THE MARKETING OF HONG KONG: NOT FOR THE FAINTHEARTED.
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
“So, you’ve gone from being the most affordable port of call for day trippers with no spending power to trying to attract those extremely few high end travellers, but what with? What does Hong Kong have that’s going to get people on a plane and want to come out there when the entire concept of tourism has morphed into something else?”
She wasn’t being critical, but being someone I had worked with when in advertising and knowing what Hong Kong was when marketed as “Asia’s world city”, my friend is pretty protective of her memories of Hong Kong like many people are who spent their wonder years in the city and have very strong emotional bonds with the city.
It’s something I think about often, and how when longtime friends meet, we reminisce about times that we’ll never have again- times we have enjoyed in Hong Kong.
Memories and nostalgia are powerful tools for a concept that lends itself to a strong ongoing tourism campaign with different stories, but is something that can only be everything it should be in the hands of a bona fide filmmaker and their own team.
As someone who was taught about various principles in advertising and marketing, especially to do with creating an emotional attachment for a product, I don’t exactly see a wealth of this quality around today- anywhere.
Maybe it were those Covid years with people wearing masks and suddenly having lockdown minds, but I often think that the almost overnight prioritising of algorithms and how businesses are so dependent on KPIs- Key Performance Indicators- have robbed creativity of its soul, and how many really don’t know what is honest to goodness effective communications anymore that can improve their bottom lines.
The passion to strive and create award winning work and memorable events don’t exactly seem to be overflowing, except perhaps in the brilliant casting and attention to detail and plot twists of the “Mad Men” series with some of us following the life and career of the character known as Don Draper and the world of advertising he inhabited.
As for the marketing of Hong Kong, here’s a longtime Hong Kong Belonger who wonders if it’s even worth spending more hundreds of millions on another campaign for tourism that will look as bland and predictable as what has come in the past few years- and what is the strategy?
Compared to some brilliant advertising campaigns created and produced for a very different and far more international looking Hong Kong, the brand personality of the city has changed significantly, and one very much doubts that the Hong Kong Tourist Association knows what to do other than produce something that it’s always done- a patchwork quilt job of montages of the city with some innocuous music and hackneyed theme line.
One hopes that I am wrong, but with a very sharp decline in the retail business, there’s also been an overall lowering of standards in everything to do with creativity and with very few understanding the job of strategic marketing and advertising. It’s not PR and certainly not blatant self promotion.
When it comes to marketing Hong Kong to tourists what I have seen recently and continue to see is cornball work that reeks of being tacky and the result of “creative by committee” with zero lasting power.
Below was what was produced almost TWENTY YEARS AGO. Certainly not great, but was it actually better and more effective than the work produced more recently?
Quite frankly, many of the ideas and the work being produced today is embarrassing and makes one wonder why low end tourists would bother visiting Hong Kong, let alone, high end ones, because of some advertising and marketing campaign?
What does Hong Kong have to make people from other cities and countries decide to get on a plane and come to THIS city? For the “world class”horse racing? Outlying islands? Restaurants? The ‘live’ music scene?
Yes, maybe, but what does Hong Kong have that’s exclusive to Hong Kong other than Lee Kum Kee sauce?
Don’t people make any city?
Why not a campaign built around Hong Kong-born heroes- and nothing doleful, but things uplifting and extremely well-directed, researched and not scripted featuring real-life heroes like our healthcare workers and firefighters, Gold Medalist and champion swimmer Siobhan Haughey, fencer Edgar Cheung Ka-long, Actress Cecilia Yip-Tung, culinary master Chef Margaret Xu Yuan , Canto Pop pioneer Sam Hui, film director, actor and legend Michael Hui, Actor Tony Leung Chiu-wai…
While on a tootsie roll, here’s something off the beaten track: a mockumentary and documentary that takes audiences on a rollercoaster ride through the world of Hong Kong racing starring characters and events and a walk on the wild side of the dark side of the moon.
Only few can make this a reality- perhaps the Coen Brothers. Unfortunately, David Lynch is no longer with us.
The characters and goings on, and in no particular order of importance- Cosmo Chan, Monsieur Biancone, side trips to Macau, signals, “Sex For Tips”, Michael Bastion taking flight from the sixth floor of Estoril Court, Rambo Tse, TC Cheng, The Moore dynasty, The Boys From Brazil, “The Organiser”, The Fall Guy, Clare The Clairvoyant, “integrity issues”, the moving of goalposts, fist bumps, Joe Bananas, Al’s Diner, Tonnochy Ballroom, Suite 1616, love for sale, dragon-i, the Shanghai syndicate…
The above idea might not be strategically correct for a tourism campaign, but, and I am half joking when I say that if produced the way I see it as a series of almost film noir mockumentaries, these will certainly have people talking about the often enigmatic Hong Kong, and which is what advertising and marketing is all about- to pique the interest before making the sale.
ABOUT HANS EBERT
When he arrived by ship from what was then known as Ceylon to the British colony of Hong Kong, the Dutch Burgher- it’s a long story-thought he had arrived in Melbourne because that’s what his parents had told him- it’s an even longer story- until he saw all the rickshaws, women wearing cheongsams with slits up to their arse, and was given a pair of chopsticks during his first lunch in the city.
He had never eaten dim sum, but then again, no one told him that as a fledgling journalist, he would meet and interview everyone from Peter Sellers, Roman Polanski and George Harrison to Billy Joel, Norah Jones, Gorillaz, David Bowie and Quincy Jones, create the Happy Wednesday brand for the Hong Kong Jockey Club, win the Gold Award at the London Advertising Awards for his “Right Of Abode campaign, coin the term “Canto Pop” when writing for the American trade publication Billboard, and when in advertising not only helped launch McDonald’s in Hong Kong and work on the business as Director of Creative Services for over two decades, and was very much involved in the launch of STARTV, MTV Asia and PCCW.
He has written hits for some of the biggest names in Chinese popular music and wooed and married the model who was the Wrangler Girl.
These days, he is rewriting his journography and working on introducing the world to his imaginary friend Muzi and their search for everything that leads to positivity by leaving the dullards behind to pursue nutworking.
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