CAN HONG KONG STILL PRODUCE EFFECTIVE ADVERTISING AND COMMUNICATIONS?

Advertising that breaks the pattern, effective communications and, personally speaking, especially relevant and time sensitive PSAs- Public Service Announcements. 

These have always been so important to being part of the creative community. 

When with advertising agency DDB, we in Hong Kong created pro bono work for The Samaritans, AIDS awareness programmes, international award winning work for The Right Of Abode, the KELY Support Group and others with media partners like the newspapers and supporting us. 

The question is whether in these post pandemic times, there still exists this commitment- this pride or has Hong Kong become bereft of understanding the importance of showing empathy and compassion and has been reduced to a soulless shell floating along on a sea of hypocrisy and superficiality and greed?

Globally, do multi national companies, international businesses and also governments still hold on to being ethical and have the staff capable of working on and creating effective communications and marketing? 

Do their hires know how to communicate with especially the constantly changing younger generation? 

Or have communications become a tossed salad of random hires from all over the place and a product that is sometimes a little reminiscent of a Far Side cartoon by Gary Larson?  

How is the high end worrying suicide rate amongst those below 25 being addressed in Hong Kong other than having this be yet another tame news story buried on page five? 

All this and having spent some quality time in Scandinavia recently and being involved in a very different creative environment has me thinking about the need for a multi media creative hub comprising experienced advertising professionals who are able to bring new things to the table instead of leftovers, clichés and crumbs. 

Why advertising people? Because when advertising was a craft and writers were wordsmiths and art directors knew about fonts and typefaces and what worked best with and for what purposes, it had the power to change the world and bring about positive change. 

Especially important are Public Service Announcements that are not glib messages, but which create thought and awareness about mental health issues and how these are often kept hidden. 

This is a problem where the root cause must be highlighted and made known by professionals and where ad people work with those brilliant and giving healthcare workers. 

How are we thanking these people?  

Unlike what is being Trumpeted by the current leader in the White House about making “billions and billions of dollars”, Hong Kong can’t afford to be seen by those on the outside looking in as something of a Greedfest, where money cures all ills. 

It doesn’t. 

Advertising in its heyday in Hong Kong was an art form, and part of a global movement that taught many of us about life priorities, structure and the importance of knowing the power advertising and marketing can be when in the right hands and not the type of power that’s transparently superfluous and all about much ado about nothing. 

At DDB, our Chairman Keith Reinhard taught many of us that the technique was not the idea, that we were must always strive to break the pattern, to be strategically creative and to not follow leaders and watch our parking meters because timing is everything- and time is always running out for many things to be successfully accomplished. 

Hard to imagine when seeing most of the work produced here in recent years is how there was a time when Hong Kong advertising was at the top of its game.

This was very largely due to the work of commercials directors like Louis Ng from Film Factory, my longtime friend Stasch Radwanski at Academy One, below, music production houses like Schtung led by another longtime friend in Morton Wilson, and post production houses like the Tony Morias owned PPS, and Videopost, Nelson Ng’s Touches and Brian Schweggmann’s Showreel.

Even the world renowned official Beatles photographer Robert Freeman worked in Hong Kong with some of us and for a few years as a commercials director. 

There were also some excellent ad agency creative directors like Michael Chu, Leoni Ki, Nigel Ng, Mike Fromowitz, John Doig and Ross Sutherland and others. 

We looked up to the quirky and creative advertising from Thailand and Japan and learned from the groundbreaking design work of Henry Steiner and the style and vision of entrepreneur David Tang. 

Then, the big marketing dollars from China for flowed in for advertising and lured much Hong Kong talent away to the mainland.

This was before social media became what it’s not and created instant fame like instant noodles, and standards have been nosediving into saucers full of soya sauce ever since. 

It doesn’t have to be like this and a renaissance period for advertising with new Mad Men is around the corner.  

I can smell it, I can hear it and I can see it. 

Do those with talent, empathy and new thinking still exist? 

How many really know what is great advertising?

I often think of Margaret Xu Yuan, below, the Hong Kong based creative culinary chef and former advertising executive with ad agency J Walter Thompson and her consistently innovative work in the kitchen at the fabulous and now sadly closed Yin Yang Coastal. 

Margaret is someone I would be privileged to work with because of her ability to create things I never can, and I do believe that we will work together very soon and create things that go beyond advertising. 

Like the term “Entertainment”, there is so much more than to advertising than shallow celebrity endorsements and formulaic marketing that continues to miss the mark. 

Entertainment is also something that many don’t understand- like the opportunity to create for products brand personalities and bring about lateral thinking and not clichés and more clickbait clutter. 

It’s about raising the standards of everything and creating sustainable creativity and not being sycophantic order takers during these murky times.

Cuisine, sports, fashion, travel, health- mental and otherwise- and so much more is all part of the new and international world of interactive storytelling and communications that’s waiting to make itself seen and heard. 

And it will.

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