The Pitch HK

Mixed messages

2008-07-01T00:14:00.001-07:00

I’ve always found it pretty amusing this marketing technique employed by so many Hong Kong companies of hiring young women, dressing them up in skimpy outfits and parading them around their products. It's everywhere! In the pub, on the street, press conferences and trade shows. I suspect its to get the attention of the young, mostly male photographers.

I couldn’t help but laugh when Strategic Communications & Consultants sent this press release on behalf of Fuji Xerox Printers yesterday, featuring this young lass in a variety of quasi-sexual poses.

My all-female colleagues didn’t get the joke, said I was lame and went back to work. Is this just a male thing?

Mugabe is not an acceptable client says WPP

2008-06-25T05:48:00.000-07:00

WPP has responded to a juicy yarn from Brand Republic in the UK, which on Monday reported that an advertising agency partly owned by Young & Rubicam, part of the WPP group, had been advising Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF political party about its reelection advertising strategy.

The CEO of Imago Y&R in Harare was named as the architect of its election campaign.

The story forced WPP to defend its stance on human rights and admit that one of its senior managers was advising president Mugabe in a personal capacity. The statement stressed that WPP companies will uphold the principles contained in the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the International Labour Organisation's fundamental conventions on core labour standards.

WPP said it is now looking to divest its interest in Imago Y&R.

Here’s the statement

WPP shares the world's outrage at what is happening in Zimbabwe.

We were therefore extremely alarmed by the allegation last week that a firm in which we hold a minority interest (25%) through Y&R and over which we have no legal control, may be advising Robert Mugabe and his political party. This could never happen with our knowledge or approval and we investigated the situation as a matter of urgency.

We have now established that a senior member of the management had been advising President Mugabe in a personal capacity. Nonetheless we want no association with this effort.

WPP's board and management have established clear guidelines for our operating companies on clients for which we are prepared to work. The Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe is not an acceptable client in accordance with these standards.

The decision to divest Y&R's minority interests in Zimbabwe was proposed earlier this year and we are working to ensure this is completed as soon as possible.

Alibaba’s deep pockets

2008-03-25T00:51:00.000-07:00

The first round of financials from e-commerce company Alibaba after its 2007 IPO were released last week revealing some pretty interesting details.

Net income at Hangzhou-based company soared 340% to 967.8 million yuan (HK$1.06 billion) last year, up from 219.94 million yuan in 2006, partially benefiting from 350.5 million yuan in interest income from oversubscriptions of its public offering in November last year.

Buried deep down in its financial statement was how much money the company spent on sales and marketing. If you were anywhere around Hong Kong in the final months of 2007 it would have been hard to miss the Alibaba logo, which was stuck on buses, taxi's, all over the MTR and pretty much anywhere else you can buy advertising space. In short, the company was (and still is) everywhere!

Alibaba’s own records state that its sales & marketing expenses increased 20.7% from RMB610 million in 2006 to RMB737 million in 2007. The company said its sales and marketing expenses increased mainly as a result of increased staff costs, advertising and promotional expenses and sales commission. It added that sales and marketing expenses increased in the second half of 2007 – leading up to its IPO.

“We invested more on promotional activities in new regions that we expanded our business into as well as promotion of new products that we started to offer during the year."

Why gag the media? Gag the athletes

2008-03-20T23:55:00.000-07:00

Here’s a pretty disturbing report from Australia, which suggests that Australia’s federal government is forcing athletes to sign a 53-page document that means they will have to ask permission to comment on human rights during the Beijing Games.

Speaking to ABC news, Australian Olympic Committee media director Mike Tancred said the agreement is designed to stop athletes “criticising team mates” and not a means to gag political commentary.

Tancred told ABC TV's Lateline program: “We want them to talk about their own prospects and performances, thank their mum and their dad, their coaches, but not to be critical of their team-mates or other teams,” he said.

The report said athletes could be sent home if the agreement was broken.

Critics of the move are only expected to grow as the Olympic Torch makes its way to Tibet in about six weeks time – en route to Beijing.

A 2004 Olympic finalist Michelle Engelsman, a strong critic of China's human rights record, has joined Team Darfur, a worldwide group of athletes “raising awareness of China's support for the Sudanese regime responsible for violence in Darfur.”

