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.

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.

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.

What if you have HK$1 million ? That's a promotion held by a relatively new finance company in order to generate awareness. People can go to the website and write about how they will spend HK$1 million. Sun Finance will help the one who gets the highest number of votes to realize his dream. It's a simple idea. Those who won't participate into the promotion will get aware of the brand. Those who get onto the website and take part into the promotion will get to know more about the company. A good attempt but don't know if this is a effective promotion.

The promotion mechanics of this ParknShop Money Back promotion is a copycat of credit card promotions where every Money Back card holder is given a target spending amount and if you achieve that, you will get 10x points. The objective is of course to increase consumer share of spending with ParknShop . 羊毛出自羊身上. If you are a rational consumer, you can imagine the point benefits should come from the prices of the products you pay. So the question is : how can they offer the claimed lowest prices at the same time ?

Congratulations to the one who came up with this promotion. It has been receiving very favourable response. Maybe it's because the glass is given away free upon super-sizing value meal. I bet Coke must have sponsored all or part of the cost of the glasses but it's a win-win definitely. McDonald's can drive some additional revenues on one hand (without using the boring Hello Kitty this time round). Coke can promote the classic cola brand image on the other. Heard that some colours have run out of stocks already. Have you got one yet ?

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 ?

Blue Girl launches a big scale promotion in summer time every year. Different from previous years, it seems that it tries to target the younger drinkers at bars and pubs this time. It's an interesting promotion ad that plays on 大獎 and 大掌 phonetically. Yet the prizes don't quite look too attractive. The grand prize is a gold bottle together with piggy bank, bottle opener, beer mug, T-shirt etc. Would it be motivating to the younger bar and pub drinkers ? I wonder.

Here's an ad you won't miss. A bus is buried in a checker pattern background, which should get you curious to find out what it is about. The promotion mechanics and the ad execution tie well with invisibility, the unique selling point of the product. Although there may not be too many people interested to participate, the ad still reminds people about the goodness of the product. There is a 2+1 promotion offer tag-on too. Quite a good attempt to kill two birds with one stone.

AXA rides on the current financial situation to do promotion while Fortis plays on swine flu. Swine flu is not so widespread in HK (yet). So the extra coverage on swine flu may not be able to motivate people to buy the insurance from Fortis. Insurance is a business of probability. On the other hand, if swine flu breaks out in a big scale, it may not launch such a promotion anyway because of the high payout potential.

Doesn't this make some good sense ? During the current financial tsunami, AXA guarantees that you will get refund on the paid premium if you turn unemployed within a year. However, you can only enjoy this guarantee if you subscribe to a policy before May 25. It's a promotion for new customers only. It may not be viable but if this guarantee were extended to all existing customers, it could be a great PR initiative to build AXA as the caring insurance company that goes through tough times with its customers. There would be short term impact in terms of revenue and costs but it may be worthwhile for long term brand equity.

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 ?

Wow, boy, you can treat the girls without going broke at Pizza Hut ! Wow 常餐, from as low as HK $35, is available all day. The intention is to attract more customers by extending the value offer during the recessionary period. The ad manages to make use of the offer to build Pizza Hut image as the ideal place for gathering with friends. Such image is owned by Pizza Hut over time. Just that the storyline has been used by McDonald's some time ago. It's alright so long as not so many people recall that.

This ad puts a smile on my face. Marketers sometimes do implement some complicated mechanics which are hard for consumers to understand. Promotions are supposed to generate short-term increase in sales and any grand prize shouldn't be given away too easily unless consumers have spent enough. The ad echoes with the mentality of the general consumers at this time : just give me a better price rather than gimmicky promotion. It says no gimmick and it is said by McDonald's, funny huh ?

Consumer promotion is supposed to increase purchase and consumption. The more consumers buy, the higher chance they consume more. Drugs should be consumed on need-to-have basis as advised by doctor. Is it ethical to run consumer promotion on subscription drugs ? Should there be some regulations to govern this ?

Here is a series of 2 promotion ads of Campbell's Soup. The first part is about a writing competition for consumers to share why they love Campbell's Soup. What are the objectives behind this ? Awareness, consumer involvement and WOM, maybe. It's an interesting idea but it's not expected that too many consumers will participate. So it will just generate some awareness at the end. If it's for awareness, would straightforward thematic advertising be a better way ? I wonder. As for the second part, it's targeting loyal users for increased purchase and consumption. Maybe it deserves more advertising support as it is more sales-related.

Another purpose of consumer promotion is sampling. Like in this case, Huggies combines product and call for consumer participation into getting free sample. Registration is done online and the catch is that consumers need to register with their contact details like postal and email addresses. Such details can then be used for future communications. Also by counting the number of registrations, the effectiveness of the ad can be measured too. This is a good practice we can learn from.