ThinkNoLimit Marketing Coaching

Positioning is about focus. There are many financial institutions offering re-mortgage service. It seems Konew is the one that concentrates on this business. Positioning is about relativity to your competitors. In the case of Konew, it stresses on the simple application and speedy approval compared with the banks. Positioning is also about money. You need enough money to communicate your positioning and occupy the consumer mind. Basically Konew has all what it takes. Too bad the infomercials really suck ...

It seems that Mannings has come up with a good direction for its thematic TVC this time round. As the distribution strategy, it has been opening small stores in housing estates in order to compete with the independent neighbourhood drugstores. Services of these neighbourhood stores are more personalized and this is what chained stores are weak in. So it's logical for Mannings to air a thematic TVC project a warm, caring and personal image. Yet as we all know those neighbourhood drugstores also offer better prices on many popular items like milk powders, nappies, toothpastes and so on . Price differential is fundamental in shaping shopping habit. So even with an TVC like this, Mannings will not completely replace the business of those drugstores.

Since the incidence of 三聚青胺, consumers have lost confidence in all milk products made in China. Parents are now buying Japanese brands of milk powders for their children. It's an interesting phenomenon that most consumers see Japan as the country of origin for high quality milk products, rather than anywhere else. In reality, there are many countries that produce high quality milk products, like Australia, New Zealand, Holland and so on. Why do consumers consider Japan as the top of mind choice ? I don't have an exact answer and maybe consumers feel that Japan is an Asian country and its milk formulae are more suitable for the Asians. This Nestle Excel TVC stresses on the Swiss origin. Will it be able to win over the perception ? I doubt it.

Thought about investing in gold ? Gold hasn't been a popular investment tool compared with stocks, mutual funds and foreign currencies. It's kind of forgotten. Yet lately you just don't need to be a professional investor to hear the news that the price of gold has been on the surge. If you have heard about the gold price surge and watched this TVC , you will probably be moved to consider investing in gold. Gold is about power, security and happiness. It's quite a good emotional ad.

Everybody can afford 100M broadband service as it's only HK$99 a month. Isn't this Hong Kong Broadband TVC a bit disappointing in terms of creativity ? The production value looks quite high though. There are different scenes and if the Lamborghini is not computer-retouched onto the scene, you will need to either move the car around to different places or build different sets. It's costly either way. The only merit of this ad is that the Lamborghini becomes the mnemonic device of the speedy broadband and it can be easily applied in different 2D media. Yet compared with the previous Ads of HK Broadband, I still prefer the creative idea driven ones of the past.

Yahoo! has been airing an infomerical on TVB. It tells us the most searched buzzwords of today. It's something nice to know but why does Yahoo! do that ? Tell us that it's the number one search engine in Hong Kong ? Perhaps. So as to promote the search traffic to the site in a soft-selling, indirect way ? Maybe. Or it tries to promote the Most Searched Buzzword site, buzz.yahoo.com.hk ? Have a look at this site. What's the thinking behind it ? I wonder if this is a new serach advertising option for advertisers or it's simply intended for projecting the search engine leadership image.

I was wondering how Coke wants to manage the Minute Maid brand when I see this launch of grape juice + aloe bits variant. When it launched the brand with major investment, it launched 果粒橙 and later on, 西柚橙. I thought it was intended to stand for pulpy juice. Now it launched grape juice + aloe bits. Does it want the brand to stand for juice with fruit bits or something else ? What a brand stands for would depend on the products launched under it. Let's keep track of what Coke will do to manage this brand which is still at the early stage. It could be a learning example of brand management.

This TVC must have been "inspired" by the Transformer movie. You may say it's not so creative but at least it's conveying the no paper jam positioning. In fact our rational mind tells us that this positioning is not believable. If your photocopier is old and lacks maintenance, all brands of paper will jam anyway. Double A is no exception. Nevertheless, advertising would wash your brain when repeated many times and perception is reality. Your photocopier still jams with Double A as you would expect. You still prefer it as you may believe it jams more with other brands.

If there were censorship on bad taste TVCs, this should be banned. It's an eye sore. The intention of getting association with the East Asian Games is obvious. How on earth would consumers find the association between 龜苓膏 and the East Asian Games relevant in the first place ?! 中國人再無東亞病夫 ?! It even plays on Patriotism as well ! Isn't that too big for selling 龜苓膏 ?! LOL Thanks to the founder of 海天堂, 吳耀明先生, we can have some good laughs from time to time.

