When the Financial Times unfurled what it claimed was the world's biggest outdoor sign in Hong Kong, the gesture seemed to say that the sky's the limit for the industry.
It couldn't have come any sooner. The Sars outbreak, which emptied out Hong Kong streets as locals scurried home, presented the outdoor sector with one of its biggest disasters in years. Even before Sars hit, advertisers' love affair with the sector had seemed to be over. From a blistering growth rate of 46 per cent in 2000, the expansion pace moderated to 18 per cent the following year and to just under nine per cent in 2002. But the FT signage, McDonald's unveiling of a massive neon sign and the awarding of a bronze Lion this year to Leo Burnett for an outdoor ad for Tung Fong Hung, are helping to put the medium back in a big way on marketers' radars.
"I wouldn't describe 2003 as a vintage year. However, our second half revenues have pleasantly surprised on the upside and allowed us to recoup the first-half revenue shortfall," says Warren Poots, sales director of Buspak Advertising. It may not be a vintage year, but the industry looks to be in the early stages of an upswing. Media Partners CEO Winnie To says: "In the first quarter after Sars, we saw 30 per cent growth over the pre-Sars period."
New sites, new technology and a new burst of creativity and flexibility are breathing new life into Hong Kong outdoor advertising.
Moving signs have sprung up in congested Mongkok, taxi tops are taking off, tunnel sections of the MTR are about to become media space, and there is a push to have the Government allow advertising inside the heavily-used cross-harbour road tunnels. New printing technologies are aso allowing for quicker turnaround times and the opportunity to advertise on buses' glazed window panes. With improving technologies, Poots says bus ads no longer look like "press ads on steroids", as was once noted.
"The new technology is giving people more reason to consider using outdoor," says Henny To, group buying manager at ZenithOptimedia Hong Kong.
The Sars outbreak led makers of household products such as detergents, cleaning sprays and even vacuum cleaners to look afresh at outdoor, and Media Partners' To says property developers are using far more outdoor than before.
"This year, the property market's been a lot more active. They usually use a lot of TV and press, and now they're using outdoor as well, so you see the ads when you're out looking at properties," she says.
Hunger for business has led media owners to be more flexible and open to ideas, and with new rules in mainland China allowing greater numbers of tourists into Hong Kong, it is thought that insurance and financial services companies targeting mainlanders will further drive up outdoor adspend. But JCDecaux Pearl & Dean cautions that with outdoor claiming what it estimates to be 11 per cent of total adspend last year, up from eight per cent in 1997, there is a risk of the streetscape becoming too cluttered.
Outdoor improvements
JCDecaux Pearl & Dean introduced new Crown Panels, double the previous size, on MTR escalators, along with high-quality trackside plasma TV screens.
Texon Media expanded its network by 2.3 per cent, giving it a total of close of 3,700 panels, and introduced its Mega Panel, offering 1.5 times the display size of a 12-sheet panel. Texon also conducted two additional phases of its Awareness Research study, surveying 49 campaigns of varying weights with 5,400 sample sizes.
Buspak Advertising added the Emperor Panel, measuring 4 x 4.5 metres, to its fleet of 1,000 buses.