ThinkNoLimit Marketing Coaching

It's quite a laugh with the play of words and the old 賭聖 movie. It's not a sophisticated kind of humour but it catches your attention and makes you remember. Positioned specifically to smokers, this smoke stain removing toothpaste has been around for ages. Compared with whitening toothpaste, the potential market size is much smaller. Yet the bigger whitening market is occupied by bigger brands like Colgate and Darlie. Smaller brand can still have a chance to succeed by occupying a specific niche.

Tissue paper, like many other FMCG products, is a saturated market. Brands are competing for market share while there is literal no market growth. Kleenex, Andrex and Scott are the first comers that developed the category. Yet over the years, their shares are eaten up by other cheaper alternative brands. Why ? First the category is generic in the sense that there is minimal product differences among different brands. Second, the more well-known brands did not invest much in marketing communications. Now it's all too late. Will consumers buy more of these three brands because it is a famous international company that produce them ? It gets consumers more confused in a way. What are the differences among the three brands ?

Let me use textbook theories to explain the intention behind this consecutive ads. Print advertising is an one-way non-personal communications . It's not easy to grab people's attention and reader involvement is low in the communication with print ad. So we need to think of a good way to involve and engage the readers better : give them an IQ test. Better still, if the IQ test is related to our product, we can do the selling at the same time. Prefect thinking but the result like this is more like a self-talking piece. I consider myself educated and got some IQ.... I still can't understand the questions and answers .

What does it mean by Da咩"火羅" ? Da咩 is Japanese meaning No/Stop. "火羅" is Cantonese slang meaning embarrassment. So the ad is trying to say you are smart drinking Fanta and there is no more embarrassment. Yes yes yes you are clever enough to understand what Da咩"火羅" means and there is no need for me to explain. This was exactly what I had in mind when I heard the radio ad of Fanta explaining what Da咩"火羅" means ! The ad is intended to create some kind of new buzzword for the young in the hope that it will be a 潮語 among them. Yet it is feared that this new buzzword is not understood. So an radio ad is produced to explain. Who planned all these ? The adult marketers. Buzz is not created by advertising. It tells in your face. It's not quite the way of communications to the young.

Thanks to a friend who sent me this. This video only lasts 5 minutes or so. It's worth the time to watch it and think it over. Everyone is talking about the importance of social media in marketing communications. It's free and it can reach the younger generation. Is it simply about posting your TVC onto YouTube ? And you expect people to send and share it ? If it's not creative or anything funny, people would not share it at all. Heineken here is a good example. You may call it a PR stunt, with the use of internet to spread it out.

Quite many people are talking about the new launch of GUM 5 by Wrigley's. I bet the heated talk abouts must be generated by the TVCs and the packaging design which resembles to condom packs. I have clipped all three ads from YouTube for your enjoyment. The campaign has centred around taste sensation. No doubt these are great ads which are of high production value as well as successfully set up the expectation and build up the excitement for trial. The risk is there when consumers try it and find the taste nothing special. It will become an over-claim and the heat will only be like fireworks that last for a short while.

This must be a pretty memorable ad, probably not because of Andy Lau but the cute monkeys. Ads of 道地 TVCs is very consistent over the years. Andy Lau, the natural environment, and the soothing feeling of the music. I suppose 道地 is the leader in bottled tea. Does such consistency in advertising have anything to do with its leadership position ? Well sales do not depend solely on advertising but consistency in advertising would definitely give you a better chance to build the brand in the mind. Back to this ad. It's about a new product called 清烏龍 with the selling points of 茶清解渴 and 真正茶味. It's nothing special at all. What's the point ...

Said to improve skin complexion, collagen drinks have been around for about 6 years. The most pronounced brand is Fancl House. On and off there are brands going in and out into the market with advertising investments. It seems there must be some loyalists who really believe in collagen drinks. As a late comer brand, H2O+ has taken a direct competitive approach of dosage comparison. It has 8,000 mg of collagen and so it's said to be the most effective. This ad has been launched for a week or so and here comes the Consumer Council's report on the effectiveness of collagen drinks yesterday. I wouldn't call it hard luck for H2O. Everyone in the health supplement business know collagen drink doesn't work at all. If people still decide to put in big money to kid consumers, it's their choice and they deserve having their fingers burned.

This ad must be inspired by the movie 家有囍事 way back in the 90's. It plays parody with the role of 吳君如 in the movie. You would be able to get the joke only if you watched the movie before. Those who watched it before should be 30+ old, i.e. the target audience supposedly. You may or may not like the parody with 家有囍事 as the idea. The learning is that by parodying with a popular memorable movie, we can home in on a particular target audience.

Is it a good move to come up with a new version of a popular ad of the past ? The song, the romance and the directorship, unquestionably the old 陽光檸檬茶 TVC is a classic. Some people may tend to compare the old and the new and argue which one is better. There is no point arguing about that. It is a good ad so long as it works to appeal to the target audience. The old one managed to do so as it was new and fresh in the advertising scene at that time. Over the year, there have been many emotional appeal ads with similar blends of song + romance. Since the target audience were born in the 90's and hadn't seen the old version before, it may just be another ad similar to what they have seen many times. It is actually their parents resonating with this ad. Note young people are rebellious. They hate what their parents like. This ad may just remind the young people 陽光檸檬茶 belongs to their parents' generation and provokes the "not-for-me" thought.

