ThinkNoLimit Marketing Coaching

How would you sell a handycam ? The obvious choice is taking the usage route, reminding people of how the handycam can be used in order to trigger the need for it. In the past, handycam was for shooting the life of the new born baby. Now it's for shooting new born doggies. Keeping pets is the trend but we see a lot of new born babies around us this year. If I have to decide, I would still use the baby route as people may find it more worthwhile to invest in a handycam for shooting their babies.

Having two LCD screens, one at the front and another at the back, is not a hugh innovation. When you get on Facebook, you will see a lot of people post photos that are taken by themselves. There seems a consumer need for a DC with two screen for self-phototaking. Yet the question is whether it is a determining feature that drives purchase. Or is it just a nice-to-have ? Will you bet you A&P to shoot a TVC and advertise heavily ?

It seems Nikon is also taking the route of targeting the young female market. This TVC looks quite similar to the previous Canon EOS 500D TVC but stressing more on the user-friendliness and different handy functions. With the two key brands promoting to the same segment, I'm sure the market for easy-to-use DSLRs will be growing quickly and soon it will become a trade up from 儍瓜機. If you are the competitor of Canon and Nikon, what will you do ? Will you get into the same battlefield ? Positioning is about being differentiated. Maybe there is a space for another brand to occupy professionalism and sophistication targeting male users.

Canon Selphy is positioned as a small and user-friendly photo printer for users who look for fun of photo sharing, rather than high quality prints. Primarily the target market is skewed towards females. You may not call this ad creative but it does bring out the warmth and fun of using this handy photo printer. A very relevant situation is picked as the demonstration. There has been a small boom of new born babies this year. So you must find the scene familiar . That's the merit of the ad.

Come to think of it. It's not easy to advertise TV sets on TV. The trouble is you can't do good demonstration how great the sound system is, how clear and fine the pictures are and so on. If your TV set is worn and old, you won't be able to appreciate any difference. If your TV set is new, you may be able to appreciate the differences, which means you don't need to change it. Kind of embarrassing . Maybe we can focus more on call-to-action in TV set advertising. That is, asking people to check it out at the stores themselves .

What do we call this kind of ad ? It's a typical direct response ad where it has a call-to-action objective and asks consumers to act on a message. In this case, consumers are asked to go to the website to participate into a game to win a helicopter trip. Immediacy and convenience to respond is the key to success of direct response ad. Print ad may not be the right medium to ask consumers to respond on the net. You can imagine the response rate generated from it may not be too high compared with advertising on the net instead.

Advances in technologies have made digital photography widespread in a very fast pace. The pace of penetration is even faster than mobile phone. It's not uncommon for people to own more than one digital cameras nowadays. DCs are now smaller, lighter and cheaper with a lot of different functions. There is another stream of development where people are trading up to DSLRs which allow more creativity and sophisticated pictures. In the past, DSLRs were expensive and perceived to be the gears of professional photographers or the toys of more mature male users who can afford it. Competition drives prices down. Starter's models of DSLR is sold at something HK$5,000-6,000 with lens and so more people can afford it. Who are the target consumers ? This ad has told you : younger users, aged 20-30, primarily females. It reflects what is going. If you go to those photography hot spots in HK, you will see more and more young ladies using DSLRs taking pictures. It's not a guy's toy a...

Nikon might not be a late comer in DSLR vs Canon but it should be a late comer in advertising about it. When I saw this TVC , I thought it was an ad from Canon. The execution is so similar to many ads of Canon. Look, advertising has role to play in differentiating from competitors. So we need to work hard on that from creative idea to execution. Better branding can also be weaved into the ad so that people can tell it's Nikon not Canon. Call me old school but you need to ensure that you are not advertising for your competitor ! A brief sign-off logo at the very end can be easily missed.

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.

Speaking of DC advertising, how about this Canon Powershot E1 ad ? The strategy is pretty clear. This DC is positioned as a camera for taking snapshots to the young. The idea uses a slice-of-life that young people can relate to with a touch of humour. The functional selling point, face-tracking, is tactfully blended into the storyline. The tone and manner is quite Japanese in order to appeal to the target audience too. However, it doesn't come without a downside. Although it's humourous, the users in the ad are portrayed like 牛蒡男. That can be a little humiliating.

Ever imagine you may have put your precious advertising money in advertising for your competitor ? When I saw this TVC of Oylmpus, I thought it was from Canon. The message is about the fastest auto-focus function, a point of difference from the competitors yet the execution look so similar with any other camera ads (below). Also the branding is rather too. I bet more than 5 out of 10 consumers would say they have seen a Canon ad instead of an Olympus ad.