She told ABC news the Tibetan uprising has added to her concerns.

“To be going into a country that has massive rioting and death going on, that's definitely something to be paying attention to and be concerned," she said.

“But I think the biggest thing to come out of that is greater external pressure to allow foreign media in, to allow the UN to go in and have a look at what's happening and really push for human rights.”

This video is not available in your country

2008-03-18T18:20:00.000-07:00

"This video is not available in your country." That's the message you get when you type "Lhasa Tibet" into the search engine of YouTube. Let me be clear here, this is not YouTube's China portal, which by the way has been shut since Sunday (16 March), this is just youtube.com. This clearly looks like a self-censoring exercise on behalf of the video sharing website. There are many reports floating around the net that China is again blocking access to a number of foreign news organisations when reports about Tibet are aired. It's a shame that firstly, the Google-owned YouTube is continuously blocked in China, but especially sad if it has made a decision to self-sensor for purely commercial reasons.

2008 Superbowl Commercials

2008-02-04T05:28:00.000-08:00

The Superbowl's commercials seem to be more popular than the game itself. This year's game was a slow, six-hour marathon. But at least some of the ads were good. And at US$2.7 million per 30 seconds, they damn well should be.

Victoria's Secret - Adriana Lima and Valentine's Day

Bud Light - Will Ferrell and his new flick "Semi Pro"

Fed Ex - Carrier Pigeons

Pepsi Stuff - Justin Timberlake

Audi R8 - The Godfather

Bud Light - I Can Fly

Celebrity scandals and brand image

2008-01-31T20:26:00.000-08:00

Celebrity marketing could be a powerful promotion tool but what happens when the celebrity that endorses your brand attracts the wrong kind of publicity? To what extent will that coverage have an impact on your brand?

The past few days have seen the Hong Kong media report on several local celebrities such as Edison Chen, Gillian Chung and Cecilia Cheung, hit by a "doctored photo" scandal where supposed nude photographs were posted and circulated on the internet.

While police have started investigations to apprehend the poster, media reports have varied to analyse if the photographs were real or photoshopped.

From a marketing perspective, however, how would news of this scandal impact on the brand image?

For the first time in October last year, Adidas Hong Kong has engaged local popstar Gillian Chung for an ad campaign aimed at females to promote that sports is fun.

Dave Thomas, former marketing director for Adidas Hong Kong, had said having a local celebrity could engage consumers in a more localised way.

The question now is whether Adidas will continue to engage Chung as its brand ambassador and if the company will shift its marketing strategy moving forward.

Hong Kong Tourism Board has also engaged Twins for its Winterfest promotions last year and when probed, HKTB refused to comment on the issue directly.

The response from a HKTB spokesperson is that the board's endorsement of personalities extends to gourmets, musicians and sportsmen, to help promote Hong Kong’s destination appeals in different markets.

"We will continue to tailor our marketing strategies to the interests and preferences of different consumer segments in the respective markets".

So what advice would the spin doctors have to give on the current scandal?

Georgeana Fung, executive VP for Weber Shandwick, said:"Honesty and sincerity are important in dealing with the case".

She added that especially how the celebrities handle the situation would be critical to change the public's perception.

John Morgan, regional MD, Greater China of Golin Harris, added that when celebrity endorsements turn sour, it depends on how at odds the scandal is with the brands they represent.

However, he said consumers are now much more progressive and if a brand does walk away, it may end up hurting the brand.

With this scandal, some cheeky scam ads have also appeared on the internet featuring Edison Chen and Bobo endorsing abalone and sausages, which happen to be appropriate timing for the Lunar New Year.

Li's Facebook flutter

2007-12-02T23:19:00.000-08:00

A Dow Jones blog has reported that Asian billionaire Li Ka Shing has plunged US$60 million into social networking giant Facebook, with the option of investing a further $60 million should he wish to part with his cash.
Quoting anonymous sources, the report said Li is not making the investment in Facebook via the companies he controls, Li is chairman of Cheung Kong Holdings Limited and Hutchison Whampoa Limited, but through another investment entity.
According to the report, the deal with Li came through a Facebook investor, who introduced the company to Solina Chau, director of the Li Ka Shing Foundation. Chau is also a major stockholder in Tom.com, a media company in China in which Li’s companies also have an interest.
At first glance the investment makes perfect sense for Li. The synergies between Facebook and Li's 3 Mobile brand are endless and lucrative (hello advertisers!).
But the partnership would also be a huge boost for Tom.com and could allow Facebook a potential partner to crack the Chinese market.
Don't expect the news to be broadcast by Facebook or any of Li's companies. The notoriously secretive nature of Li will no doubt ensure the news is known only to a select few.

