ThinkNoLimit Marketing Coaching

PCCW Wi-Fi is offering 2-month free trial of its hotspot Wi-Fi service. Don't get too excited about it. First, only users of mobile phone can enjoy this free trial. Why ? Data volumes used by mobile phones are usually smaller than computers. So it would be safe to offer free trial to mobile phone users only. Even if many people try it for free at the same time, the network wouldn't be overloaded so that the speed experience is maintained. Another catch is that the ad trumpets about the 100M speed. Yet in fact it's only available at certain hotspots only... how much longer can telco kid consumers with small prints ? I wonder.

Play this ad and stop at about the 20 second mark. Guess what brand of DC is being advertised. Most of us would have thought it's Canon. No, it's Nikon. The execution is similar to Canon's ads again. One may argue that all DC ads should look similar as most of them are playing with the common category motivator : capturing the happy moments. True in a way and it's a creative challenge. Canon is the market leader and advertises more. The only way out for Nikon is to try harder and look different. Ok.... good creative is not easy to come by.... at least the branding in the ad can be played up...

Seen this series of TVCs during the Christmas season ? There are like 4-5 versions featuring 洪金寶 playing different games with different people. It's just a simple demonstration to show that Wii is fun for all age groups. The campaign has caught the right timing of the festive season where people might buy it as gift for fun sharing during the holidays. Right product, right timing. I bet quite a bit of products should be sold with this campaign.

Different legends in history have made use of different tootls to influence the world. That's the analogy for selling 1010 Next G mobile data service. Bruce Lee, Martin Luther King and JFK. The target audience may be aspired to these legends but still is the analogy a bit too "big" ? it just gives me goose bump... I wonder why it doesn't mention Obama and his Blackberry... LOL

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.

The launch of Windows has generated quite a bit of noise worldwide. It's said to have a lot of advantages and to be better than Vista. A friend has posted this Mac ad on Facebook. It's not only a good laugh but it's also quite thought-provoking. Marketers and companies are sometimes self-defeating and give broken promise. Has Mac given broken promises before ? It probably has.

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.

WiFi everywhere, does it sounds like an interesting service ? It can connect up to 5 WiFi devices too. At the beginning, I was confused between this Pocket WiFi and the hotspot WiFi PCCW has been advertising about before. Have checked it out from the website . It seems the pocket Wifi thingy is like a wireless router that connects to the 3G or HSPA wireless network for sharing. This service is not too cheap. For unlimited usage, it costs you HK$328 a month with 24-month contract. I just wonder who will use this service and if you pay attention to the details, the highest connection speed is 7.2Mbps, to be shared with 5 devices. The actual speed also depends on the environment and network stability. So you can imagine the speed when it's really shared by 5 people.

Seems smartphone with touch screen is the current trend of mobile phones. Such trend is created by iPhone. Other brands have been launching mobile phones with touch screens stressing on user-friendliness and intuitive user interface. While iPhone is still the phone everyone aspires to have, its price remains stiff. There is a market gap for smartphones that are not as powerful as iPhone or HTC but are sold at a lower price. This is exactly how Samsung Anycall Jet is positioned. Sold at HK$3,000+ and targeting the young, it should have some potential.

Guess I'm out of touch with the current cantopop secene. There are 3 young singers in this ad. Are they well-known ? Don't know why 3 has shot a TVC for this promotion. The offer is quite trivial : a special Yahoo edition of USB wireless modem plus free viewing of Yahoo. Would it be better to just advertise on the Yahoo website ?

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.

What is Next G ? It's a 3G UMTS mobile network trade-marked by Telstra in Australia, a major stakeholder of CSL. It's said that the speed can get up to 21Mbps and it's the fastest modile data network in the world. One2Free launches it with video on demand service broadcasting full versions of TVB dramas and movies. It sounds pretty attractive while price has come down quite a bit. Yet we are all quite skeptical about the speed stability and coverage. If a mobile operator can gain the trust on the network quality and word of mouth, it should be able to win more customers for mobile entertainment or other data services.

I have to admit I have certain prejudice about PCCW. Thanks to Mr. Richard Li, the reputation of the company has gone down the drain. The failed privatization and the lay-off have been generating too much negative publicity. Its business and marketing strategies also get it attacked by competitors in all directions. I still scratch my head why PCCW keeps investing on this Eye service. Now the second generation comes with a wireless touch screen for easy access to the contents owned by it like NOW TV and Moov Live. Everyone has a computer nowadays and netbook is getting popular. Why do we need mini touch screen monitor ? They can just open up subscription to these contents on the net...

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...

PCCW is getting hit from all directions. Now Smartone is also getting into the home broadband service with its HSPA wireless broadband. A bit pity that the ad sells on the style and look of the machine and price. How about coverage, stability and speed ? These are the concerns of most customers for them to switch from PCCW. PCCW has run into serious corporate reputation problem due to the failed privatization. If other opeartors work harder, I'm sure they will steal more businesses from it over time. And it's actually happening. CTI has just announced its interim results and growth is reported.

This is a fun ad for your enjoyment. I must say it's a good attempt ! If you fire people and don't want to get revenge, you should use genuine softwares. If you find your boss replacing pirated softwares with genuine ones, you would know he has planned to fire someone. It also reminds you to dig out some misconducts of your company and disclose them in case you are fired. Isn't it a great ad ? I think Microsoft should adapt it.

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.

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.

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.

PCCW Next Gen network - Beyond 3G ! I scratch my head when I try to listen to what the VO says. The delivery is so fast like 數白欖...1000M+ optical fiber backbone, HSPA technologies, HSPA plus cyber, PCCW Mobile, Netvigator Everywhere ... all these buzzwords occupy half of the TVC. There are benefit claims in the later part of the VO like powerful Internet experience, higher data transmission volumes, smooth and fast etc. The whole TVC just lacks any central idea of what it's trying to say. At the end, how does this so called Next Gen network benefit me as a consumer ? It's more like a self-pleasing ad that trumpets leadership in technologies.