Ocean Park, the true Hong Konger’s theme park, has just taken more initiatives to embraces digital and interactive marketing to promote their recently open Amazing Asian Animals. They revamped their website, created an online platform in tvb.com and setup their official Facebook page.

Revamped Ocean Park Web Site

▲ Ocean Park’s Revamped Website of Amazing Asian Animals

Ocean Park revamped thier website and launched it at the end of May. The website looks much refreshing and likely targets to youngsters. Heavy flash animation are used and Facebook fan page is also introduced for the first time.

Interactive Campaing on TVB.com

▲ Ocean Park’s Interactive Campaing on TVB.com’s MyTV

▲ Ocean Park’s Q&A in the Interactive Campaign

Ocean Park partners with TVB.com to launch an interactive campaign as well. They put a few videos about the new Amazing Asian Animals on MyTV to introduce their new residents like giant panda, red panda, Chinese giant salamander. After viewing those clips, users can try the Q&A and get a chance to win tickets to Ocean Park.

Ocean Park’s Facebook Fan Page

▲ Ocean Park’s offical Facebook Fan Page

The theme park try-out social media as well to promote themselves among the younger generation. It launches their offical Facebook fan page recently and posted some events, photos, etc. to engaged its fans. However, it’s seems the other user-created fan page are much more engaging with Ocean Park’s funny ads.

After all, I am happy to see Ocean Park has visioned that interactive marketing is the key factor of success advertising campaign. I wish they will promote this true theme park of Hong Kong succesfully to the world through the new media.

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According to Nielsen Online’s latest AdRelevance press release, Hong Kong internet display advertising spending remains steady at HK$172MM in the 1st quarter of 2009. This fact confirms that brands and marketers still keep spending their budget for interactive campaign, while advertising budget is declining as projected  by HK2A during the current econmic recession.

Fashion Brands Spent A Lot in 1st Quarter

From the report, fashion sector increse their online adspend 163% from HK$2.2million to HK$5.8 million from the same period last year. The top 3 brands are H&M, Nike and Cartier, of which they launched large advertising campaigns in many major local Hong Kong websites like Yahoo! Hong Kong to drive the figures up.

Hong Kong Government Spent More Too

It is observed that Hong Kong Goverment is ranked as the 2nd largest advertisers in the period. It had large campaign to promote the GovHK portal offered by OGCIO in major websites like TVB.com and Yahoo! Hong Kong. It’s wise for Hong Kong Government to take the advantage of this effective channels, and it can take the lead to move on to new media marketing as well.

Research Data by Nielsen Online’s AdRelevance (2009 Q1)

▲ Hong Kong Online Advertising Activities (2009 Q1)

▲ Hong Kong Online Advertising Spending by Sectors (2009 Q1)

▲ Hong Kong Top 10 Online Advertisers (2009 Q1)

Extended Reading

• Online Advertising Holds Ground in First Quarter with Advertising Valued at HK$172MM by The Nielsen Company
• Online advertising stays flat in Hong Kong by Media Magazine
• Online advertising flat in first quarter by Marketing Magazine

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• HSBC New Homepage: Lag far behind in Web 2.0
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Hong Kong Association of Interactive Marketing (HKAIM) held a coffee break session last week for digital marketing fellows to share ideas and connect in a relax atmosphere. Volkswagen was very kind to host this event in their Volkswagen HK Center in Wan Chai, and its topics focuses on digital marketing for automobile brands.

Digital Campaign is More Effective

Mr. Till Scheer, Managing Director of Volkswagen Hong Kong Limited, gave an opening speech of the event. He stated digital marketing has enable them to carry out more targeted and effective marketing campaign for Volkswagen in Hong Kong last year and looking to increase their market share by 3% in 2009.

Digital Word-of-mouth Intelligence

Mr. Ralph Szeto, Business Development Director of CMRS Digital Solutions Limited, shared his experience and findings about online automobile market with digital word-of-mouth (WOM) intelligence. The WOM intelligence platform is called ezBuzz, and it found that Honda was the most discussed brand in Hong Kong cyberspace in the past 6 months. He also stressed netizens are more active in forum in Hong Kong while people have more conversation in blogs about automobile in other major countries.

Volkswagen Believes in Digital Marketing

Mr. Sam Hui, General Manager of Next Interactive Limited, moderated an open forum to discuss “All About Automobile Market in Hong Kong” with Ralph Szeto, joined with Ms Anna Au, Marketing Director of Volkswagen Hong Kong Limited. Sam stated Volkswagen is relatively much aggressive in and relies on digital marketing to increase their market share in Hong Kong. Anna also agreed Volkswagen will continue to explore more marketing campaign idea in cyberspace, especially after Ralph’s sharing in WOM intelligence.

