HK CLIENTS HEAD OUT OF THE BOX: The Lipton Tea Star Ferry, Patek Philippe's ZeitByte and New World First Bus' 'Green Force' have all been PR coups for their sponsors

The Hong Kong advertising industry greets the New Year with a flurry of unusual media activities, suggesting that clients are ready and willing to take up 'out-of-the-box' opportunities, if presented with them. Lipton Tea's bright yellow Star Ferry set sail on January 1, Patek Philippe's "edutainment" offering, ZeitByte, performs at the Academy For Performing Arts in Wanchai on January 22 and New World First Bus' 'Green Force' is gathering momentum as it approaches its first anniversary on March 31. By definition, promotional activities, the Lipton Tea Star Ferry, Patek Philippe's ZeitByte and First Bus' 'Green Force' have all proved to be public relations coups for their sponsors. With special supplements adorning the covers of Business Week and The Far Eastern Economic Review, Unilever linked the Lipton Tea Yellow Label brand's history from the first tea cutters, to the emblematic Hong Kong Star Ferry. In so doing, Unilever general manager Marc Desenfans said the company remained true to its mission statement to be "One Step Ahead". The Star Ferry promotion is an in-house initiative on the part of Unilever Hong Kong. According to Mr Alan Lau of Libertas Hong Kong, which holds the Patek Philippe account, "Hong Kong is already a mature advertising market producing many top quality campaigns." Perhaps one way to enrich this is to nurture the cultural and creative lives of Hong Kong people so that more locally bred designers, artists and creative professionals can emerge into prominent positions in the field. This partly explains why Patek Philippe was enthusiastic to engage in ZeitByte. Positioning the company as "more than" a sponsor, Mr Lau said Patek Philippe's involvement in ZeitByte was "part of a total communications programme which includes not only advertising but also information flow, customer service and training. Patek Philippe's engagement in the project of ZeitByte this year is the outcome of a series of info-creative programmes that have run over the past four years". With direct participation in the creative process of the production, Patek Philippe employed specialist education and entertainment local boutique agency Encounter Enterprise to undertake the project. The attendant public relations values of client-initiated projects such as these, is certainly appealing in times of economic pressure. ZeitByte gained coverage throughout the media in the week following the press release. Balancing the need to expand with increasingly stringent budget controls is giving birth to some exceedingly sharp ideas, with longevity that appeals to established market leaders and new companies equally. First Bus' Green Force initiative marries a young company's advertising and brand development needs with environmental issues and grass roots activities. In alliance with Green Power, a non-profit interest group in Hong Kong, First Bus created the Green Force Campaign. This involved training 100 "ambassadors" - volunteer members of the public - to form a vehicle monitoring team who noted down offending pollutant emitting vehicles in their Green Force record book. Weekly reports were submitted and these were acted upon immediately by First Bus. According to Mr C F Kwan, assistant general manager for corporate communications at First Bus, The Green Force and the Green Foundation sponsorship of local events and activities aimed to increase public awareness, and maximise public relations exercises on product and service developments. On anticipated media activities for 2000, Mr Kwan says that First Bus will "embark on a non-tactical media campaign to proactively seek out media opportunities to promote the company's ethos, and so continue to raise public awareness and company profile. Engaging in soft and educational green activities to secure long term advantages that benefit both the company and the community in preference to short-term, above-the-line advertising. It will strive to employ low cost, high exposure public relations activities in the bid to actively promote cost effectiveness for the company and to act as a responsible corporate citizen in pioneering environmentally sound, smart working practices. Green Force is a client initiated project engineered by local shop Freeway, run by the ex-MD of DMB&B Hong Kong Desmond Soon. If the above examples are anything to go by, Hong Kong clients are ready and willing to purchase relevant out-of-the-box ideas and are indeed doing so - without, it should be added, the help of the 4As.

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