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.

Technology has the power to change consumer behaviour. Internet breeds new brands that provide better solution to our lives. Classified Post was the market leader in premium job advertising. 米報, we call it. I suspect jobsdb.com is now the leader in job advertising. Providing various helpful functions for employers and job-seekers, it wins with technologies. The battlefield is Internet but funny that Classified Post is still advertising about the "hard copy". As for the ad itself, playing on superstition is not a compelling idea. Yet the whole execution is a flop. I bet it intends to save a bit of money. It's a 15-second ad and it's just to short to build the drama. The production looks too cheap to target premium job seekers. And worse still, the idiotic act of the leading actor is alienating premium job-seekers.

After seeing so many Epson's ads, I have found a good one at last and it's a great example where the strategy, message and creative are closely linked together. The strategy is to provide VIP after-sale services in order to encourage the use of the original cartridges. The message is of course about the benefits of the speedy service whenever your printer breaks down. And finally the message is presented with a parody creative idea that associates with the Aladdin's lamp and the genie. The whole things make a lot of sense. Brilliant one.

Real PR or faked PR ? PR is about building credibility via third party's endorsement. By media relations, we need to find way to interest journalists so that they will cover the stories of our companies. It's not easy as it involves a lot of hard works and creativity. So many people would rather take the easy way out. The market is big for this kind of awards and different media and publications have been inventing various awards in different names to make advertisers (and the bosses) feel good and spend more money. Never know whether consumers would believe all these awards. Or we are just kidding ourselves ?

PCCW has just launched this new multimedia service. Now you can access different information and services by your landline phone. In recent years, I think PCCW has been quite sucessful in setting up its multimedia services with some appealing contents. Since the service platform is there, it needs to increase the methods of access available to consumers in order to maximize usage : mobile phone, Now.com (web), Now TV (cable) and now the landline phone. Who would use landline phone for multimedia services ? My guess is those who don't know how to use the Interenet, probably the older generation aged above 50+. It does have a point but this EYE service isn't cheap at all. You will need pay HK$128 per month and on top you will need to pay some extras for stock quotes, the spots channels and so on. It can be quite a high price to pay for the older generation and I wonder whether it will get popular.

"修身堂 helps you to stay young forever" is the key message of this ad. What are the support to this claim ? 殿堂級幕後精英 at different age ranges are the live demos of the miraculous results. They all look young, slim and pretty in the ad. But is it credible ? Not quite. You can tell the ad is done with a lot of computer retouch. Consumers are not that easy to kid nowadays.

睇好戲影靚相, this big headline caught my attention but when I read on, I scratched my head. Everything is in fact in the body copies : buy Warner Brothers videos and you will get a discounted price at HK$500 for a so called "Venture拍攝之旅". What does it mean ? What is Venture ? I scratched my head. So I searched the net : Venture is a family portrait photography studio. If you are not as 八卦 as I am, I bet you would never know. This is a case where joint promotion is wrongly taken as a tool to build awareness for a new brand. There are always better alternatives.

Haven't been to Karaoke for a loooong while. Guess I need to be re-educated about the latest Karaoke scene. According to this ad, we can now select our favourite songs with our Nokia phone in California Red and there is no need to "compete" for the remote control. It's a great idea indeed but I'm just curious about what kind of technology is used to enable this. Infra-red, Blue-tooth or via the mobile network. Is it convenient or complicated to operate ? Too bad that these are not mentioned in the ad. Could someone tell the backward old man please ? I won't be able to check that out as I'm not a Karaoke singer at all...

The marketers in 現代教育 are really doing their job in marketing. Just take at look at this pair of vertical executions. You want gimmicks, you have gimmicks. The heading is 美女班房 Ken sir 監製, featuring two good looking, long-legged tutors in mini skirts. A bit of sex appeal. 問你死未? Even I want to go back to school again ..... You want promotion offers ? They are offering coupons for 3+1 free lesson and free first-lesson. No complaint about their creativity at all... It's phenomenon of Hong Kong where everything is pushed to the limit.