Kids Fantasy

2007-11-08T19:19:00.000-08:00

If you thought cigarette companies were evil, how's this....

A popular Australian kids toy product Bindeez (better know around the world as Aqua Dots), has been ripped from shelves after scientists discovered that the product contains a chemical that if swallowed converts into the illegal party drug fantasy.
Media reports say three children in Australia and two in North America have been left in near-comatose states after digesting the toy.
Bindeez, a highly popular holiday toy sold by Australia-based Moose Enterprises, is manufactured in China. Reports around the web say thousands of stores in the US and Canada, including giant retailer Toys 'R Us, are now clearing their shelves of the product.
In far North Queensland police are warning people that if you're caught selling Bindeez Beads, you'll be up on drugs charges!

To make matters worse the product bears an uncanny resemblance to mood altering pills. What a mess.....

The Alibaba hype machine

2007-11-06T17:27:00.000-08:00

Well it looks as if the complete barrage of marketing activity leading up to the public listing of Alibaba.com has paid off.... handsomely. The first day's trading saw Alibaba.com stock jump 192%, closing at $HK39.5. Leading up to the float, the company - part owned by Yahoo! China - was absolutely everywhere. On taxi, it basically bought out the MTR for a couple of weeks, cover wraps on local newspapaers as well as a Alibaba.com roadshow, which generated huge amounts of press coverage. One very smart strategy to target mum and dad investors. Thanks to JCDecaux for the image.

Family Fun with Xbox 360

2007-10-23T21:13:00.001-07:00

Xbox 360, marketers of hardcore games such as Gears of War and Halo 3, are heading into the non-traditional gaming market, launching an Xbox 360 console for families. In what looks to be an attempt to dampen the family appeal of Nintendo’s Wii, Microsoft has unleashed the full force of its marketing might on the new, and potentially lucrative, gaming audience.
So how does it differ from a normal Xbox 360? For starters, violent games are clearly gone and have been replaced by more “family-friendly” games and Microsoft has signed a deal with Warner Bros to unleash a suite Looney Tunes cartoons for download on Xbox 360. Also, Nickelodeon has jumped on board, adding three new shows to its existing library of more than 300 episodes of TV shows available on Xbox LIVE and games will be exclusively available on Xbox LIVE Arcade.
In a statement, Jeff Bell, corporate vice president of global marketing at Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment division, had this to say about its new offering.
“As families gather together this holiday, it’s the perfect time to launch a new low-priced, high-value Xbox 360 that plays games, TV shows and music for everyone to enjoy.”
Sounds nice, but just don’t tell the hardcore gamers.

Free speech in China, yeah right!

2007-10-22T23:58:00.000-07:00

According to gossip floating around the web, YouTube has or will soon launch a Chinese version. This follows news from Down Under that the time wasting.... sorry video-sharing site has launched a local version for the Aussie market.
Currently all attempts to get into YouTube China have proven unsuccessful and instead I'm greeted with a "server not found" message.
This should not surprise anyone. The United States recent decision to honor the Dalai Lama has reportedly infuriated Chinese officials to the point that they have now placed bans on foreign search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and Look.com. Maybe president Hu Jintao thinks the Dalai Lama will convince George W Bush to launch a pre-eminent strike on the communist country!
Anyway, Reporters without Borders, another on the China hit list I suspect, has published a report on the governments inner workings around web sites, which makes for very interesting reading.
We'll watch with interest to see how the launch of YouTube unfolds and whether, like its parent company, it will self-censor to keep those nasty government critics at bay.

It's everywhere and it's free!