I have talked about Eee Box in my earlier post . In its last advertorial, it was trying to sell to young lady users. It was commented that it could have picked the right target segment based on the small size and the very basic performance standards. To my surprise, in its next ad, it tries to sell to business customers based on energy saving. There is nothing wrong with selling to two segments, only if we know what it takes. Channel, price and promotion strategies need to be different. Do we have enough resources to kill two birds with one stone ? Given limited resources, we need to make trade-off decisions. Just a coincidence that I clipped another ad of Megaman that talks about energy saving. Sold at HK$19.90, this energy saving light bulb is said to save 80% of electricity. Would it be more motivating to spell how much money it could help save as the support ? I mean just like what ASUS Eee box does above.

Digital single-lens reflex camera has become a trend. Prices are coming down and many people are trading up from their 傻瓜機 to DSLR . All DC brands are now competing for a share. Professional and sophisticated image of the brand is quite crucial in this segment. Among them, Canon, Nikon and Pentax have the credentials in SLR for a long time since the flim era of photography. On the other hand, Sony is a brand that stands for electronic products and it lacks the same history in photography products and it will take a lot of marketing investment for it to convince consumers. Also in terms of branding, Sony has to use sub-branding for its digital photography products. Sony Cybershot is a great name for DC but Sony Alpha as a name for Digital SLR is not a very associative.

I wouldn't say this is not a creative and funny TVC. Just that the idea is way too complicated to be appreciated. It uses the pimple of the extra acting black pepper as the subject matter to tell us how fine the image of this HD TV is. Probably there could be other subject matters that are funny and easier to understand. What's more, it gives me a feeling of racist in a way. So I guess I would only take this creative only if you point a gun at my head ....

Speaking of HD, heard from the news that Sony has won the battle of high definition disc format with its Blu-ray disc over the HD DVD format by Toshiba. Toshiba has announced that it would no longer develop or manufacture HD DVD players. How did Sony manage to win ? It's not marketing but corporate strategy. The fact is that Sony is a conglomerate into various entertainment industries, like video game console (Playstation) and movie production, on top of AV and computer products, putting it into the advantageous position to lead and dominate. Now that the dust has settled. Blu-ray is the future. It is expected that various manufacturers will follow suit to develop more advanced, cheaper Blu-ray disc players. How long will it take to replace DVD and VCD ? It will definitely take short time than the replacement of VHS.

This Megaman TVC has been nominated in the TVB Most Popular TVC Awards. It's a brilliant TVC, straightforward, easy to understand and humourous. What if I tell you it is a very similar to an old Tuborg beer ad from Denmark ? Take a look at the TVC below. The creative idea is exactly the same. But I still do think the Megaman TVC is a brilliant one. One one hand, as marketers, we need to watch more and see more to get more inspirations and also avoid "idea twins" that could be presented to us by the agency. On the other, we should keep an open-mind. After all, any idea that hasn't been exposed or seen by our audience could be of potential to be a great creative idea. If you were the marketing director of Megaman and had seen the Tuborg TVC before, would you approve the storyboard ? I would.

Two brands. Two ads. One same message : The printer can produce close-to-real images. The creative ideas are pretty much the same too but which one is stronger ? How do we judge ? We judge by relevance and association. Catching a butterfly in the office is not a situation or something you would associate with in real life. How about a crying baby looking for his mother ? It is definitely a situation that happens in real life all the time. So Brother wins. Any objection ?

Are these ads coming from the same ad agency ? The ideas are pretty much the same. Although the headlines are not the same, they both use the same approach of "mixing and matching" to say the products give you wings, i.e. freedom and superiority. Idea twins are not uncommon after all. How do we avoid them ? Only by hard work. See more, read more, look more. Not just the ads of our competitors in the same industry but ads of other categories as well.

This is a very strong creative using "mixing and matching". It's got the stopping power to catch our attention. And if we use our imagination, we would find it very campaignable too. In fact there are more versions like Pop, Rock etc. But is it really a good creative ? It still depends on what message we are trying to convey. The USP of this MP3 is 3-minute fast charge for 3-hour play. That's a very attractive selling point. Is the creative communicating it effectively ?

It's not always easy to come with up a consumer promotion that matches with product image/positioning and drives sales at the same time. If we can't come up with a sales-driving promotion, our sales colleagues would definitely complain. But a pure sales-driving promotion may damage our brand image. It's hard to strike the balance. In this promotion, a "design amplifying chair" (phone stand) is given away with N73. This premium really helps to convey the positioning of phone as a multimedia gadget for quality sound and picture enjoyment like a 40" TV. Simple mechanics, simple creative, good choice of premium. Isn't that great ?