It was a wonderful event and I met a lot of poeple too, many photos are shared here. Special thanks are given to HKAIM for making this happen and Volkswagen for supporting with such a great place.

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Nike has recently launched the《踢出火》(“Ignite Your Game”) marketing campaign in Hong Kong just before the end of 2008/09 football season. Its incredible Arsenal vs Manchester United TV commercial frequently appears in major TV channels as well as on the homepage of YouTube geo-targeted for Hong Kong visitors. There are ads in print out-of-home media, but it is digital media making the integrated campaign more engaging to raise far more brand/products awareness for Nike.

Video Worth a Thousand Words

Comparing with standard banner ad, display ad with stunning video is much more effective in building brand awareness and delivering the campaign message to audience. This incredible Arsenal vs Manchester United match video shows how players, featured by Fabregas and C. Ronaldo, ignite their game during the remaining additional time. Video worth a thousand words in online marketing too.

Interactive Campaign Site

To convert the awareness into engagement and make it more viral, this Nike Football Ignite Your Game campaign mini-site is really stunning. There is a lot of trainings and challenges hi-res videos demonstrated by many football stars how they get ready to ignite their game, and so do the audience. Its interactive complement what standard and video ad cannot achieve.

Targeted Football Fans in GoalGoalGoal.com

Nike Football also partners with GoalGoalGoal.com, a local soccer forum, to create an individual section for “Ignite Your Game”. They publish latest soccer news and updates about their Nike 5 Football competition in Hong Kong.
Besides the interactive campaign site, GoalGoalGoal can effectively attract the targeted group of football fans and create more awareness of “Ignite Your Game” campaign among them. It makes the whole campaign a more integrated one.

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It was a wonderful time being in WordCamp Hong Kong 2009 last Sunday, it is my pleasure to meet Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress, a lot of active bloggers and new media enthusiastists. The event not only gave many insights about blogging and WordPress, but connected people in local blogging and twitter community.

Matt and WordPress

Matt has shared much about the born of WordPress inside-out and the latest development of Automattic. I love the idea of making WordPress as a CMS (Content Management System) so much, it has so much potential to unleash in Hong Kong web design and development.

Jay and WordPress themes

I was mostly impressed by Jay’s passion about web and WordPress theme design, I strongly recommend you go to have a look of Jsbox (Her blog) and PlainBox (One of her WordPress theme). Jay also did a brilliant job making a slide suggesting people to give up Internet Explorer 6 and choose a better browser to support WordPress theme designer.

Coolest Photo of the Day by dawfon

Goodbye! WordCamp Hong Kong 2009.

Extended Reading

• Time to show some WordPres Love by Ryanne
• WordCamp Hong Kong 2009 Afterword by Jay
• Tweets of #wordcamphk on Twitter

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• Google Hong Kong Finance Beta launched

HSBC Hong Kong has just launched their new homepage on April 1, 2009. There are noticeable minor changes to the main content section on the right in the homepage, but it definitely lags far behind in Web 2.0.

HSBC new homepage is still old fashioned

Compared to the old homepage above, the new homepage does offer users with the followings:

• A more interactive layout
• Timely promotion updates and exclusive offers
• Introduce commentary video on HSBC website, which it is the very first time I’ve seen in local consumer bank.

HSBC has not started to leverage the power of social media to benefit itself in viral marketing, nor enabled users to share and discuss the information more easily through any Web 2.0 applications. As one of the biggest corporations and the largest online service provider in Hong Kong , I am quite disappointed to see HSBC has not taken any step to adopt Web 2.0 in their online strategy.

HaveMyBank.com – Social Media Marketing Tryout by Citibank

It reminds me about a recent social media marketing tryout by the most active online advertising giant, Citiank Hong Kong. It has worked with Publicis to launch a digital campaign, HaveMyBank.com, in December, 2008. They experiment the use of social media to promote their latest mobile banking service by publishing video clips of Vivek Mahbubani, Fu Wing (苦榮) and Siu Hak (小克), and hope people are convinced and will share them with their social networking platform.

Seems like either they have not carried on with idea or the campaign does not go well, there was no comment for 5 weeks on the website and just moderate video views on YouTube. But at least we have a start for both advertisers and agencies to try out a social media marketing for financial institutions. I look forward to seeing  more Web 2.0 usages by banks and hopefully some Banking 2.0 ideas in Hong Kong soon.

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Google just launched Google Hong Kong Finance (Google 香港財經) Beta on March 30, 2009. It is a localized version of Google Finance, which has already been launched for over 3 years in U.S., and offers users with comprehensive finance information for Hong Kong, China and major worldwide stock markets.

