bull is usually taken as a mixer with alcohols). At off-premise, i.e. supermarkets and convenience stores, the non-alcoholic positioning is not quite valid. A non-alcoholic sparkling drink like this SINVINO is just a carbonated juice drink. It is exposed to a big sea of competitive non-alcoholic drinks, carbonated or non-carbonated, from pure juices to juice drinks. The chance of success is pretty slim but time will tell. I checked out its website and this br...

This is a 4-page ad of Estee Lauder in Next Magazine. One page of teaser, then a double-page spread of testimonials and one page of product selling. That's a typical arrangement to achieve size and grab attention in magazine (given you have the money). One special thing is its use of real career women instead of models and actresses as the spokespersons. They look ordinary and they are not as pretty as the celebrities but they make the ad more credible. Estee Lauder is known as a brand for more mature ladies. There are bound to be so many affluent thirty-something career women out there working days and nights needing some replenishment to their skins. Given the target audience, using career women for testimonial should be more appealing and convincing than using pretty celebrities.

醫學防衰老專門店 ! Anti-aging ! That sounds like a very new specialty. Not quite. It's just yet another beauty house selling 羊胎素 (Black Goat Embryo Element Tonic Liquid, what a long English name from Yahoo! search). Funny that this company has no name and it seems trying to call itself with a plain descriptive, just 醫學防衰老專門店 . As for the ad, I think this is the greatest before and after ad I have ever seen, thanks to the magics of cosmetic and computer re-touch. This lady is said to be 51 years old ! And just take a look at her "before" picture. You must be kidding me !

At a glimpse, I thought it was a consumer promotion ad for a new drink called WOONGJIN. If you take a closer look, it's not. In fact there are two half-page ads on the same page. The upper ad announces a new launch with product as the hero but nothing much is said about this new drink. It's a barley tea soda (?), it's healthy and it's from Korea. So what's so special about it ? How does it benefit me ? More elaboration would be better for the sake of selling. As for the Fuji ad below, the branding is way too weak. Also the copies are really small and it's like a testimonial, telling a story about the importance of printing digital photos. Whose testimonial is that ? There is no mentioning but if you have a magnifying glass, you will be able to see it's 李力持. It's just very confusing to have these two ads placed together. It's also an example of brainless arrangement of ads by the magazine. Which magazine is that ? Sorry, I can't r...

Both TVCs are low-cost productions. They are literally selling similar personal loans. I'm putting them up side by side to illustrate the difference in creativity. The fact is that we can still put a bit of creativity into low cost productions. In the Promise TVC, it takes a spokesperson approach. A creative idea is lacking where the message is not "encoded" with a creative idea. Straightforward, you may call it but it's won't make an impression so that people will remember. As for the Citifinancial TVC, an analogy is used : its loan is like a life saving aid that prevents you from drowning in debts. It's not awfully creative as it's just a low-cost production. But at least there is a creative idea that people can associate with. Limited budget ? Still, let's not give up on creativity. P.S. We are organizing a program on marketing communications for banking and finance on Nov 17. Check out the details of the program and enrolment .

Happy Long Weekend ! Daily post resumes on October 22. Stay tuned.

In the FMCG market, many brands or products have been around for ages and are in their mature product life cycle. In face of maturity, there are usually two ways to go. First is extension, either line extension to new flavours/sizes or brand extension to a whole new product arena. Second way is to increase usage by giving the product new usage reasons or new usage occasions/situations. Knorr chicken powder is a mature product as we all know and it has chosen to take the latter route. Many children hate eating vegetables. That's a consumer insight from the mums. A new usage has been invented : using chicken powder to marinate vegetables so that they are more tasty for the kids. It should be an idea liked by the mums. That's clever marketing indeed.

Bonluxe is a brand of functional lingerie that hides your fat by wrapping it up and pushing it to the "right" place. Its target market is the mature women, probably aged 40 or above, who are too lazy to do exercises or finds it to expensive/time-consuming to go to slimming houses. It just provides a quick-fix solution to them. The positioning is clear enough. However, I wonder why it launches a low-waist underwear. Obviously it tries to capture the trend of low-waist trousers by offering a match. The thing is if you have a big belly and try to wear a pair of low-waist trousers, this wouldn't help at all as it doesn't wrap up your belly. (Of course if you have the same figure as the the model in the print ad, it doesn't matter what you wear.) A useless product that doesn't match with the brand positioning ...

