Week in review: Mobile predictions, invisible ads, dead trees, more

News

As happens sometimes, even in this industry, the week was fairly quiet on the news front. In Singapore, a group of investors acquired luxury-goods publisher Heart Media, and shared their optimism about the dead-tree medium—albeit augmented with a more concerted digital strategy.

Invisible ads appeared (see what we did there?) more than once in our coverage this week. First in a study by DG MediaMind that quantified the link between viewability and engagement. And then in a news item from TripAdvisor, which announced it would henceforth charge clients only for advertisements that the user sees (what a concept!) by not serving the ad until the user scrolls to the portion of the page where the ad resides.

Some advertisers of cosmetic services in Taiwan probably wished their ads were invisible after a watchdog organisation pointed out that they were promoting discounts on procedures classified as medical in nature, in violation of the country's laws. 

Elsewhere, Dentsu and Vision Critical announced plans to provide online-community research for marketers in Japan, Princess Cruises outlined plans to expand its operations in Asia and a newish agency in Cambodia, Cream, added Tiger Beer and ABC Stout to a number of other recent wins.

We also covered account wins for brands including Closeup, Jack Wills, Relaxa, Canon, Beam Global and Goldilocks. Catch up on all the week's news.

Analysis, data and opinion

Senior reporter Ben Li talked to seemingly the entire marcomm industry in Hong Kong about the topic of marketing to LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) consumers, finding a decidedly wide range of opinions on the matter—including whether such target-marketing is progressive or a regressive kind of stereotyping in and of itself.

We looked at JWT's annual report on mobile trends. A commenter pointed out that some of it seems a bit pie in the sky, but predicting future mobile behaviour is kind of the point, which is why we think it's valuable.

We also reported on an interesting study by Vivaki that claims to show online ads elicit more of an emotional response than TV, why online video is far more important than TV in Chongqing, mobile shopping habits in India and China, and more.

Hari Shankar, who works for Performics and writes for us regularly on digital issues, is one of the most eager early adopters we know. But even he was taken aback by Facebook's 'Home' app and what it seems to do to the smartphone user experience.

The Work

Tiger Street Football employed special effects to attract an audience for its upcoming first appearance in Australia. Carlsberg launched a Singapore-specific social complement to a global online ad that made us wonder when a brand is going to cross the line with the unknowing participant thing (this one comes pretty close). AAMI in Australia made parents face their teenage, 1980s selves and One2free kicked off a campaign that aims to turn Hong Kong into a virtual playground. We also saw not one but two ads featuring the New Zealand All Blacks.

And finally

Please consider following us on Facebook, where we're posting the things we find ourselves discussing around the water cooler. (Who are we kidding? No one does that. We just IM or email about them from 10 feet away like everyone else.)

This week, these included...

The creation of 'Ex-Valentine's Day' in Brazil (it's in Portuguese, so the gist is that the Salvation Army is proposing April 18 as a day for everyone to donate all the stuff they have that reminds them of their ex-lovers):

 

Jedi mind-control tricks involving Crunchy Nut cereal:

 

And this, another in a long series of doggie-related gems from Volkswagen:

 

Have a great weekend, everyone! Thanks for reading Campaign Asia-Pacific.