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.