Seen this 健康工房山楂蘋果TVC ? The message is very clear : you can eat as much and as heavy as you like because it helps your digestion. Helping digestion is one of the Chinese medicine functions of 山楂. In fact according to the Chinese medicine theory, its biggest selling point is about the reduction of cholesterol level and heart health : 山楂含黄酮类化合物,能防治心血管疾病,具有扩张血管、增加冠脉血流量、改善心脏活力、兴奋中枢神经系统、降低血压和胆固醇、软化血管及利尿和镇静等作用。 The ad doesn't tie these functions with "all you can eat" due to censorship and the advertising laws on health claims. Otherwise, a marketer would probably make a claim like : drink this and you can eat all the fatty foods you like because it frees you from heart and cholesterol problems ...

This is quite a creative offer. Green is hot and Hang Lung rides on the trend to come up with a carpark offer for green drivers. If you have an environmentally friendly car, you can enjoy a range of carpark offers. I think it is a PR idea than a sales promotion idea though. The penetration of green hybrid cars is still low. So this offer is rather limited to a small group of car owners and I doubt it would be able to really generate additional revenues for its carparks. However, if turn it into a PR or CSR initiative, there could be more mileage to trumpet about Hang Lung as a good corporate citizen. How ? For example, it can join force with the government which is already promoting the use of green hybrid cars with tax benefits.

Sometimes gimmicks are necessary in marketing but marketing is not just about gimmicks ... Ever had the feeling of being cheated by some ads ? This ad caught my attention as it advertises something called 棋門宴. Sounds interesting, isn't it ? But when you look at the actual menu, you will be quite disappointed. The dishes in the menu are nothing special and the whole thing has nothing to do with 棋藝 at all. Who is it trying to kid ? The price is quite attractive though. It would be more honest to advertise about the value for money of the menu.

Nescafe is an instant coffee brand. It's logical to use the same brand for canned coffee. I suppose it is the biggest canned coffee brand in Hong Kong. Then it extends to tea. Nestea is the brand name. Clever for them to use a hybrid naming appraoach, Nes cafe --> Nes tea and launch lemon tea as the prototype product to pick a head-on competition with Vita previously unchallenged by anyone else. It has managed to get some good business with better tasting, less sweet products. Now it extends to bottled Chinese tea using Nestea to endorse a new brand called 淳茶 舍 . I doubt whether this will be successful. First it's all too late as the bottled Chinese tea market is already flooded with too many brands. Second, the whole leaf and no-additive proposition is just too weak to cut through. Third, Nestea as a brand name is more associated with western teas and it doesn't have the power to endorse a Chinese tea brand. Without the brand value transfer from the mother brand, 淳茶 舍 ...

Pocari Sweat has launched a new TVC featuring SMAP (yes, they have been around for so long and they are still around !). Interesting to see that it doesn't use the former execution elements that have been used for a long time : young female Japanese stars, blue skies, outdoor funs and refreshing drinking shots. Although SMAP is a bit old for the younger generation Pocari used to appeal to, this new TVC should create some talkabouts. However, I wonder this brand can be sustained solely relying on new ad direction and new celebrities. This brand in a way lacks real newness to face with the fierce competition of the drink market. New products ? New packaging ? Maybe.

When I was a young boy 25+ years ago, Kickers was a brand of boots aspired by secondary school students. It was a trend symbol and it was very pretty expensive too. Several hundred dollars for a pair of boot in the old days, that was a a lot of money. I could never afford a pair. Popular for several years, this brand vanished and was replaced by those brands like Timberland, Dr. Martens and so on. Why Kickers was so popular ? I can't really tell exactly as it was long time ago and I wasn't a marketer at that time . Styles, quality and high price maybe. Saw this ad. This brand is no longer into boots but it's into the student market, school-bags in specific. Looking at its advertising and styles of its bags, low chance that it can appeal to the trend-conscious youngsters who have so many choices nowadays and have the same glory in the past. Looks like it will only remain in the memory of the mature generation. Don't know who is still investing into this brand. I would ...

