If music is the food of love, who’s there in Hong Kong to play on?
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
Once upon a wonton, the television weather man in Hong Kong was an animated character named Freddy who would look up at the sky and either smile, put on his shades and happily walk off frame whistling or when the weather was getting cooler, his teeth would chatter and he would say, “It’s faaaaaaaaaaliiiiiiiiing!”.
If Freddy was still around today, he could be used to use this line to describe the standards of everything in Hong Kong, especially creativity though it must be said that those with the culinary skills of my friend and celebrity chef Margaret Xu Yan are in a class of their own, and something possibly inspired from her time with ad agency J Walter Thompson.
This is not to short change the high standards of creativity in culinary cuisine in Hong Kong though one must ask about the OVERALL standards of creativity in the city and how this would need to be improved if there is really going to be an increase in high end tourism as reported last week by the Hong Kong Tourism Board.
What does Hong Kong really have that’s sustainable and Made In Hong Kong for international tourists other than horse racing twice a week and some five star hotels with six star restaurants?
As asked many times, what is Hong Kong’s present product and brand personality and how and where is this being marketed?
I mention this after watching someone named MC Cheung and his obligatory gyrating backup dancers open the ceremonies on Sunday for BMW Hong Kong Derby Day at Shatin with a few tracks reminiscent of the commercial R’n B that Khalil Fong was once recording in a far more entertainment driven Hong Kong.
Today’s Canto Pop? Well, it is what it was and with the usual suspects who are now in their fifties and sixties still bringing in the audiences, who are mainly their longtime fans in their seventies and the new kids on the block exciting the local cougars with their androgynous ‘looks’ inspired by the success of K-Pop groups.
Having a relatively new artist like MC Cheung, with no real hits to his name in a city where music is hardly ever heard unlike in Singapore where radio is so popular perform to a very mature local audience, surely many things are bloody obvious?
Is an organisation like the Hong Kong Jockey Club somewhat lost when it comes to music marketing, entertainment and very probably having no one with the necessary A&R and marketing skills not to try and bring together two vastly different generations?
Personally speaking, I think that this is Mission: Impossible.
One of my “fondest” memories of the HKJC was being asked by its visionary CEO if I could “teach” one of his executive hires about music, someone who he had handpicked to nefariously replace me as the head of the Happy Wednesday brand that I had created twelve years earlier.
Let’s just say that I met with the lady in question, taped our conversation for posterity, but by this time, all types of wacky weirdness had come on stream- and then just as quickly washed away with seemingly nothing being fixed…Giddy up, indeed.
These matinee performances at midday in Shatin on a race day on a Sunday to what looks like retirees from an aged care home huddled together in the public area of the racetrack is not only embarrassing for the artist performing in the paddock area, it makes for rather odd viewing for those bothering to watch this show unfold, especially on television and thinking, “Huh?”
If, as announced last week, the Hong Kong Tourism Board is changing strategies to focus on high end travellers from China, the “ASEAN region” and elsewhere, entertainment, especially music, becomes of paramount importance as it’s needed to create a new and vibrant nightlife.
From where, however, is the music for this high end and not geographically challenged and INTERNATIONAL driven audience going to come from?
If appealing to the lowest common denominator in the tourism sector with no spending power is now being pushed back, how and from where does Hong Kong suddenly find for itself those who understand that if music is the food of love, there’s a need to play on?
Music aside, despite gobbledygook like “+Tourism”, Hong Kong needs a complete overhaul in how it markets itself as competition everywhere in the world, and especially in Asia to win over travellers who are not looking for the same old same old is no walk in the park.
There are some very savvy entertainment marketing people with international experience being brought in to look at ways of making the old look new and relevant, and who remember the gremlin like mistakes made by MTV who thought that audiences in Asia would accept anything thrown their way and that one size fits all.
They were very wrong.
Even when it comes to marketing only to Chinese audiences, these customer segments have totally different tastes and very different ideas about what is marketed today as “entertainment”- very possibly even AI created entertainment- and who are always on the lookout for things that are new and fresh and which INSPIRE new thinking and changes.
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