MOFOS UNITE!!!

Let’s address the elephant and dodo bird in the room: If the world is in a mess, little old Hong Kong has become a miserable and sad city when looking beyond the obvious, like the little train that could, the city is small enough to travel under the radar and be anything it could be plus being something special.

These days, this train is travelling in reverse and perilously close to being derailed.

Why? Perhaps it’s a lack of creativity which was here when there was an inspired advertising and film industry that brought together local and international talent. 

Today, Hong Kong is very probably not being inspired enough to have one of those Eureka moments and see how it could reinvent itself and be so much more than some copycat with ingredients offering no taste?

The very international Hong Kong I know wasn’t like it is today.

Perhaps, this, where and why there should be an unofficial Ministry Of Fun Organisation (MOFO).

Hong Kong MUST have a Ministry Of Fun Organisation (MOFO), so there can be a Hong FUN Kong!

Perhaps this can even be a franchise?

MOFO can happen and must happen without the usual suspects with archaic thinking that is way out of sync with the world we’re living in- and what Hong Kong needs as opposed to those who THINK they know what Hong Kong wants.

At a time when some of us lived through the highs and lows of what was the longest party in the world in a truly international city offering everyone so many very different opportunities and so much FUN, Hong Kong has turned into a bland oversupply of dullness sprinkled with dullards.

The main problem might be that the FUN has gone out of Hong Kong like a deflated balloon and the GLUMMY BEARS have been allowed to settle in while the city was asleep.

Where does one go out to today to have FUN or meet FUN people in Hong Kong? Tinder? Grinder? Some online dating site? An eatery that closes at 11pm?

Hong Kong desperately needs a visionary who leads with the type of intuition that my late friend Daniel Ng had.

The former NASA engineer who had the moxie to purchase the McDonald’s franchise for Hong Kong despite the warnings of the naysayers, turned the brand in the city to the mega McSuccess it became.

Having worked with Daniel on the McDonald’s business for over twenty years when head of Creative with ad agency DDB, he would have been “all in” to support MOFO. 

He would think nothing in having kids paint a Star Ferry in whatever fun ways they saw or making McFun burgers or making a record or using those millions of tray mats printed every day to promote making the city Hong FUN Kong.

Remember when some would refer to Singapore as Swingabore?

Well, Hong Kong appears to have become the new centre for the bored and the boring.

Doesn’t it get tiring when nearly everyone around you is discussing wealth and making more money and when that’s done showing off their latest designer show ponies?

I often think about those days when heading out to Lan Kwai Fong meant something like being on Mr Toad’s Wild Ride and ending up two days later at Marouche or Escape or Drop.

Before those days, there were restaurants with FUN service like at Wyndham Street Thai, La Bodega and Jimmy’s Kitchen and a choice of nightlife to take in- Canton Disco, Manhattan, disco, JJ’s, Tonnochy Ballroom, China City and the big daddy of them all known as Club BBoss.

Sure, all that was over twenty years ago and those days are gone forever, but FUN should not be allowed to disappear along with them.

FUN is infectious. It’s not something shallow nor pretentious. It’s as natural and welcoming and warm and inviting as Diane Keaton’s laugh. 

A recent visitor to Hong Kong found going racing in the city on the weekend to be a cross between “rigid, frigid and strict”.

“Maybe they should teach racegoers how to sing ‘Sweet Caroline’?” she asked, half jokingly.

Maybe they must, he said very seriously- by perhaps thinking global and going local.

As I have been saying for many years, people make any city or any event or any brand popular.

A consumer instantly knows what they like. Seeing this and feeling this over and over again is something that research and various algorithms can never teach you because feelings cannot be taught.

Very few understand this and which is why in Hong Kong, there’s an oversupply of things that are easily discardable.

As they say, you’re only as good as your last hit.

I like to think that you’re only as happy as your last good laugh.

Laughter speaks in many languages that have no words and is all about FUN- and the MOFO.

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