DIARY: Rant

Hands up who thinks the new ads for Hong Kong's MTR are any good. Hmm, not many takers. For those of media's readers who live outside Hong Kong, here's a quick description. In one ad, a child plays forlornly on its own, draws a picture and has no one to show it to. Time passes and eventually it's bed time. Later, his father gets home, and realises that he can't play with his child. In another execution, a mother plays with her happy baby because she took the MTR. Message - if you take the MTR, you have more time for family, ie for the important things in your life. Well, pardon me, but doesn't this miss the point somewhat? What we have here is an ad for transport, or maybe for fast transport. What we don't really have is an ad for the MTR. Because the campaign seems to imply that the MTR's core proposition, its key differentiator, the thing that makes it great, is its speed. And that patently isn't true. Don't get me wrong, I like the MTR. It's cheap, it's clean, it's efficient. But the idea that it's the quickest way to get home is nowhere near the most relevant claim its ads could be making. It's a problem that so much advertising suffers from: the idea that your brand can stand for what you want it to stand for, rather than what it actually does stand for and then promoting that. The MTR wants to be about making more time for the important things in life, and that leads it down the route of ads that try to differentiate it in an irrelevant way. Why not promote what the MTR is good at? Until the advertising industry, clients and agencies alike, realises that its brands and its advertising need to reflect the reality of what consumers actually experience when they use products and services, this kind of thing will continue. It doesn't build touchy-feely brand associations - it just disappears right over people's heads. Whoever you are, and whatever you want to get off your chest, send your rants to rant@media.com.hk, and we'll print them anonymously.

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