This is a very interesting idea. I spotted it in a wedding supplement. Don't know whether it will work but it's very creative indeed. Xin Desire, a spa parlor, have this so called bride spa party package where the brides and the sisters can enjoy spa together before the big day. The spa package includes champagne, snacks, desserts, make up class and so on plus selections from a range of spa treatments. Price isn't too bad. HK$4,800 for 6 persons for 4 hours. I'm not advertising for them but is it a good service package idea ?

Sorry Hello Kitty again. Well, I think she deserves at least one more post of discussion. Look, all these promotion, including the McDonald's one, were running apparently at the same time during the summer. Why all these companies were doing all the me-too promotions ? Because they think it worked before and it must work again. It's the winning formula. No promotion idea ? Let's do Hello Kitty ! Like everything else, my prediction is that Hello Kitty will not last forever. Its life cycle will be shortened when everyone is exploiting it. Popularity and Novelty are in rivalry with each other.

Another hair clinic ad. It is quite unlike other hair clinic/hair loss remedy ads. I couldn't tell it is about hair clinic from the key visual at once but it did arouse my curiosity to find out what it is selling. Bamboo is used as the association with hair, a "new" way of association. Is it good or bad ? I think it's a good attempt to be different from other ads of the same category. It is a well-thought-out creative strategy too if you look at their logo. Their logo is also a bamboo illustration but too bad their brand name is "ProHair" which is quite generic to remember. I think a name like "Bamboo Hair Clinic", 竹林髮療, could have been a better name.

Sometimes we find ads that are really literal. Creativity is lacking where these ads just 劃公仔劃埋D腸. In this MTR customer care ad, the headline says 掛在心 and they just really 掛D乘客在心 in the key visual. It's a discipline to send benefit-oriented key message in our communications and it just fails to convey any. Worse still, when I get at the body copies, this ad is in fact about voting for the best service MTR staff. The whole thing is missing the point...

At a glance, this is a pretty normal ad. What I see is a father and a son looking at a map, kind of discussing where they are going or they want to go. You feel the warm relationship of father and son. Not too creative but it suits the selling of an airline service. But when getting to the copies, it doesn't talk about things like shortening the distance between people, visit your relatives, blah blah blah. It actually talks about "two daily flights to European destinations and around the world where you can get all more business opportunities. Isn't that funny ? 上身著西裝, 下身著唐裝.

Hair health ad again. Number of advertisers in this category is growing, after slimming. Women want slimmer bodies and Men want their hair back. This ad makes use of "hair on the pillow" as a familiar situation to depict a relevant problem. A typical problem and solution approach playing with exaggeration. It's not a bad idea but they may be too greedy to include too many copies which cover up the key visual.

Mother's Day. Who invented it ? I guess it must be some businessman who is good at marketing. Now that Mother's Day has become a big day for consumer spending and everyone wants to share a spoonful of it. We have California Red here. All in a sudden, it has become a place for 親子 with handicraft workshops and XO sauce giveaway. The question is whether you would bring your kids to a typically smoky, stinky drinking place ? There may be a market for 親子 Karaoke. It's just that California Red is not the brand name for it. A brand represents consumer perceptions. Just a print ad or two would not do much.

This is a very unique ad of wordplay. Personally, I really appreciate the Chinese poetic way of spelling out their 16 years' leadership in car body maintenance. The only downside is that something visual is missing to relate to their business and help readers to associate with what they are advertising about. The only clue in the ad is their logo at the bottom. Maybe featuring a shiny body part of a Mercede Benz could help a bit.

As I mentioned in my class, good promotional ads are not easy to produce. First and most important of all, we will need to come up with a promotion offer that matches with the proposition or the benffits of the promoted product. That is a relevant promotion mechanic. Only with such, we can do a good promotional ad that really helps drive the participation of the promotion in question and generate sales. In this particular ad, a bottle of perfum (the gift) is featured together with the hand phone that is being promoted. They are not really related in consumers' mind. So that it can be confusing as to which one is the gift and which one is the promoted product. BTW, the pinkish background is not highlighting any focus of attention as the headline, the perfum, the phone are all in pink.

"Our dietitians stand by you !" But is the dietitian standing a little bit too close to the client ? 專業, 貼心 , I agree. His chest is really sticking tight to her chest ! This is what they mean by "貼心". It's an ad that generates a lot of imagination for those who want to lose weight ...