ThinkNoLimit Marketing Coaching

Heard from the news recently that majority of HK people are not aware of the fact that HK is the host city of the East Asain Games. What's more, there are insufficient sponsors of the event during the financial tsunami and there may be potential deficits for the government to absorb. A TVC like this can solve the former issue of awareness. The trouble is HK is such a small place with 7 million people. Although all of us know the East Asian Game will be held here, will that help boost up the sponsorships for the event tremendously ? The problem with money remains but how can more money be raised ? Open for discussion please.

The financial tsunami represents an opportunity for fast food and cheap eats. Supposedly people will tighten their belts and eat out less too. How about some hot freshly made pizzas at home ? I think Pizza Hut has picked the right time to promote its delivery service. Although there is no new news talking about the same hot pouch that has been advertised about before, the ad will definitely boost up top of mind awareness. The message of the ad is very clear as being single-minded.

The tone and manner of this ad is so Canon. At the beginning, I thought it was selling DC or photo printer again. Memories, happy faces, slices of life, all these imageries are associated with the use of digital photography. Yet it's selling the document/file retrieval of a new copier (I'm not too sure just by watching the TVC). I can't judge whether the message is clear as supposedly it targets business users for office use of this machine. The strange part is the ad is aired on TV where most of us wouldn't find it relevant.

What is 直銷, direct selling ? In theory, by direct selling, it means manufacturer sells directly to customers without going through any middlemen like wholesalers or retailers in the distribution. So it's kind of misleading for DSC for call itself 直銷中心. It's just a discount retailer of electrical appliances and electronic products. Although it's not a theoretically correct name, it has helped DSC to build a good bargain image against other retailers. Nowadays consumers equate 直銷 with good bargain . Perception is reality. It doesn't matter anymore.

This new TVC of Coke is currently on. It goes along the same line of the previous TVCs. That is "going well with food" or "food pairing". The imagery is very similar too where it features a group of young people enjoying food and getting happily together. Just that the timing of the TVC is a bit weird. It is said to be the perfect match with hotpot but would it be better if it's aired earlier when the weather is cold ? Another thing worth noting is that Coke original, Coke Light and Coke Zero have been grouped under the same proposition umbrella of going well with food. It seems a logical thing to do as at the end they all come under the same brand.

It's Friday. Been writing too much already. Want to leave something for your discussion again. My only comments about this ad is that it may have include too many copy points selling different attributes of the product. How would you choose one from the various attributes and make it the key message that sells ?

Organic is the trend. Organic soy sauce is nothing new under the sun. The question has become whether organic is an edge for your product so that you can charge a premium or organic will become a hygienic , must-have attribute for every brand over time. The latter may be true as product attribute can be copied easily. BTW, take a look at the packaging. I almost can't recognize the brand from the pack design. "Pearl River Bridge" in green classic English fonts. What a radical change !

明智投資, 學「問」為先. What a strike to the head at this time of financial tsunami. Recognize the song ? The original song is "問我". Is it from the 70's or 80's ? I can't really remember. Is the ad talking to the more mature group at their late 30's or 40's, I wonder. The lyrics are very well-written. If you really attention to it, it will put a bitter smile on your face like a sad song ...

Some experts say during the economic downturn, there will be an upward business trend for fast-food restaurants and the market for cheap eats will get bigger. It's a fair prediction. If you were in fast-food chain, what would you do to cultivate on such trend ? One way of course is to come up with a range of cheap menus to satisfy the need of the price-conscious consumers. Another way is to stick to the quality food image without slashing the prices. Maxim's has just launched shark fin soup so that consumer can still pamper themselves with"cheap luxury". No one knows which way is better. I can only guess that fast-food chains wouldn't want to slash prices to compete. The reality is that they still have to pay high rents for the shops with rental commitments from last year when the rents were still up there.

I scratched my head when I saw this new product. I see the logic in combining watch and Octopus functions and some people may buy Octopus watches. But what about this Octopus crystal accessory ? It costs HK$328 each. Who would buy that and hang it outside her handbag ? Are there otter Octopus new product ideas that sell ? Readers, open for discussion please.

