ThinkNoLimit Marketing Coaching

After the Sichuan earthquake, I bet all PR or corporate communications managers would have faced with the same question : should we do anything about it to show to people we are good corporate citizens ? With the expectation that many companies would be working on some charity acts of some kind. The issue has become how to stand out from the crowd. Watsons has chosen to do a charity sales with TV advertising. The purpose is clearly call-to-action and corporate image enhancement. But look, should it donate the advertising money to charity instead ? The more you advertise, the more people would ask this question. If you have not enough media weight, there won't be enough participation. A dilemma indeed. Would it better to use PR all the way through ?

This TVC is not new but is on air again recently. It's a straight sell TVC featuring 劉青雲. Key message : effective in fighting against Dandruff. Support : Selenium Sulfide. Head & Shoulders is having the same positioning but its support is different : ZPT. Which brand has a better active ingredient for fighting against dandruff ? Consumers can never tell and brands sell on perception. Head & Shoulders is a better brand name as it is more associative with the product benefit. Such a brand name will be easier to get into the mind of the consumers. Interestingly, the packaging of Selsun makes it look more effective. The dark blue + red cap gives a medication look and feel visually. One wins on brand name and ther other wins on packaging. Selsun is sold at a higher price per volume. Which one wins more sales revenue ? I wonder.

Just seen this new TVC of Rexona. I wouldn't say it's not funny or the key message is not clear. However, if you happened to see its previous TVC before, you would find this one rather strange as it is so inconsistent with the previous TVC. The previous TVC played on romance and surprises to spell out the need for protection for unexpected moments (the girl bumps into a guy and she is embarrassed with her sweaty armpits). As for this new one, it's more like a straight-sell with comical presentation. I would say both have merits. Just that consistency has not been considered between the two.

Should the Jockey Club be allowed to advertise ? I guess most of us would say no. Promoting gambling is not really a good thing. True that allowing it to advertise would help fight against illegal gambling. Also true that the Jockey Club is a non-profit making organization as its profits are for charities. However, being a non-profit making organization doesn't mean that it won't act like other commercial organizations. It still has sales and profit targets to achieve in order to finance the operations of the whole organization and its executives get paid to achieve the targets. What would you do if you were these high-pay executives ? Lobbying the government. The government also has gambling taxes at stake too. This is how what we call government relations has got into the play.

Hair loss treatment. My interest. Playing with Shakespeare, this creative idea is called parody. That is, twisting the original to send a message. This one is an interesting creative that should be able to catch people's attention. However, I'm more interested in the tag-on message about trial of the treatment at a small price with proceeds donated to 苗圃行動. Potentially this charity act can be campaignable alone. If resources allow, we can do a thematic ad first to spell out the effectiveness of the treatment. After the thematic message is gotten by consumers, we can then do this charity act in a bigger scale.

The best a man can get. This tagline has been used by Gillette for ages. It's a brilliant tagline that spells out the leadership (and it is the leader in disposable razor) as well as its commitment to providing innovative products (although the 5+1 blade idea is "marginalized" as discussed in my previous post ). I showed this TVC to my students the other day. The first reaction was "wow! They are so rich". Of course P&G is rich but in fact it is an example of good practice of using celebrities : having the celebrities to actually demonstrate the use of the product. Sound so common sense, right ? The ironic thing is that it is missing in many ads out there ... So if you sell drinks, show drinking shots. If you sell pizzas, show the tasty bite. Don't be kidded by your agency that that's not cool.

Some ads are nice to watch yet fail to make an impression or get us to remember. Creativity is an important but not the only factor. Back to basics. Ask ourselves : why do we do an ad in the first place ? Primarily, we have a message to send to our consumers, a message that helps sell our product or service. In order to do that, we need a benefit-oriented message and it should be relevant to the target consumers. Otherwise, your consumers will never remember your message. Back to this ad of Swire Travel. We would see that there is a message : "Swire Travel helps you 忙裹偷閒". It's a benefit-oriented message alright. But what is missing ? The support, the reason why, the how. Without that, consumers will not be motivated to buy from you even if you have a benefit-oriented message.