2007-09-11T22:45:00.001-07:00

It may have been a gamble, but three days into its free subscription model and The Standard looks to have outstripped all expectations.
The newspaper is absolutely everywhere, which starts when I leave my apartment building in the morning, then as I pass through the MTR, past the basketball courts, shopping centre and.... well, you get the picture.
Monday's initial print run was 120,000 copies - three times its circulation of the previous week. Ivan Tong, editor in chief of The Standard, yesterday told the International Herald Tribune that the response had been "better than we expected." Fair enough, but it's kind of like shooting fish in a barrel. Of course people will take it - it's free!
Since Monday The Standard has been wall-to-wall with advertising. Whether or not Sing Tao (owners of the The Standard) dropped its standard to entice more advertisers is merely speculation and I wonder how much those legions of Standard distributors are costing the company?
Tuesday's edition also had Britney Spears on the cover - a bit of a turnaround from its usual business coverage. But it will be interesting to see how The Standard brings in new readers without ostracising business readers and advertisers.
Nevertheless, Sing Tao should be congratulated for realising and changing its model to fend off the growing impact the net is having on newspaper readership.
It will be interesting to see how its The Post responds.

Out and about

2007-09-06T18:17:00.000-07:00

This is my first blog as editor of Marketing magazine Hong Kong. I'm only three weeks into role, but you may have noticed a couple of slight changes. We've now taken Marketing Daily from three to five times a week, so any tips, news, campaigns, comments, feedback etc etc are more than welcome.

This week has seen quite a few big events, none bigger than MasterCard's luxury week. The publishers of travel magazine Escape also threw a fairly big shindig at Q Bar in Lan Kwai Fong on Wednesday to celebrate its 500th day in publishing. Spotting Media, publishers of Escape and Beats Magazine shelled out some cool prizes including a trip to Vancouver, which Joanne Wong from Ogilvy PR won!
Last night (Thursday 6 Sept) saw the official launch of media monitoring group Cision at the International Finance Centre. Not too bad a launch, good turn out, lots of reps from the PR industry turned up to see who they'll now be competing against. By that I mean a growing part of any PR business these days is media monitoring. Cision, one of the bigger media monitoring groups, is now establishing an Asian presence, so competition in this space will only heat up as its operations expand. Worth noting though that Cision's strategy in many markets around the work is based on developing partnerships and hiring third party suppliers. All of Cision's big wigs are in town including its director Anders Bjurstam (a great bloke by the way) and CEO Niklas Flyborg, who may very well be scouring the market for a partner.

Managed to meet Ibrahim El-Mouelhy at Cision launch. Ibrahim is marketing director of technology group Out Blaze, which if you've not checked out already, publishes a great blog. If you've got a few minutes and care about censorship issues, check out the Hong Kong Essay: Mammillaphobia, or Fear of Nipples. Definitely worth a read. That's it for me for now.

Don't get your hopes up

2007-07-11T03:08:00.000-07:00

Last night I had a bit of an incident with my Blackberry. I have long been a fan of this technical marvel for the time it gives me back rather than the time it demands of me.

Reading mail on the taxi ride across town each day is a huge saver of time for me so that when I get into the office I am raring to go and ready to get on with more important tasks…like getting the first coffee of the day. But last night it let me down, it just stopped working, it was like it passed quietly away at a time I desperately needed to make a phone call. In the frustration that followed things might have been said, fingers might have been pointed a blackberry might have been thrown against a wall, who can say.

Bottom line my blackberry doesn’t work anymore and I think I realised I have outgrown it. One reason is I am sick of the sight of it and I am sick of it growling at me at inconvenient times at night when I am trying to relax, but secondly I am a little caught up in the hysteria of the iPhone. It’s the adult version of the Harry Potter phenomena and I make no apologies.

I have long been a mad Apple fan and I have been reading all the reviews from gushing technology journalists about the iPhone and frankly it makes the loss of my BB much easier to take.

I can’t wait. But then we have to because we’re in Asia.

This long awaited iPod/communicator hybrid is now available in the US and that launch even saw some enthusiasts camp out the front of the Time Square Apple store to ensure they were one of the first to get their hands on the gadget. It saw some fly half way around the world from countries where it would only be seen many months later.

In Asia we are in for a long wait. A vague date of 2008 has been given for the launch date here and in neighboring markets and there is nothing we can do but suck it up.

As consumers we have no leverage against these staged roll outs, the hype surrounding the iPhone has been epic and has seen Apple and the Apple fanboys create a massive circle of love for the product particularly by creating an audible hum around the blogs and on forums and social tagging news sites, but all we can do is watch from the sidelines.