Let's continue our discussion from the last post. In theory, positioning gives consistency to the other 4Ps. What if your positioning is difficult to convey other than using advertising ? As we all know, 7-Eleven owns the positioning of convenience with the widest distribution. Does this Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative match with its positioning or serve to communicate the positioning ? Not really. That's why we find this sponsorship unrelated to 7-Eleven. Should it do that ? I say yes. At least, it is doing something to give back to the society and it's neutral. Theory is theory after all and there should be leeway in reality. P.S. The number of visits to this blog has exceeded 20,000. Thanks all of you for reading !

Lucosade runs a promotion with curry fish ball and Shaomai at Circle-K. It sounds strange. The positioning of Lucosade is pretty clear. A drink for mental performance. With this positioning, how do we come up with some sales promotions to build the brand and drive sales at the same time ? Not really that easy. Say if we are to give away some premiums that go in line with the mental performance positioning, we can think of stuff like IQ puzzles. You are lucky if you can find some funny and attractive IQ puzzles, consumers will love it and probably you can really drive sales. But you just can't give away IQ puzzles all the time. Are there any other premium ideas ? It's not easy, is it ? When sales pressure is on, promotion with curry fish ball and Shaomai is still alright. Sounds unrelated but at least it doesn't hurt the image of the brand.

Automatic Mah Jong Table ! Well, don't laugh. What do you do if you are to market it ? I spotted this ad in Next magazine. It isn't cheap. The cheapest version costs HK$12,888 and it looks bulky. It's not the cup of tea of everybody. Who is this thing for ? Affluent heavy Mah Jong players who live in reasonably big apartments. While we all know placing an ad like this in Next Magazine represent a lot of wastage, how do we reach this specific target audience in a more on-target way ? Difficult, isn't it ? Any suggestion ?

There are two versions of TVC for the Ocean Park Halloween Bash this year. I was only able to get one. The media weight isn't too heavy, compared with Disney's. Also the production value of Ocean park's TVCs is not as high. You have the money but it doesn't mean you will win. Advertising can never do the magic all the time. Like I said in my earlier post , Disney is literally advertising for Ocean Park. If I were the marketing guy at Ocean Park when I saw the TVC of Disney, I would clap my hands and cut back my media budget. The fact is that all weekend tickets of Ocean haven already been sold out. Advertising can't build product advantage but convey it. If Disney is to win, it will need to work harder on the actual product by offering a brand new consumer experience better than Ocean Park.

Don't know the proper name of this comic-type advertising. Just seen a couple fo them lately. Using comic execution to advertise is not new but not too popular. I guess one reason is that the use of story-telling to soft-sell a product or a service can be quite costly. Like in this case, two pages are used and we still can't figure out what message it is trying to deliver. An alternative idea is to sponsor an actual comic book with product placement and storyline blended in, like what OSIM, P&G and the Jockey Club are doing with the dramas on TVB. However, too bad that the glory of local comic books has passed with shrinking readership. Otherwise it could be good alternative to traditional advertising.

Just talked about Maxim's MX's new healthy menus in my recent post . I said that it could take healthy meals as the a long-term strategy to build a healthy fastfood restaurant positioning. Too bad that it's not going to do that. It has just launched a TVC about its "new" Shabu Shabu. Both Cafe de Coral and Fairwood have hotpot. Why copycat them ? This brand of fastfood chain need some prototype products or services to build a positioning. And positioning is about uniqueness and differentiation. There should be better ideas ...

This ad is an interesting composition. Yoga is hot. So there are Yoga visuals and it talks about drinking Tropicana after Yoga. Health and fitness is hot. So it talks about the goodness of Tropicana as a healthy drink : 100% pure, 0% fat, preservative free and so on. Of course there are testimonials from consumers. Blog is hot. So it's a layout that looks like a blog. In fact, it doesn't have a blog but a dead boring website . Thought it could have done better than that.

For just HK$1,990, you can fly one way to Vancouver. That's quite a value for money. Less for less is the proposition for budget arlines. Although there have been negative publicity about the safety and the frequent delay of budget airlines, the prices are just so low that there must be a good number of switchers who are willing to "bear the risks". With low prices as the major attraction, sometimes I wonder how these budget airlines can make a profit with the ever-rising oil price and labour cost. This is how Oasis does it : trading up the customers. For HK$5,990, customers have the option to fly one way on business class with a bigger seat that you need for flying long-haul. It's close to the price you pay for flying economy on other major airlines. I guess cheap long-haul business class will be the way to go for budget airlines.