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.

Said to be health tips, it's an advertorial in fact. Advertorial is an ad disguised as an editorial. The trouble is that we see many advertorials that don't really look like editorial at all. They are managed as advertising like this one. Big product shot, cramped copies and a layout that doesn't look like editorial at all. Back to this new product. It's a water fortified with 20-36 times oxygen and said to do all the goodness to your health. There are claims but not scientific proofs whatsoever. Would you believe it ? The upside is that it's not too expensive selling at around HK$10 a bottle. Some people may have interest in giving it a try...

Advertising sells a product by making consumers recognize the need for it. In this case, the ad provides a new piece of information : it takes our vocal cords to vibrate 115 times to speak a single word. This is the support, the reason why you will need this throat soothing candy for the health maintenance of the throat. Appreciate the thinking behind it. The creative is quite interesting and it manages to grab your attention as well as get you to remember it. A good one overall.

There is cut-throat competition in the loan product market. When a certain market is getting more and more competitive, we will start to see more advertising that are "over-the-top". That is very common when all have run out of ideas on what message to send to appeal to the consumers. In my last post about UA e-Cash, an attempt was made to trigger the need for borrowing for love and relationship. Now we have another one from Public Bank playing on marriage. One million dollar cash + a flat + a car ! What kind of concept is it sending ? Some believe advertising has the power to shape social trends and the way people think and act while some believe advertising mirrors values rather than sets them. Which one is true ?

Dragon boat festival is around the corner. Rice dumpling is an important festive business for Chinese restaurants, next to mooncake. There is quite a sizable campaign from 稻香 advertising its new rice dumpling. It's been a while since 稻香 uses this kind of illustrative execution with a funny character/spokesperson. I have some mixed feeling about it. On one hand, it's good to be different from other typical restaurant ads. On the other, will it be well-received by Chinese restaurant goers who are more traditional and mature ? It's not easy to judge. What do you think ?

Health foods like Lingzhi, Cordyceps and Birdnest are getting less popular nowadays. What will be the next health food that is able to create another hype ? Spirulina 螺旋藻 ? Maybe. How about Spirulina under the Lo Hong Ka brand name ? Lo Hong Ka is a well-known and recognized name. Using the same name would save some bugs in communications. However, in the minds of most consumers, Lo Hong Ka is a brand name known for birdnest and this is very deep-rooted. It could have been better if it goes for endorsement branding.

In my previous post , I said I doubted why SmarTone would get into the stagnant fixed line phone market. Saw the above comparative ad that is trying to get head-on with PCCW. Smartone is a new entrant into the fixed line market and I can understand why it uses this ad trying to saying to consumers "I'm better than the leader". What has puzzled me is that why PCCW has reacted with a comparative ad below so similar to that of SmartTone. First, they look the same and are confusing consumers. Second, PCCW shouldn't have reacted like a small guy as it is the leader. Leaders advertise leadership rather than trivializing the message as what the challenger says. Finally, should it react with advertising in the first place ? Would PR be a better tool ? Like taking the initiatives to provide comparative information to the press and let them do the comparisons. Well, if you are really confident that your service is really better...

睇完呢輯廣告, 又忍唔住寫中文, Objective 係乜? Message係乜 ? Support 又係乜? 大家都應該smart enough 明白個message係話男人/女人都應該要揾到錢, 吓咁都得?! 雖然呢個係香港嘅社會價值, 唔係假道學, 但聽落真係唔順耳, 我估應該有Ｄ觀眾都有呢種感覺, OK, 就算你buy男人女人都信唔過, 又點解要幫襯KBC ? 冇support, 所以我都唔知佢個obejctive係乜...好似出嚟貪過癮咁 ... 如果有08年十大最poor taste TVC, 呢個應該榜上有名。 P.S. 呢個blog巳踏入40,000 visits 大關, 多謝大家支持, 又到long weekend, 下星期二見。

HSBC has recently launched this green card. The welcome gift offer is pretty attractive : HK$500 rebate for spending HK$2,800 in 2 months. It's not a bad deal and I think it will attract quite many new subscribers. Green is hot and it's theme of this card. The whole idea can kill two birds with one stone. It uses green as the reason to encourage continuous spending with it as HSBC will donate 0.1% of your spending to the "HSBC Green Roof for Schools" programme. It's not much but it also acts as a goodwill to build positive corporate image as well. Good thinking indeed.

This is not a new TVC of Giabo but it is on air again recently. I brought this up as it's an example where there are message and creative idea but poor execution turns it into a flop. The intended message is that this new machine can make various different types of desserts. There is an attempt to link works of art with the desserts made by the machine, as the creative idea. It's a potential association but much time of the ad has been spent on the supposedly humorous storyline. The result is : we don't find it funny and we don't get the message clearly enough.

Do you find all corporate TVC are more or less the same ? They are not too memorable and most of the time, you just can't tell which is which. The reason is quite simple if we analyse the messages and supports of these ads. Messages are generic. One way or another, they tell you the company grows up with you and has been helping you in every stage of life, like this Centaline TVC plus all others : HSBC, Construction Bank, Cathay Pacific, you name it. When everyone is saying more or less the same thing, how could any single one cut through ? Creative execution has a role to play to make a difference but that has limit. It still the message that counts. Another thing is that these ads usually lack supports. The reasons why and the hows. For example, for this Centaline ad, should it at least say something about how many professional agents are helping you find the perfect home ? Or the number of people they have helped in the past 30 years ? Without supports of some kind, it's jus

The photo developing and printing business is definitely shrinking as we all know. FOTOMAX has a strong franchise as the photo-finishing expert but the trouble is that people store digital photos on their computers instead of getting them printed. What would you do if you were to sustain FOTOMAX ? Selling more photo-related products like HP printer cartridges ? It has a network of 80+ stores and the thinking is pretty obvious : using the network to sell more products. However, would the saying about official products at the right price be good enough to attract people to visit its store ? I doubt it. What would you do to sustain the business of FOTOMAX ?

This ad attracted me to read more of it because I didn't know what it was trying to sell. I didn't recognize it is from One2Free as it has changed its logo and branding. Worse still, the main visual, i.e. the busy street, is not sending any message at all. Grand opening of a flagship store in Causeway Bay, huh ? It may be a big deal for those who works in One2Free. Is it a big deal for consumers ? If you don't tell them the specific reason why they should pay it a visit ? It's just a self-entertaining ad...