When my dad saw this TVC, he said : "what kind of abalone can Cafe De Coral offer you ?". This is exactly the doubt of the consumers. Cafe De Coral, as we all know, is a fastfood chain and it means cheap eat. If the price of this abalone menu is low, people would doubt the quality of the abalone. On the other hand, if Cafe De Coral is trying to trade up with this abalone menu, asking for more bugs, people will find it not so worthwhile as fastfood chain should still mean cheap eat. Cafe De Coral has been advertising different novelty ingredients, which is a good strategy to project a quality food image. Yet it's a bit overdone this time round while getting itself into a paradox... a bit 走火入魔...

When I saw this new pizza of Pizza Hut, I bursted into laughters. The new pizzas of Pizza Hut are getting more "creative" (or gimmicky). Can we call that pizza anymore ? I'm sure there will be smiley face pizza later... One would argue young people like newness and you will need to have some new items on the menu to attract them to come over and over again. True, but it's getting overdone. Putting sarcasm aside, if the leader in pizza is messing up with its pizza, there may be room for a pizza restaurant chain to stress on authentic pizza as the positioning. Target segment can be the richer mature group. Remember how Triple O and other premium Burger chains get shares of the burger market from McDonald's ?

Speaking of shampoos and shampoos specifically for men, Head & Shoulder has yet again launched a new formula, Strong Hair. It's said to protect you from dandruff as well as keep your hair strong. 甄子丹 is employed as the spokesperson. Although he may be the man role model and admired by the women who buy shampoos for their men, he doesn't really have the thick hair to sell strong hair... LOL ...

Since the success of 霸王 and the launch of Rejoice 漢方防掉髮, it seems a new 漢方 arena has been created in the shampoo market. More brands are launching 漢方 shampoos with 漢方 as the base for different consumer needs, like 澳雪HD漢方洗髮露 which is an anti-dandruff. With different brands investing, I'm sure the 澳雪 concept will get bigger and represent a major sub-category in shampoo market. There must be consumers shifting to 漢方 for initial trial but let's see which brand can sustain. Based on the concept of positioning, only one or maybe two can own 漢方.

On and off, we see imported TVCs from Japan like this one. The ad is in original Japanese voice-over with Chinese subtitles at the beginning. It's not too easy to catch what they are saying. There is a comedy actress called 小靜. I don't know her... is she well-known ? Celebrities are often used in Japanese ads but not all of them are known by HK consumers. If this 小靜 is not that well-known, the first 10 seconds can be saved in fact...

Park'n Shop asks consumers to print discount coupons for items on special promotions. You can choose and print the coupons of your choice. It seems Park'n Shop has just been taking Money Back as an initiative to promote what it wants to promote. In fact, Money Back can be very powerful if it's used for database marketing. When a customer uses Money Back card, each purchase could have been stored in the database, like what the customer has bought and at what prices. These data can be analyzed to provide discounts and offers tailored to that specific customer so as to encourage him/her to spend more and increase loyalty. Too bad Park'n is just taking Money Back as a low-level initiative. It's quite a waste after it's been around for so many years.

It's quite a sizable campaign launched by Cup Noodle lately with different media supports. It's basically about the new packaging that is microwavable. It's not quite a big deal but a brand needs marketing communications and product innovations consistently to stay evergreen, even you are the market leader like Cup Noodle. In many cases however, investment in the brand comes too late. Companies and managements like staying in the comfort zone and ignore the need for investing in the brand. "So long as it can sell, why should we spend the money and make our bottom line look bad ?" That's what managers usually have in mind and they will only "do something" when the brand is in trouble. Hope it's not the case for Cup Noodle.

Yes Lady Finance, the Chinese name is 發達太太. Just the name will catch our attention I'm sure. It's such a funny brand name for a finance company that lend money to luxury brand hand bag owners. That is, shopaholic women who may have over-spent on shopping of luxury handbags and many other things else. It doesn't come without consumer insight and there could be such need in the market. It just reminds me of the pawn shops in the old days.

Even if your brand is big, there are still limitations as to what it can extend to. Panadol means pain killing in the minds of the consumers. Stretching it into the cold and flu remedy arena is a bit marginal. People recall 幸福傷風素 better when they need cold and flu remedy. Now it gets into the cold syrup arena. For cough syrup, I can recall 樂信 and 佩夫人. When I look at the ad, the trouble is that there is nothing too special about this new cough syrup except the single-serve sachet packaging. That can be easily copied by any competitor.