Let's change topic from the promotions that we have talked about these few days. After seeing this ad of LG, it gets me to think about the trend of mobile phone market. I'm not a fortune teller and hope everyone will share their views. It seems to me that various mobile phone brands are coming up with phones with more powerful camera and MP3 functions. Like this LG ad, it is saying the phone has the power of everything one. It has 800 mega pixels, face detection function and ISO 1600. All these functions are comparable to many DCs. The question is whether phone will replace the demand for DCs. Open for discussion please.

Consumer promotion is supposed to increase purchase and consumption. The more consumers buy, the higher chance they consume more. Drugs should be consumed on need-to-have basis as advised by doctor. Is it ethical to run consumer promotion on subscription drugs ? Should there be some regulations to govern this ?

Here is a series of 2 promotion ads of Campbell's Soup. The first part is about a writing competition for consumers to share why they love Campbell's Soup. What are the objectives behind this ? Awareness, consumer involvement and WOM, maybe. It's an interesting idea but it's not expected that too many consumers will participate. So it will just generate some awareness at the end. If it's for awareness, would straightforward thematic advertising be a better way ? I wonder. As for the second part, it's targeting loyal users for increased purchase and consumption. Maybe it deserves more advertising support as it is more sales-related.

Another purpose of consumer promotion is sampling. Like in this case, Huggies combines product and call for consumer participation into getting free sample. Registration is done online and the catch is that consumers need to register with their contact details like postal and email addresses. Such details can then be used for future communications. Also by counting the number of registrations, the effectiveness of the ad can be measured too. This is a good practice we can learn from.

Colgate 360 is giving away free personalized tooth brush with your name engraved on it. Sounds quite innovative as the first impression but come to think of it, is it motivating enough for consumer to buy more ? One prime objective of consumer promotion is to drive incremental sales within a limited short period of time. Or sometimes we do promotion to build brand image. But would giving away personalized tooth brush contribute to brand equity ? It seems to me it's neither here or there.

It's surprising to see P&G come up with a "one-stone-kills-two-birds" ad too. In the key visual, it is trying to say that various brands and products would make you beautiful and radiant. The cause-related initiative is like a tag-on. If the objective is to build a good corporate citizen image with the 希望工程 donation, why doesn't it play it up and make it the focus of the whole ad ?

Dove launched this promotion giving away HK$1,000 Lane Crawford cash coupons to consumers who bought most Dove each week. I wonder if this is really a consumer promotion as such. As a consumer, would you be interested in participating into this promotion. I suspect there would be two possible outcomes. First the participation rate of consumers was very low and it didn't drive much sales increase. Or it was the wholesalers or small retailers that really bought the products for re-selling and get the coupons. Not sure what happened at last but at the end we need to ensure consumers would get the benefits in any consumer promotion.

Speaking of health supplements, you may also notice this initiative by Mannings. It joins force with HKBU to conduct extra tests on the health supplements sold at Mannings. The tests are not thought to be very sophisticated but it's the image projected by such intitiative that counts. Health suupplement represents a sizable chunk of business for drugstore chains. By providing extra quality and safety assurance to consumers, Mannings would be able to attract more consumers to buy health supplements there. You may ask if the same products are sold in Watson's as well, would it also benefit Watson's ? Maybe but Mannings will take in exclusive products to minimize that, I'm sure.

The market for potency health supplement is always there. On and off we see new launches of such things. As they can't claim 壯陽 directly in the ads, they just hint the effect in a not-so-subtle way with some creative copies. You must click the image on the left and have a read at the copies. I bet you will laugh out loud like I did. Particularly I love this line : "不是春藥, 更勝春藥" ! Two thumbs up !

This is a new anti-wrinkle product. On top of advertising, there are big POP displays in Mannings as well. I think it needs a Chinese brand name as most of us just don't know how to pronounce the English brand name properly. And the packaging is not like other skincare products, which is a good thing for it to stand out but too bad it's pretty like those medicated ointments. I wonder if it is trying to project a professional image. It can be better done though. In the ad, there are claims on its instant effects. If this is to be advertised on TV, these claims without support will definitely be banned by censorship. What company is behind this new product ? I'll leave it to you to find out. It's not a no-body. A pretty big one.