ANALYSIS: Iconoclast Sunday justifies its gross ads - What's up with Sunday and its gory ads? Richard Lord goes to BBDO to investigate

Sunday Communications has long enjoyed a reputation as one of Hong Kong's more innovative advertisers. In any advertising climate, Sunday's ads would be pretty unusual; in ultra-conservative Hong Kong, and in telecoms, a sector not known for its risk-taking, they're positively bizarre. Even by the telecoms company's standards, however, the latest campaign is pretty wacky. One ad - featuring a human eyeball being lifted out of a bowl of noodles on the end of a pair of chopsticks, has already caused a stir, racking up several hundred complaints to the Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority. If anything, another execution is even stranger: an introduce-your-friends offer is promoted with an image of human heads in a dim sum steamer. And then there's Sunday's history of in-your-face ads, designed to back up the brand's 'Feels like Sunday'proposition: a man punching passers-by in the street; the claim that nine out of 10 Sunday users are handsome; the Independence Day number portability campaign; and the Taxi Driver ghost-story campaign, that managed to generate more than 2,000 complaints. The people behind this apparently relentless quest to stretch the boundaries of advertising lunacy are Sunday's chief marketing officer Bing Zeat Mah, and BBDO's joint executive creative directors Paul Chan and KC Tsang. Ask Chan and Tsang to describe their campaigns down the years, and you'll be greeted with an engaging hail of giggles; they obviously relish their work, and love working on the account. Partly that's because of the support they get from the client: "She's even more crazy than the advertising," says Chan. "She buys these crazy ideas because she's brave. She always wants to keep pushing it further." Sounds like a creative team's dream account. The confident wackiness of the Sunday work is the source of its strength, but it's also the source of criticism that has been levelled at it. People, particularly in the advertising industry, look at this succession of shock-horror executions and see ads made by indulgent creatives, with no underlying strategy and no consistent brand message. Not surprisingly, it's a viewpoint Chan refutes. "A lot of our colleagues in the advertising industry look at Sunday's ads and say: 'It's another impact execution, but where's the strategy?' "They convince themselves that there's no strategy behind it, because that reassures them that the over-rigid way they work is the right way. But I would ask anyone why the client never stops buying these campaigns, if the strategy is wrong? Either the client is crazy, or it works." The Sunday brand was launched in 1997. Saatchi & Saatchi originally held the account, before BBDO took it over that December, with OMD responsible for media. Although shallower-pocketed than most of its competitors, the brand has consistently been one of the highest marketing spenders in its sector. The company says it "is committed to a strategy of differentiating its products through consumer branding". In that regard, the obvious comparison within the telecoms market is with Orange, which broke the mould in a sector traumatised with product-led advertising by, like Sunday, making its brand intensely human and emotional. That's where the similarity ends. Where Orange is cool, detached, serious, Sunday is humorous, iconoclastic, and fiercely promotion-driven. That iconoclasm is driven by the client, says Chan, who generally turns down about six campaign ideas for every one she accepts. "The client loves the complaints," he says. "It's not a successful campaign if we don't get complaints." The promotion-led nature of the advertising (the last dozen campaigns have all been promotional) shows that promotional ads don't have to be uncreative. All the campaigns have sales targets, according to Chan, and they hit them. "People believe that if you've got a really good offer, you don't have to be creative," he comments. "But anyone can match a good offer tomorrow - there's so much competition in the market. The function of advertising is to get people interested in the offer, to get an emotional reaction - if you just rely on your offer, someone will always come along with a better one "If you do a better offer but worse advertising, you lose. "The most important thing is that the brand evolves with the reaction of the audience," he adds. "We shouldn't really define the brand and say 'this is Sunday', because that means it doesn't develop." Chan and Tsang seem to have a liking for impact ads: they were also responsible for online share trading company E*Trade's recent Ferrari-ramming spots (119 complaints at the last count). Chan comments: "That's another one where people say the ads aren't strategic. But it met its targets in a third of the time, even with the market falling and so many competitors." Which is all very well, but it doesn't do much to alleviate the real downside of this fondness for shock executions: "My family keep asking me why I'm doing these horrible commercials," says Chan.

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