Apple will sell all units of the iPhone so these staggered launches make sense to keep different markets keen.

Or does it make sense?

Apple needs to learn lessons the film industry did, that one of the best ways to combat piracy is to do a global same day release. It won’t take long before some enterprising mainlanders get their hands on the iPhone and reverse engineers it and creates a cheaper and probably poorer quality version for the local market.

While I wouldn’t buy, in this instance, anything but the real thing, I would say to Apple it’s a fine line between keeping consumers keen and making them wait so long they give up and turn to a competitive product or cheaper rip off.

Come on Apple bring the release date forward, I am in the market for a phone, I’m a motivated buyer…and I promise I wont’ throw it against a wall.

Eye spy a pretty good attempt at engagement

2007-06-24T20:36:00.000-07:00

I realise I'm not breaking any news here when I say when a new magazine launches that has Wallpaper legend Tyler Brule's fingerprints all over it you know it is going to be something of an event. The guy's name is an event enough in itself.

But I found something even more interesting about Brule's much anticipated slick new "global affairs, business, culture & design" title Monocle, now up to it's fourth issue, when I picked it up to read on a flight back to Hong Kong the other day.

Yes there is the caliber, quality and quantity of ads between the pages to make any publisher swoon (think Rolex, Cartier, Grey Goose plus ads for speedboats and private jets) but there is also a much more inventive branding platform. It is in the form of a Manga comic insert called Kita Koga.

Not only is this an "of the moment" type of content for Monocle's readers but it is also an extremely clever product placement platform for the magazine. For instance in the current edition you'll find excellent Manga renderings of the latest model iPod shuffle, a very prominent Prada branded mobile phone, Carlsberg 900 premium beer and a late model Audi.

Credits appear for the comic, which is produced by a joint London and Tokyo production team, but there is no mention of whether product placement within the comic is paid for or sold as part of an advertising package.

With everyone scrambling to engage consumers now wooed by multi-platform media offerings and with many publishers scratching their heads over how to re-invigorate print audiences this is a pretty innovative attempt.

It won’t appeal to true young Manga fans who would probably see it as a cynical commercialization, but for their Dads and Mums it is likely to have the desired impact.

As for the rest of Brule’s new baby? The jury’s still out.

The Oxford dictionary isn't Wikipedia

2007-05-24T19:33:00.000-07:00

When your brand becomes so pervasive that it is listed in one of the world’s most respected dictionaries it should mean you have attained a kind of branding nirvana.

Not so, reasons McDonald’s, which has taken exception to the listing of the word McJob in the Oxford Dictionary and is launching a grass roots campaign to gather signatures on petitions to have it removed and is also undertaking an in-store advertising blitz to trumpet the benefits of working for the burger chain.

Maybe Maccas has gotten a little too used to the Web 2.0 bible Wikipedia, which allows you to edit definitions...and history for that matter (you will also find a none too flattering definition of McJobs there as well).

I first heard the term McJob when I read it in Douglas Coupland’s Generation X: Tales For an Accelerated Culture (yes Coupland did define the term Generation X – so demographers, socialists, trend watchers and of course marketers owe a lot to him).

Coupland wasn’t the first to use the term McJob but he certainly brought it into general usage as a term to describe a going nowhere job. Understandably McDonald’s isn’t happy with the terms and its implication about the brand and those who work under the golden arches.

The company has spent this week trying to build support for the removal of the term from the dictionary (as well as several others like Merriam Websters and explaining that the term doesn’t fit because the company offers exciting career options for its workers now.

Does anyone else see where this is heading? That’s right a mighty big McBacklash.

There is a certain amount of humour implied in the term McJob, and, while it is a little unkind, it is doubtful there really is much of an impact on the brand or on people’s intentions to work for it.

All that has really happened over the past few days is that McDonald’s has introduced a lot of people to the term which few would have heard outside of Coupland’s book and a few sociology lectures.

If you want to know what people are saying about McDonald’s attempts to have “McJob” censored from dictionaries feed the word McJob into Technorati - for the blogs have spoken and it’s not pretty.

You will come across blog posts with such snappy titles as “Big Brother is flipping your burgers”, “Fast Feud Outlet” and "Talking McBollocks" among the 1708 blog post the terms brings up.