Other than confectionery products, pre-Chinese New Year is the season for promoting household cleaning products. How about having someone to do the clean-up for you ? Clorox is having a promotion to give away 2-hour cleaning service by HK Employment Development Service. It's not a bad promotion idea at all but 2 hours is definitely not long enough if one wants to have the whole flat thoroughly cleaned for the new year. We all have budget constraint understandably and it's a trade-off between number of prizes and the size of the prize (length of the cleaning service in this case). In fact, it can be potentially turned into a societal promotion initiative, more for brand building than sales generation. The mechanics can be the same but the saying in the ad can be twisted a bit to do that.

If you want to try Colgate Sensitive Teeth Toothpaste, here is your chance. You just need to buy it anywhere and send back your receipt to get your money back. It's probably a mechanic we should learn from when we do sampling. Easy and simple. Worried about the administrative works involved ? Contract it out to a third party. Seems it has contracted the tedious handling to a company called ActMedia. By giving out free samples with such a generous mechanics, it will add credibility to your products that it works too. Not bad at all.

Mannings has come up with an ad talking about their nutritionists. Note that nutritionist is different from dietitian. To qualify as dietitian, you will need to complete internship and exams to get registered. Like this ad says, there is no accreditation system for dietitian in HK and it is only available elsewhere overseas. There are limited number of registered dietitians, like 200-300, in HK while they are either practicing privately or working in public health services. In recent years, both Mannings and Watson's are trumpeting about professional care with the presence of pharmacists and so called 營養師 but their 營養師 are not actually registered dietitians. On and off we hear some negative coverage that their nutritionists are in fact product promoters rather than giving neutral professional advice (note registered dietitians are not supposed to sell products). To counter the negative publicity, Mannings has come up with this ad to "clarify". Will it work ? It reminds us...

The founder of 海天堂, 吳耀明先生, keeps enjoying the fun of self-pleasuring. He has been investing quite a lot in TV advertising and he has become the icon of the brand. He is also the pioneer of rejuvenating the aged 龜苓膏 category by coming up with different new products : 龜苓膠, 龜苓茶, 龜苓糖... for more convenient consumption by all walks of life. Most of the TVCs are not great at all except this 海天堂 x 黃飛鴻 campaign. It's still self-pleasuring but at least it's fun to watch and attention-grabbing in the current boring ad scene.

Here we go again ! With the same old Hello Kitty, it's not easy to come up with new promotion idea where a lot of gimmicks have been used before. The mechanics is the same old "spend n collect" but I have to say the promotion TVC is quite enjoyable playing on good old childhood memories. It's obvioulsy targeting those under 25 but savouring childhood romance is one thing, wearing a Hello Kitty wrist chain is another. I would be surprised if there are people who are willing to wear it ... LOL.

BRAND'S essence of chicken has launched a new TVC. Still remember the last campaign with Eason Chan in it ? If we put the two TVC side by side, you will see the new one is a disappointment. Why ? By the use of big celebrity like Eason Chan, certainly you will get fast spread awareness, create credibility and generate word of mouth. Yet when you can't afford the celebrity at later stage, all the magics will be gone at once. It's worth a second thought about using celebrities indeed. Somehow it's a road with no return. What you get is inconsistency at the end.

The latest TVC of Lipton tries to equate the consumption with hugging to depict the warm hearty feeling of the consumption. It's a sound attempt but the association between hug and tea consumption is rather far-fetched. Consumers may find it difficult to associate. I wonder if it would be better to skip the hug idea and just use the touching scenes to express the consumption experience.

This is a low cost animation production playing with the rather popular TV show 超級巨聲. It's not a great idea but the message is clear "Ribena is made from blackcurrant, rich in Vitamin C". The ad compares blackcurrant with grape. Is it trying to counter other grape juice products like Minute Maid ? Or is it trying to clarify that Ribena is not made from grape ? For an established brand like Ribena where there is no more new news about the product function, maybe it would better to strengthen the brand on the emotional ground.

The household consumption of cooking oil must be on decline or with no growth. People eat out and for those who really cook at home, they use less oil due to health concern. Brands are competing for market share with price as it's not easy to come up with real product differentiation to win. Cooking oil is cooking oil after all. This cooking spray is meant to meet the health trend of using less oil. Will it sell ? The thinking may be good : "People are using less cooking oil anyway. So let them use less and provide the convenience with a spray container. We can probably ask for a higher price." Yet it reminds some smart consumers to make their own home-made version : Just put the cooking oil into a spray bottle. It's much more economical. LOL.

You wouldn't miss this campaign of Dove. There are TVC, print and outdoor. As most of us know, chocolate is a mood elevator and many people, especially ladies, take it as a treat to pamper and relax. The campaign tries to have Dove to own such category motivator. The strategy is sound but the creative idea is rather questionable. The analogy with taking medicine is not quite a good association.