ThinkNoLimit Marketing Coaching

Ask yourself as a FB user or a user of any social media : under what circumstances would you share a page, a video or any news ? Either you find it useful or funny for others to enjoy. So in this case, if you don't find the HKET page useful, you just won't share it. Would such lucky draw boost the number of people sharing the page ? Some people may be attracted but I suspect most of us won't really bother. Try paying people to become a fan of your page ? You will need to pay more. LOL

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.

Yellow Page has redesigned its portal. There are various kinds of information, including latest news, entertainment, map and traffic information, travel information as well as property information. All information in the portal is relevant to our daily life for sure but doesn't it sound like Yahoo and Google ? It's quite me too. What is Yellow Pages ? Originally it is a physical copy of directory for companies to post contacts and ads to attract businesses. Since the birth of the Internet , it has a lesser role to play in our life. We are now used to searching for information on the net and Yahoo and Google dominate this market. How should Yellow Pages do to compete with them in terms of positioning ? There is no easy answer. I leave it to you to think about it.

Here is an ad from ebay. Basically it's selling the similar thing as the Yahoo! Auction ad that I posted yesterday. Let's do a little comparison. Could I say this ebay ad is stronger playing on Mark Six as the creative idea ? Both ads try to use one stone to kill two birds while selling the benefits of setting up own e-business and announcing sales promotions at the same time. The promotion of ebay is even more distant as it's a sales contest. The promotion mechanic is more for the existing users of ebay. The chance of getting new users with this promotion mechanic is slim. Look, when we do promotion, we need to think about the objectives we try to achieve.

When job security is low and unemployment rate is getting higher, Yahoo! has picked the right time to promote its online store/auction service. The ad is loaded with a lot of messages : the goodness of having an online store, call for action to check out the success stories online and the promotion offers. The promotion offers are most prominent in the ad. It goes with the thinking that promotion offer motivates consumers to purchase. Is it always true ? In this case, consumers would need to take some time to consider whether online store is something of value to them and figure out what to sell. Promotion is more like the last deal-making step. So would it be better to put the communication of the promotion offers online after consumers have checked out the success stories ?

Thanks to one of my friends, I finally got hold of all 18 TVCs of Hong Kong Broadband. You would just either like it or hate it but the campaign has managed to create a lot of talkabouts. It's just as controversial as the chairman of CTI, 王維基. Not going to analyse it as I think it's more for enjoyment.

Notebooks and Netbooks are hot and mobile broadband is the arena that PCCW and Smartone-Vodafone both want to have a share in. It's funny that Telcos are quite into competitive advertising. But this Smartone-Vodafone does have a point and strike right on the weakness of Netvigator Everywhere. Netvigator is not "everywhere" per se. At home, you use fixed line broadband. Out of home, you need a device to connect to either WiFi, HSDPA or 3G. I mentioned it's self-defeating in my post last year. Seems Smartone-Vodafone people have been reading my blog. LOL.

Some people comment that this TVC is horrible with the play of monster/ghostly images. I think it's quite cute. Cute and horrible, there is a fine line but it has definitely generated some talkabouts. Thanks once again to 王維基, we can see some interesting and different ads in the boring ad scene. It seems like everything HKBB is quite committed to head-on with PCCW. Last time I talked about the Netvigator HD decoder promotion saying that it's not attractive at a price of HK990. Now HKBB offers the same for free. I checked out the HKBB's offer on its website . I must say it's much more attractive than the offer of Netvigator as the lowest commitment is just HK$48 x 24 months with the IDD0030 300-minute/month plan. I'm not advertising for them but it's worth considering it.

So looks like the fights goes on between HK Broadband and PCCW. My brother sent me this Flash comic (click onto the above image to see). I guess it is an eDM sent to internet users. It is bascially laughing at the credibility of PCCW's coverage of optical fibre. There are several things worth noting about this fight-back initiative. First it picked the right channel talking to internet users via eDM. Second there is no censorship on the net. Hence, it can push it to limit in term of compeitive message. You just can't show this on TV without getting banned. Finally it is very clever to use animation/comic to continue the campaign (I'm aware that it is using the same approach for print ads and outdoors). It is cheap and fast to produce. The felxibility would enable it to react to any competitive move of PCCW. Don't know whether it is by accident or something planned. If it is the latter, the agency and the marketers in HK Broadband must be really really smart. They shoul...

Yahoo! is running this search competition. The more you search on Yahoo!, the higher the chance you can win some prizes. It's a promotion that you don't need to buy anything or spend a penny to win a prize. So what's the catch ? I think it's a good promotion idea that could kill two birds with one stone. On one hand, it could potentially build itself as the search engine of choice against Google amongst the users. On the other, it could promote its search traffic to support the sales of search advertising to advertisers. So literally it is the advertisers of Yahoo! paying for the fabulous prizes.

Yahoo! has launched a new e-store platform for auctioning. Stemming from the "normal" auctioning, it's an added platform for those people who are willing to pay a bit more for added services to do their trades better. Logically the strategy is to position it against leasing of traditional physical stores. The ad says it all with a simple creative. A good example that if we are able to position our products and services clearly in a focussed manner, our ads can be more easily done nicely to convey a single-minded message.

Long time no see ads using spoof/parody as creative approach. Zuji has just done one. The idea is to twist around commonly known matters or visuals to catch attention and send a message. This ad mimics The Economist and parodies with breakoutof financial news to communicate their price promotion. It's always great to see advertisers making more different creative attempts.