...and our own shameless outdoor confession

2007-04-18T02:59:00.000-07:00

There’s a cheeky notion that says the reason marketers in Hong Kong are so fond of outdoor, particularly in certain high traffic locations, is that it’s an easy way to show the boss where the marketing budget is being spent.

When the argument is about trying to convince a client to spend more on online the response, some claim, is “it’s easier to buy an outdoor site, where the boss drives past every day, then it is to try and show off search terms in a keyword campaign”.

I thought that was alittle simplistic. Until of course today when I got my own little taste of the vanity of seeing your own brand on a visible outdoor site.

If you saw me loitering around the O’Brien Road footbridge this afternoon there was good reason. We have just dabbled in our own bit of outdoor exposure with a modest space highly visible from the footbridge.

Is the heavy foot traffic between Central Plaza and the Wanchai Computer Centre our target demographic? Will we see a large spike in subs (the call to action)? We’ll see. I do have to say though it was gratifying to walk casually past…numerous times and see our brand that big.

So now I get it, sometimes its shameless self promotion a bit like this posting today really, anyway if you’re passing by check it out, it’s adjacent to the guy who plays the snakeskin banjo.

The day outdoor died

2007-04-15T23:03:00.000-07:00

Ever wondered what a world without visible outdoor advertising would look like? These impressive pictures show what would happen if out of home advertising were completely banned and all existing ad messages removed virtually overnight.

After being increasingly frustrated by media buyers refusal to play by the rules Sao Paulo city council passed ordnance that outright banned all forms of visible outdoor advertising.

Existing outdoor sites have now been stripped of their creative and this is the dramatic result.

The city has a kind of end of the world feel about it.

MySpace wrecked our house Coke fixed it

2007-04-13T02:37:00.000-07:00

I thought talk of mayhem caused by the consumer generated content set was all a bit of hysteria until I tuned into some blogs this morning to read one particular read hot yarn around the social networks: “How MySpace wrecked our house”.

You may have read about it, a girl in rural Britain advertised a house party while her folks were away, on her MySpace site, many more guests turned up than were expected and the house gets destroyed.

The girl now appears to be staying at a friend’s house for a “cooling down” period after her mum, bucket and broom in hand said she also needed “my space”, space which doesn’t include her daughter for the time being.

What does this have to do with advertising, marketing or media? Not much really, but I am sure I can bring it back. OK got it. Because this story got so much attention in the social networks and blogs, what if a big brand like Virgin, Coke or, better still, News Corporation (owner of MySpace) stepped in and said ok your house got wrecked we’ll send a “fix-it” crew – wearing overalls branded in our company logo - to fix your house and replace all damaged items at no cost to you.

You could video it happening, post it up on YouTube and what do you know for the cost of some paint and the time of a few beefy laborers – you get bucket loads of free branding and plenty of CSR kudos in the online chattersphere.

Some say ruined carpet and urinated on wedding dresses, I say missed marketing opportunity!

Old habits die, well pretty easy

2007-04-11T02:10:00.000-07:00

I think I understand why a lot of marketers stick by the old faithful media buys and look with curiosity, but not commitment, at digital opportunities and it has a lot to do with looking in the mirror in-denial.

As far as being online savvy I like to think I am at the ‘more’ than ‘less’ side of the scale, but I also still like to think I have broad and impressive media habits befitting someone who can smugly discuss the historical importance of news print along with the post modern implications of user generated content.

Well I’m not, I’m just like everyone else. My media consumption is shrinking like the book size of most of the magazines I once liked to read but now put straight into magazine racks as soon as they land so I can admire them when I am on boring phone calls.

This become bluntly apparent when, over a morning coffee with OgilvyOne’s managing director Sean Rach yesterday, he posed what I thought was a rhetorical question about media habits. It went something along the lines of “Suppose I ask you what amount of time in percentages you spent on each of the media what would you say?”.

Hmmm, I nodded sagely ‘what would I say indeed’. Then I realised Sean actually expected me to answer.

I always hated math so any question that asks me to provide a percentage generally takes me back to less happy times. But nonetheless we went through each of the media and there it was, despite a lifetime passion for magazines, both devouring them and later putting them together, I realised I had all but abandoned them.

