ThinkNoLimit Marketing Coaching

7-Eleven is the leading convenience store in Hong Kong. It has the market-first advantage as the first brand that brought the convenience store concept into Hong Kong. It has the largest store network, 800 stores, through franchising. So Circle-K has to try harder. It renovated its stores with new brand ID and store layouts, added more instore services like ATMs and EPS money withdrawal, extended to bakery in certain stores, trained up its staff and so on. In terms operations and store management, Circle-K is better because unlike 7-Eleven, it owns its stores and has better control. It offers better shopping experience compared with 7-Eleven. With all the infrastructures in place, it's time for advertising to do the job. The TVC is simply asking consumers to "take a new perspective" at the Circle-K and rethink their habitual shopping at 7-Eleven. If you pay attention to the TVC, you would find that something is missing. That is, the support, i.e. the reason why consumers ...

This is an enjoyable TVC with high production value. I bet it has costed a lot of money to produce. It is supposed to tell us that Sun Hung Kai Financial has a long history to help you grow your wealth. The question is about its credibility. We can understand that the wealth management market is blooming and it's logical to come up with a corporate ad of some kind to boost awareness. However, when I saw the ad, it is giving me a feeling like a stranger pretending to be my good old friend. If it were an ad from HSBC, I would be more convinced. The fact is advertising has its limit. If you try to say something too far away from the perception of the consumers, it simply won't work.

I guess the soya milk market is on the rise. If we go to supermarkets, there are more brands and shelf spaces are expanded. If you want to have a share of this growing market, there is no magic. Clear and unique positioning. This Sunrise soya milk does have some potential. Produced in Canada, it is made from glacier water and non-genetically modified soy beans. It can be positioned as the high quality/high price brand of soya milk. In order to do that, its packaging design has to be upgraded. Its ad is rather down market too. It's quite a pity to see brands willingly invest on celebrity but ignore the need for creativity to convey a clear positioning.

This sounds like a self-defeating marketing idea. Netvigator Everywhere offers you a device that searches for the best wireless data service among 3G, HSPDA or WiFi. WiFi, as we know, is location specific. But were we promised that 3G is a high speed network service that allows us to make video calls and connect to an array of multimedia services anytime anywhere ? Apparently PCCW is admitting that its 3G is not covering the whole of HK or the speed is not consistent. A device, that will search for the best networking, as the key selling point is a marketing fallacy too. At the end consumers don't really care about what service they are connected to. They care about whether the speed is good and the price is right. The barrier to the wider use of wireless services is price, price, price ... hope someone will take a look at the price elasticity equation.

Ribena is a brand with long history. It's a blackcurrant syrup with very single-minded selling point : more vitamin C than orange. Sustaining a brand long term is never easy. Once on decline, it has managed to turn around with smart marketing. One turning point was its launch of the squeeze foil pack offering convenience and targeting at the younger generation. Another smart initiative, I must say, is its market extension to the tea meal house market with Ribena with Lemon. It's a marketing initiative that takes insights, commitment from the management and a lot of hard works by the sales people. Originally sold at supermarkets and convenience store, you can imagine the amount of effort and resources that are required to get into a new arena . It's about risk taking and it takes all the guts to go for it. If we ever have a HK FMCG marketing casebook, I think it should be on the top of the list.

Non-alcoholic is a positioning strategy and it's relative. You go to a bar or pub and you look for something non-alcoholic to drink if you don't fancy anything alcoholic. In such situation, the non-alcoholic positioning exists, relative to the alcoholics. There could be a market for non-alcoholics at bars and pubs but it should be relatively small. In fact, there are not too many packaged non-alcoholic drinks that are successful at on premise, particularly bars and pubs. There are Coke, Perrier and maybe Red Bull (but Red Bull is usually taken as a mixer with alcohols). At off-premise, i.e. supermarkets and convenience stores, the non-alcoholic positioning is not quite valid. A non-alcoholic sparkling drink like this SINVINO is just a carbonated juice drink. It is exposed to a big sea of competitive non-alcoholic drinks, carbonated or non-carbonated, from pure juices to juice drinks. The chance of success is pretty slim but time will tell. I checked out its website and this br...

This is a 4-page ad of Estee Lauder in Next Magazine. One page of teaser, then a double-page spread of testimonials and one page of product selling. That's a typical arrangement to achieve size and grab attention in magazine (given you have the money). One special thing is its use of real career women instead of models and actresses as the spokespersons. They look ordinary and they are not as pretty as the celebrities but they make the ad more credible. Estee Lauder is known as a brand for more mature ladies. There are bound to be so many affluent thirty-something career women out there working days and nights needing some replenishment to their skins. Given the target audience, using career women for testimonial should be more appealing and convincing than using pretty celebrities.