ThinkNoLimit Marketing Coaching

For a change, I have selected some quotes about Advertising for you to savour. Enjoy : "The very first law in advertising is to avoid the concrete promise and cultivate the delightfully vague." - Bill Cosby "What you say in advertising is more important than how you say it." - David Ogilvy "Advertising is legalized lying." - H.G. Wells "Advertising is the most fun you can have with your clothes on." - Jerry Della Femina "I've learned any fool can write a bad ad, but it takes a real genius to keep his hands off a good one." - Leo Burnett "In advertising, not to be different is virtual suicide." - William Bernbach "The headline is the most important element of an ad. It must offer a promise to the reader of a believable benefit. And it must be phrased in a way to make it memorable." - Morris Hite "Society drives people crazy with lust and calls it advertising." - John Lahr

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...

High Definition TV service is not yet launched while various brands are advertising about their HD TV sets already. Understand that they all want to gain the first-mover advantage. This is an interesting scenario. Rate of adoption of a new technology often depend on trialability. By trialability, we mean consumers need to try and experience before they make a purchase. Brands talk about 1080 resolution and true HD yet there is no way to demonstrate how good it is as HD is not in service yet. A TVC like this one will only remind us that Sony will have HD TV sets available. Is it good ? Is it better ? Consumers just can't tell when they see the ad on their current low-resolution TV sets. So how do we go about it ? First it's all about timing. I would block a heavy media schedule, say two weeks before the service launch. Try to be the exclusive TV set advertiser in prime times if I could afford the budget. The objective of the TVC would be to encourage people to check out the new ...

This is quite an enjoyable TVC. However, I'm not a big fan of corporate advertising, I have to say. In many cases, corporate advertising can only bring up the awareness and saliency of the company. Nothing more. Nothing less. Corporate ads are not really selling any product or service in specific and they usually target at broad audiences. Well, if your audiences are from 3 to 80, how creative can you be ? Creativity is not about pleasing everyone after all. So the corporate ads we see are usually warm, motherhood and nice to watch but easy to forget with cliche messages. For this Construction Bank TVC as an example, its message is basically "Construction Bank helps you realize your dreams". Sounds familiar, doesn't it ? Every bank says so one way or another. While advertising is often taken as the easy way out in corporate communications, PR is in fact a more effective tool for building awareness and image. The Standard Chartered Marathon is a very good example.

The TVCs of HK Broadband has really made a stir to the advertising scene. My post about the HK Broadband campaign have received quite a few comments. Guess generating talk-abouts is what 王維基 is good at. Thanks the readers who contributed this link of PCCW 1000M+ TVC. PCCW is fighting back. Interesting that it uses rats to make a mockery of HK Broadband. It doesn't look like a gentlemen act as the market leader. I think the TVC is not really striking the right chord. Basically the HK Broadband TVCs are talking about its high speed with optical fibres going into home. High speed is the claim and supposedly the benefit that people are looking for. The coverage of optical fibres is the support. So if PCCW is fighting back head-on, it should talk about speed, rather than its coverage of optical fibres. It has also invented a new brand name, PCCW 1000M+. I searched in its website and it is in fact a new service plan. Now we have choices of 3M, 6M or 1000M services depending on where yo...

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People always say "女人錢容易賺", especially in beauty products. Maybe it's me as a guy. I find some ads are trying to kid women. The Vidal Sassoon one I talked about yesterday is one and this Neutrogena Hydro-Boost Mask is another. It is said that the mask has many holes and can press the moisturizing essence into the pores of the skin through some hole-to-hole action. It sounds like a great invention but to me, it's just too magical to believe. Sometimes, I wonder whether it is my problem only. Would people really believe that ?