ThinkNoLimit Marketing Coaching

Happy New Year and have a wonderful 2009 ahead. See you on Jan 5~

Caught a flu from my Beijing trip and it's still lingering. Guess I also need a flu vaccination injection some time. The government has been advertising about the HK$80 subsidy for children to take flu vaccination injection. Out of the many initiatives of the government, this makes some sense. If it is successful in encouraging parents to take their children for the injection, the burden to public medical services can definitely be relieved. My blog is not a public affair blog but I think the government could have just given away the injection free and really invest on heavy communications. It's not a bad deal in terms of return on investment. Latest news : the public opinion about Tsang's administration is all time low.

Some people said there will be business growth in the fastfood and tea meal house sectors during the economic downturn while consumers are expected spending less on dinning in expensive restaurants. Let's see whether this will turns out true. When I saw this TVC of KFC, I found it quite funny. Not a bad idea leveraging on the current economic situation to advertise. Yet it's quite sad after a second thought. You have to work several jobs and at the end of the day, you can only reward yourself with KFC. How sad ...

Have a wonderful Christmas holiday and I'll see you on Dec 29 ~

If you have a good brand name, you can win by far. Branding is about building associations about your brand in the minds of the consumers. I can't say this ad is a very impressive one but I bet everyone would remember the brand name. Nivea SOS, what a brand name for an intensive moisturiser. The ad is aired at the right time when the weather is so dry too. So the association is more closely linked with a need state as well.

Ferrero Rocher is positioned as the best gift for the love ones and it usually airs the long-running TVC below during gift-giving seasons like Christmas and Chinese New Year. After watching its new TVC above, it seems it is leaving the best gift positioning and refocusing on quality and taste. The TVC plays on "the taste from heaven". To me, it's quite a strange move as I bet everyone must have eaten it before and we all know what it is like. Just feel that this ad won't motovate consumers to buy or consume more. Why change ?

I will be on holiday until Dec 21. Daily post resumes on Dec 22. Stay tuned ~

喇叭牌正露丸 is the top of mind brand for intestinal disorder. Its close competitor may be 保濟丸(?) but it has lost the space in consumer's mind. A brand needs marketing communications of some kind to stay alive. 喇叭牌正露丸 invests continuously on advertising and it has just aired this version of TVC . Basically it is selling the same thing : the Japanese origin and long history of trust and reliability and the same jingle is scored with a new rap arrangement. Even there has been no change to the products it is selling. You may just wonder how a brand can survive like this. Well, everything is relative. While your competitors have been doing nothing, you can just be the consistent leader in the category .

位元堂養陰丸 is the prototype product that has made us know the brand 位元堂. I can still remember the jingle sung by 鄭少秋. At that time there weren't so many Chinese medicine brands and products in the market and I think it sold pretty well. Yet if 位元堂 had just hung on with this single product, the brand would be dead. It manages to diversify into other products and bring the image up-to-date over time. You would just appreciate it is really investing in creativity to build a more modernised image. Like this set of ads, although the execution could have been improved a bit, there are ideas in them and branding is done well too.

Garden Life Bread may be the first brand of retailed packaged bread in HK. In the past, there weren't so many bakery and cake shop chains and it was the leading branded bread. I can guess it's still the leading branded bread but subject to the growth of bakery chains, its business has been shrinking and it's not easy for it to sustain. While this ad tries to jet up the brand awareness, it also has quite a few new products innovations to keep up with the changing needs of the consumers. However, all these have limit in going against the competitive trend of the bread market. Maybe it can be more aggressive in coming with different brands to go into other related categories.

Tic Tac refreshing super team ! Are we back in the 80's ? Such kind of execution looks very 80's to me. It is aired during prime time and looks like it's targeting the young generation, probably the 18-25 year old. Is it appealing to this group with such execution ? It's more like selling toys to kids, similar to those toy ads aired in the afternoon, isn't it ? Let me guess. Probably it's an imported ad or the one who approved it is not familiar with HK culture.

Dove, is it a body wash or a shampoo ? You must say it's both. But the point is whether consumers recognize or believe it's both and buy both of its shampoo and body wash. Orginally, Dove was started up as a body wash with a very focused positioning : containing 1/4 moisturising cream. After it has had a foothold in the body wash category, it was extended to shampoo. Here is the problem : as P&G has so many shampoo brands, how does Unilever position Dove shampoo ine the shampoo category ? It's not easy as all P&G's brands of shampoo have already occupied unique positionings and here is the catch : position it in-between Vidal Sasson and Pantene by taking "professional" from Vidal Sassoon and "damage repair" from Pantene. The trouble is the link with Dove body wash is rather weak. Take a look at these two TVCs that are aired concurrently now and you'll know what I mean.

Slimming and beauty house business is so competitive and it's not easy for a company to really make profit in face of price competition. In the case of Angel Face, it diversifies into men's grooming business. I have never been and I think I will not be one of the customers. (although it seems targeting people at my age). So I wonder whether the market is big. Anyway, it seems Angel Face has done the right thing in branding. Angel Face is a good name for beauty house for ladies and should not be extended to cover men's grooming. Hence, it has come up with another brand, Mankei, endorsed by the mother brand for a quality assurance. Smart enough.

A brand needs product innovations to sustain. By innovation, it could be new product, ingredient upgrade, formula alteration or packaging design change so that consumers can feel that your brand is progressing with time. If you ever notice, this is how P&G sustains its brands with numerous product upgrades. Yet somehow, I think it is doing it too often. Product upgrade means the new version is better than the version. As a consumer, I can help asking why it didn't design the best product for us at the beginning in the first place.

Over the years, we have seen the ups and downs of various sportswear brands. New Balance, Diadora and Reebok. They were once popular and worn by everyone. Where are they now ? Usually consumers only have room for 2-3 or 4 brands at most for a category in their minds. In the case of sportswear brands, there are Nike and Addidas. Is there room for a third brand ? Maybe but they have set up high barriers with hefty investments in brand building over time. Can Reebok come back ? Yes, if they are prepared to invest. No, with an ad like this. It just reminds me of the 80's way of advertising.

During this time of recession, Park'n Shop's strategy is loud and clear. It promotes its own brands like 金御膳 and brings in parallel imports like Castle in this case. With such strategy, it can avoid head-on price war on other branded products with Wellcome as well as build a low price image. Loss leader strategy seems something of the past. Promoting own brands and parallel imports at low prices is the way to go for getting volumes and profits from the increasingly price conscious consumers. If you happen to be in the marketing of undifferentiated or commoditized categories, I wish you good luck with Park'n Shop.

Kappa was once a popular brand of bags for a short while. People still remember it and there is some residual awareness. Nevertheless, we can't really remember what is so special about it. It lacks salience as there hasn't been any new news from it for a long time. It ends up like a nowhere brand. Building it back up takes a lot of investments over time. Another way of getting short term business is to milk it through giveaway or redemption promotions. You can get a bit of volume sales by tying up with others like supermarket chains, credit cards and so on and give away your products free or have them redeemed at a low prices. It's the quickest way to trade brand value for volume. Once this kind of promotions are done on your brand, it is certified dead. After it's given free or redeemed at low price, do you really expect consumers will still buy it at higher prices in the future ?