ThinkNoLimit Marketing Coaching

Chinese New Year is the hot selling season for confectionery and household cleaning products. It's interesting to see that underwear brands have been trying to share some of the consumer spending in the CNY. It is a custom that we should wear new underwear in the new year. Last year we see Triumph and Embry Form advertised underwear for good luck ( see my post of last year ). This year Embry Form kind of copies Triumph and pushes the idea even further with the endorsement of fortune teller, Mak Ling Ling. It's said that you need to wear a specific colour/type of underwear according to your zodiac sign. Not too late to find that out. It's still the new year. See if it works.

The weather is cold and there are some tactical ads appearing on TV, trying to capture some seasonal sales during the cold weather. This is one of them. It's just fun to see to this 利工民 TVC re-appear. How old is this TVC ? It must be 30+ year old. 羊毛內衣 is a dying category and it remains with the older generation. There are simply so many alternatives in the market for consumers to choose nowadays. This old brand is fading in consumers' minds with the category too. In fact, 利工民 is a good brand name, an association with our labourer-oriented society in the past. Society changes and so does the market. New brands come and old brands go. Some brands would just remain in our 集體回憶.

Bonluxe is a brand of functional lingerie that hides your fat by wrapping it up and pushing it to the "right" place. Its target market is the mature women, probably aged 40 or above, who are too lazy to do exercises or finds it to expensive/time-consuming to go to slimming houses. It just provides a quick-fix solution to them. The positioning is clear enough. However, I wonder why it launches a low-waist underwear. Obviously it tries to capture the trend of low-waist trousers by offering a match. The thing is if you have a big belly and try to wear a pair of low-waist trousers, this wouldn't help at all as it doesn't wrap up your belly. (Of course if you have the same figure as the the model in the print ad, it doesn't matter what you wear.) A useless product that doesn't match with the brand positioning ...

There are a couple of newly launched TVCs worth discussing, like the latest CX and the ING ones. So I tried to find them at YouTube but with no luck. Instead I discovered that 全智賢 has acted in a couple of Giordano TVCs in Korea. See the first two below. It is a surprise that Giordano invests so heavily in Korea. Both of them are of high production value but interestingly they are banned ads. Seems that Giordano likes shooting controversial TVCs and its image is very different in Korea. The third one below also features 全智賢. It's a 3-minute long TVC advertising a bottled water brand call 2%. I heard about this famous TVC but didn't have a chance to watch it before. It created a big buzz and loads of talkabout on the Internet. Enjoy. After seeing the three TVCs, you would agree with me that 全智賢 is quite a versatile actress. And I wonder if we will be able to see this kind of ambitious, high production value TVCs in HK. Chance is slim. Hong Kong is such a small market.

One student asked me why Giordano re-uses its frog logo from ages ago. I said I know don't know. Really ! Giordano is a value-for-money brand. If it prints its logo onto the T-shirts and jeans, be it the frog or anything that says "Giordano", will sales increase ? Probably not. Giordano is a brand you wear but you don't want to admit. It's not a brand like Nike or LV that can uplift your image after all. So if it puts the frog back onto its product, there may be adverse effect on its sales. I haven't visited its store at the time of writing but according to its website, it hasn't added back the frog to its products. I wouldn't do that either. So what is the point of having the frog back in its print and advertising materials ? To remind us of its good old days ?

Been to H&M ? It's the talk of the town, a must-go. If you drop by H&M, I bet you will still see long queues in front of it. It's definitely a hype created by a good blend of marketing : clever use of celebrity, attractive pricing, PR, and (outdoor) advertising. The whole buzz is created around Madonna where the attraction is that you can buy the clothes she wears at affordable prices. In fact the store has another selling point about its product management. I read an article about its concept of "fast fashion", i.e. each design is produced in small batch so that it goes fast and new designs can hit the store much faster. This concept adds to costs and it's not easy to manage but it's a remarkable benefit to consumers. An example of success with powerful marketing mix.

Speaking of sportswear, Nikko is another dated brand (don't pretend, you are old enough to have heard of this brand). Why ? You can tell simply from their ad - a very traditional way of selling : products as the heroes, captions to explain the functions and merits of each product plus a meant-to-be catchy headline. All these might have worked 20 year ago but now that sportswear is a kind of fashion selling on emotional appeals. How many real skiers are there in HK after all ? 100,000 ? People look for style and image rather than caring about whether it keeps them warm or not. Nike knows that and that's why it's a multi-billion dollar brand.

One brand. Two ads sharing a similar idea. I talked about the one above before . Which one is stronger ? They look similar visually but are they really the same ? No. The one above represents a bigger idea : "unzipping" the challenge. Such a big idea is lost in the second ad on the left. Big ideas are hard to get. It takes some kind of envisioning to make a big idea campaignable. It's a disappointment in this case. How can we envision and manage campaignability ? See more. Think more. There is no other way. Advertising : be a regular reader of my blog !

From this ad, we can see the positioning of Pro-Cam-Fis windbreaker being conveyed. A light, easy to carry windbreaker for outing. Such windbreaker is good for outing in autumn time when it's not that cold. Good intention but the ad is not great at all. The creative idea is trying to draw an analogy of light weight between falling autumn leaves and the windbreaker. But look at the awkward superimposition of the products onto the falling leaf background. There could have been better execution. Sigh...

This is a great creative idea. For those who attended my course yesterday. What does this creative idea called ? We call it "unusual combination". In this case a zipper is combined with a snow mountain to send the message that you can take the challenge of a snow mountain as easy as unzipping a zipper with Lafuma. The idea is there, are there anything that we can do to make it better on execution ?

How to ride on World Cup differently ? This is a good example. (Sorry, the World Cup season has passed and I missed to talk about this one earlier. There are just too many ads to talk about) It's a pretty provocative ad. While most men are obsessed with the World Cup, it suggests women win back with their charms in Private Shop underwears. Clever, isn't it ? There are many women soccer fans but this proposition should touch a fair number of women's hearts. Executionally, it can be improved with a brighter background. It looks too gloomy. In addition, I would prefer the models facing the readers instead ... letting the readers appreciate more of their charms...

This is an ad by a clothing brand called U-right. The ad itself is not worth talking about but the mix & match concept is quite interesting : for a fixed price, you can pick your own combination of jeans, jacket and knitwear. I'm not sure it's just a promotion or it's the "business model" of the brand. If it is the latter, I can see the potential of building a strong brand. Why ? Just because it's different. Brands come and go and it's always difficult to differentiate from competitions. Some brands take the route of product innovation and some use image and personality. Some brands simply fail to differentiate themselves, hoping that their huge ad spend can help cut through the clutter... Business model is in fact a strong point of differentiation to build a brand.

Forgive me for being critical. This ad is a complete disaster. It breaks my heart. I saw they spend on MTR trackside posters as well. Money down the drain. This is from a brand called EW x EKI?a?a. I can't pronounce it. What's the slogan ? It is "???? t?? Difference" What are the supports or USP ? You can't see the small icon down there ? Let me help. It says "Wind Stopper", "Anti-Mosquito", "UV Protection" and "Quick Dry". Plus some cliche execution with the gewlos. Are we back into the 70's ?