In fact apart from the proofs of my own, I don’t actually ‘read’ magazines at all any more. In all its cold traitorous glory there was the truth, I had abandoned my favorite media and I didn’t really even notice it happen.

The meeting made me go back to the office and root through the magazine files to find a magazine I had actually bought, as opposed to one that had been sent to me on a media subscription, nothing.

Then I thought about the “all channels” sub I am paying to NowTV to get everything they have on offer and all to watch 10 minutes of CNN in the morning.

Yes I can see how it happens now, you think you are a media glutton and that everyone you would want to reach is the same, however the reality is everyone’s is pretty much the same and yet marketing budgets don’t reflect that.

Bottom line is we are all a bit delusional and when the reality overtakes this delusion maybe we’ll start spending a bit more where it will actually do some good.

Fully captured and totally engaged

2007-04-02T03:03:00.000-07:00

After heading out for the first time as a Sevens virgin and watching the spectacle at a safe enough distance from the South Stand (to stay dry), I have to say who says you can’t engage people anymore?

For a start, after not only being bombarded by the Cathay Pacific TVC at just about every break in play and but also having to hear dreadful renditions of it in pubs all over town even as today it’s all sadly over I can’t get the bloody tune out of my head.

It’s a good TVC, but it takes a really good TVC to get that kind of airplay and still stay in the heads as the sound track of a brilliant weekend for the poor buggers who are sitting on planes now nursing epic hangovers and facing a 9 or 14 hour flight back home.

Actually it’s hard to know who to feel sorry for them or the airline staff.

As this morning I stepped over the bodies of the brave but fallen kebab clutching souls who probably hadn’t slept since Thursday night, to get into my office and as I shut my office window to muffle the sounds of a 30 person rolling brawl moving at a nice clip down Lockhart Rd and the inevitable screaming sirens that followed, I thought there is really something in this.

The Sevens, as I discovered for the first time this weekend up close, is a legendary event, it’s a weekend that lets people get away with a lot you wouldn’t normally do, for instance there’s nothing quite like running into some bloke you’ve only ever seen in a suit, wearing a gold lame dress as you are all rushing for the exits, and the taxis, at the end of the day’s play. And best of all its sports for people with short attention spans, which lets face it, is most of us.

So why aren’t more sports made into these truncated super spectacles where what goes on the field is less important than what goes on in the stands, and super fast cameramen and excellent production folk turn the live event into what could either be “College girls gone wild” or “America’s stupidest accidents” and get the whole crowd involved?

I think a lot more marketers would get interested in sports sponsorship if there were more opportunities like this.

Tennis for instance, there’s a game that certainly needs to be made a bit more rock and roll, but instead of taking people off the field like in the Sevens I’d put more on, like about 30 each side of the net, now that’s a game I’d watch.

Anyway it’s all over for another year and out my window there is just the sweet sound of barking taxi horns and speeding trucks rather than the gentle hum of 10,000 people singing the Cathay Pacific song and smashing beer bottles…ahh I miss it already.

Tell the news don’t steal its close up

2007-03-21T02:57:00.000-07:00

I have a lot of respect for the news networks but I have had about enough of this “cult of the journalist” trend that all of them are guilty of. Long extended programs about how journalists do their jobs, how they put their lives at risk doing a live cross while someone is loading ammunition into a ground to air anti-aircraft bazooka (or something) a few inches away.

I am sure the troops are thinking ‘just get your pilates perfect, designer army fatigue covered, butt out of my way while I get on with the war’. I am being facetious I know but then I was taught journalists were mean to be read but not seen.

In fact in the good old days in newsrooms it could be hazardous for your health to suggest to an editor there was something missing from one of your articles, ie a byline. You would be accused of egotism, vanity and caring more about yourself than your the story or your reader.

How much research goes into how interested, for instance, audiences really are in the story of how news crews have been kicked out of Mugabe’s Zimbabwe verses the real issue, that foreign diplomats are about to be booted out? Sure it’s important that the media play their role of “keeping the bastards honest” but it needs balance.

So here’s my theory, with everyone who knows how to open a blogger or typepad account potentially a “citizen journalist” I think the old traditional guard is making sure no-one forgets how important traditionally trained journalists still are. Nothing pushes that message through like an hour long program on the hardships faced by “real” journos. I can say this because I am a journo, of course I’ve never even seen a warzone – well not one with a war actually in it - but then a fierce pitch for an FMCG brand or an airline between hungry agencies is war too you know so where’s my Kevlar vest?