Awesome and Unique features

 Streaming Stock Quote. Besides offering real-time stock quote for China and U.S. market and 15-minute delay for Hong Kong, the displayed prices are updated automatically like streaming quote without any clicks and refresh. And most importantly, it’s free.

Goolge Trend-like Chart. The charts come along with relevant news with labels associated on the timelines which is similar to Google Trend. It helps users to identify any possible causes of the price movement. The relevant news which suggested by Google serach engine consolidate the major local financial news sources like AAStocks.com and 128128.com which is very handy for users. I hope Google will introduce the relevant blogs feature of which Google Finance in U.S. offer real soon.

Interactive Analysis. The interactive charts and analysis tools faciliates users of all-kind. Chart analysis is handy with comprehensive tool in Flash with 10-year historical data. Technical analysis is also easy by specifying criterias in “Stock Screener” (“股票篩選器”).

Promotion Event in Causeway Bay

Just read about in Twitter today that Google has temporaily rented a store in crowded Causeway Bay to introduce Google HK Finance Beta to the public. I have got a chance to be there but realized there are not many passer-by interested, and I am one of a few to sit down and experience the new awesome localized service by Google. And I was surpised by their “Google Chupa Chups” and Octopus card case with a bull in 2008 :p

Extended Reading

• “Google Finance” by Wikipedia
• “Google Finance Blog” by Google
• “Google香港財經Beta正式推出　提供一站式股票市場資訊” by e-zone 討論區

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Fans of Laughing Gor (Laughing 哥) are all upset about his death in the 22nd episode of TVB’s popular drama “Emergency Unit” (《學警狙擊》). Both the role of Laughing and the fabulous acting by Michael Tse (謝天華) have gained hot attention and massive praise since he was revealed to be an undercover for over 9 years in the recent episodes. Of course, everything didn’t happen intentionally by TVB itself, Laughing Gor just tips in the social media.

Tipping in New Media

Laughing started as a supporting role in “Emergency Unit” as a senior position in a triad (進興社) and got not so much attention in early episodes. But once the surprising rumor of Laughing is an undercover spread in various social network sites like Facebook, forums and blogs, it created massive buzz and raised much more audience attention about “Emergency Unit”. With such respectful and interesting characters of Laughing, social media facilitated the unstoppable viral distribution and hot discussion about his destiny.

Being the hottest search keyword in Yahoo! HK (The most popular search engine in Hong Kong), Laughing Gor simply dominated the local online community this week.

Fans in Facebook

The death of Laughing in 22nd episode is the hottest topic among mainstream and online media before and after it is broadcast. It attracts more than 120,000 Facebook users to join his group and here are some facts:

Mar-18 3PM: ~60,000
Mar-18 11PM: 73,166 (The night of 22nd episode)
Mar-20 1AM: 103,319
Mar-22 4PM: 125,780

The death of Laughing doubles the number of fans and attracts 1.8% of Hong Kong population just in a Facebook group, it is pretty impressive in local social media.

User-Generated Media

The death of Laughing triggered much more user-generated contents. Facebook and Twitter were flooded by the status updates in which netizens expressed their sympathy of losing Laughing. As there are massive desire of expressing their sadness, revenge and wanting Laughing back, there are popular facebook apps. The most interesting one is “In remembrance of Laughing” (“永遠懷念Laughing哥”) developed by Eric, it enables user to mourn him by laying virtual offerings.

People also organized Laughing’s gags, derived numerous funny photos and uploaded his “Death Note” video in Facebook group and forums. The phenomenon of Laughing also gained huge coverage of personal blogs as well, and all these show the power and impact of Web 2.0.

Tipping Point in Web 2.0

Laughing Gor reminds me about a book – “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Galdwell, and he completed side-mission to create a very first successful case how Web 2.0 tips drama and character from mainstream media in Hong Kong. Wish you rest in peace, Laughing Gor! We will either see you in final episode of “Emergency Unit” or Episode I of Laughing Gor (Laughing 哥前傳).

Extended Reading

• Laughing哥 – 從電視到互聯網 by 案內人隨筆
• 12萬人悼念Laughing哥 by 廣告101‧Be Always Convinced!
• 解釋 Laughing 哥 II：電視劇熱潮, 是刻意還是巧合?part 1 by 石先生
• 從領袖的角度看Laughing哥的死亡 by 寫作空間
• Unravelling the Laughing Gor Phenomenon by The Picth HK
  
• 「Laughing哥」紅遍討論區 編劇剖析熱潮 「社會需要英雄」by 明報新聞網

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