The campaign, which seeks to emphasise the speed and quality of HKBN’s broadband service when compared to the telephone line broadband service provided by dominant operator PCCW, has again been crafted by AOR M&C Saatchi and features two 30-second TVCs. In one, characters struggle to surf the internet via a telephone line in a traditional version of Chinese hell.
Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, makes a special guest appearance and points out that his telephone line, invented a century ago, was fit for conversation only then and is not designed for broadband now.
The second TVC, meanwhile, uses 10 kung-fu fighting ants - representing the downlink in a traditional ADSL connection - who gang up on a single helpless ant, representing the weaker upling. Traditional ADSL features uplink speeds that are often a tenth of downlink capacity, in contrast to HKBN’s symmetrical speeds.
HKBN marketing manager Amanda Cheung pointed out that the campaign aims to demonstrate that the company’s fibre-optic network is significantly better than the telephone lines used by most of Hong Kong’s broadband operators. “Existing broadband users may not be aware of that, or understand why using telephone lines for broadband service is no good,” she said.
The HK$10 million (US$1.3 million) campaign, for which MediaCom handled media, also features print, outdoor, and radio. In addition, online ads are running on Yahoo, MSN, and other popular discussion forums for a month, while a dedicated microsite, ujudge.com.hk, has launched to add an interactive dimension.
“As normal IT info and jargon is difficult to understand, we hope to break this perception with user-friendly communication,” added Cheung.
“In our print ad campaign, instead of just adapting it from the TVC, we use a more comic approach in traditional newspapers and popular youth magazines like Milk and East Touch to make it more salient.”