That’s one way to deal with it

2007-03-19T02:35:00.000-07:00

If you thought bitter, long in the tooth journalists and media owners were the most paranoid about bloggers and other non-accredited content creators eating their lunch, the Malaysian government is truly giving them a run for its money in the paranoia stakes with a sustained campaign to discredit bloggers as the bastard children of the real media.

There was a very interesting trend among the media about two years ago when blogging, despite the Dr Seuss quality of its nonsense name, started to be considered a serious source of information. The first stage of the media’s reaction cycle was curiosity, but this quickly turned to concern as commentators started to speculate that the growing number of bloggers were actually getting harder to dismiss. This then turned to a form of disgust where acres of newsprint were given over to the grumblings of particularly grumbly old columnists who claimed these bloggers were not only untrained but also possibly irresponsible, unethical and agenda driven. (Do you think so)

The final stage was acceptance and now no journalist working for at least a general newspaper doesn’t have a list of blogs, or blog search platform (like technorati), or news alerts including blogs, that they check daily for possible news tips.

Everyone whether they are a media professional, a blogger or a reader accepts there are a massive amount of loonies writing blogs but that some, just some, add to the tapestry of news coverage in new ways traditional journos couldn’t.

However blogs are causing huge headaches for some governments used to controlling media coverage and commentary.

For instance over the weekend the Malaysian Government made an attempt to not only discredit bloggers but to forbid the Malaysian media from giving bloggers and other online commentators outside the mainstream media any credibility at all.

It seems absurd but since publications need a permit and a breach of the latest directive could result in the very real possibility that permits might not be renewed there could be real implications.

This certainly isn’t the first time in the past few days that Malaysian pollies have vented their spleen on the blogging community. Tourism Minister Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor recently offered a broadside to bloggers labeling them mostly liars and women who were unemployed.

He last week attempted to quickly backtrack from the statement but not before igniting exactly the sort of criticism the Malaysian Government prefers to live without among the blogging community.

Just goes to show FMCG companies aren’t the only low hanging fruit for bloggers bent on having their say – but that’s the new media landscape (please read that as “new” pause “media landscape” and not “new media” landscape).

Web 2.0: A cautionary tale

2007-03-16T01:03:00.000-07:00

I have been on the wrong side of Coke before, ironically when they launched Coke Zero in Australia some time ago, so hearing Coke is about to launch here bought back some bad memories.

It was when I used to run a blog called "The Big Idea". When I say used to it's ongoing but its dead to me. I liked "the Big Idea" but I like "The Pitch" better although the more astute among you (if you are under 30 replace astute with old) will know its a blatent rip off of Bryce Courtney's long running column of the same name. But courtney long ago cast the die and abandoned the hack's game for the life as a multi-millionaire author so as far as I was concerned The Pitch was up for grabs (in your face Courtney).

There you go I broke the golden rule of blogging, don't blog about blogging.
So back to Coke. Coke launched Coke Zero in Australia during one of those relentless six month Aussie summers (take a bow global warming). It started with a big media spend outdoor posters, street stencilling - (we don't have that particular media buy in HK it's kind of semi-legal grafitti) with all the messages of a teaser nature. All the messages were about "the zero movement" and pointed to a website. On the website were allegedly consumer generated stories about what the zero movement was.

Turns out most of the stories were written by the coke marketing dept. It was an attempt to control the conversations in the infancy of the user generated content evolution. Oh dear. Needless to say the campaign backfired and was monstered in the blogs and I was happy to join the fray, it was cruel, it was mob rule it was overkill but as far as bloggers and marketing commentators were concerned companies needed to be taught a lesson that there was and is nothing simple about the rise of opinionated consumers and it doesn't adhere to any of the old rules of marketing.

Anyway to take it back to the preamble I wrote as much and coke wasn't happy and said so but not to me to someone else on the editorial team.

Yeah it was a long time before Coke would speak to us again even on the most innocent issue in fact the policy was basically not to speak to us at all.

Oh well the people won't be silienced and I am sure Coke her will be much smarter about it.