Apple Daily encourages creative in media

To encourage creativity in the advertising industry, Apple Daily organised its first print advertising award at Quarterdeck in Hong Kong. Red Cross hauled in four awards for its Humanity campaign including the most creative, outstanding arts and photography.

So how did the awards go? Imagine a scenario. While you take an elevator in the MTR, you will have a glimpse of more than 10 ads in half a minute. Which one comes to your mind? It should be those creative one. But, we have to ask, what is creativity? Take the NGOS ads as examples. Probably most of us have seen a group of poor-striken African children in a bus ad, or heard of a poster slogan saying "one dollar a day is enough to help the needy." But how much we remember about those organisations? And are we really inspired after seeing those ads while tones of videos about poverty in Africa and Latin America bombared in our life in different forms, like Roadshow or TV programs.

The biggest winner of this year award, David Communication Group Ltd, however, shows us its secret of success is breaking away from the old.

And he is right. The print ads come in three versions. In the “Ghandi version”, a man portraying Ghandi is helping an elderly man to wash his body with the message “The modest action of one person affects the lives of many” to uphold the pillar of humanity - caring for the health of the vulnerable; in the “Mother Teresa version”, a man with his head covered by a sheet resembling the head scarf of Mother Teresa is grasping the hand to a person who has fallen from a building. This ad carries the message “good people can be of any gender, generation or background” to synchronize with the pillar – protecting human life; in the “Florence Nightingale version”, a lady holding a lamp similar to Florence Nightingale is visiting a homeless man living under a bridge. This ad comes with a message “the greatest care starts close to home” to bring out the pillar - respecting human dignity.

“The aim of the ad is to let readers visualize the abstract idea of humanitarianism,” said Rhea Leung, Hong Kong Red Cross Corporate Communications Manager.

“And to tell readers that everyone around us can be a humanitarian."

Creativity somehow can come in different forms. The organising committee for the Apple Daily awards certainly took a creative approach. The group invited a 300-pound woman, an old man decked out in hip hop style as the presenters of the award. To me, it is kind of weird, but after all, it coincides with its award presentation slogan "creativity means courage"! The woman should have big courage, in Hong Kong where figure is everything, to be the model, I would say.

Creativity must drive business

Creativity online is really nothing to scream and shout about. But as digital media becomes a bigger part of the business world, Elaine Chow, corporate creative office at Next Media, says creativity is more important than ever.

Online a real threat to conventional TV

Many have described online TV as merely a complimentary offering to the traditional TV business. But after just one year the Oriental Press Group's On.cc network is putting this theory to test. On.cc deputy controller ATung Kwok-tung LEE says peak viewing times for the online TV network are now mirroring those of the traditional TV.

No budget, no worries

Who says that just because you don't have much in the kitty for a TV commercial it has to be low brow.

Get out of ya comfort zone and talk to marketers please!

Microsoft organised its annual luncheon gathering with the media yesterday. To coincide with Valentine's Day, the media party was themed "Celebrating the Marriage of Software and Services".

I had to say the venue was a stark improvement from previous years as it was held at Watermark in Central Pier this time.

However, the marriage element between software + services was lost on me and I found the wedding themed opening of the event - the music and masters of ceremonies as if they were the bride and groom - a bit tacky.

Adam Anger, senior director of business and marketing organisation for Microsoft spent close to an hour to give an overview on what the company has achieved in the past year and a preview of the exciting products and services to come. And of course how the marriage of software and services will be the next big thing to watch out for.

Thank goodness I had the privilege to sit beside a Microsoft employee (I've got to admit I've no idea what products she is selling) who understands the importance that they should not limit their message delivery to just IT decision makers.

The product marketing manager candidly told me the company has done a good job speaking to niche IT related media but would like to expand that target audience to include marketers and business decision makers.

What she shared with me reminded me the frustruation I sometimes face when chasing a story where some companies fail to see the 'big picture' and dismiss niche publications as they prefer to speak with consumer media since they reach out to a much larger audience.

I hate to bring this up but the reality is the world is facing an economic crunch right now and perhaps it is time for companies to re-think and expand their circle of 'stakeholders' they are delivering their messages to. Afterall the more 'exposure' your brand gets to the right audience, the higher your chance of standing out from that very saturated clutter.

A few sobering words from Stephen Roach

Met up with a few old friends from Sydney last night and like a lot of conversations these days, ours drifted towards.... yep, the economy!

We all work in different industries - entertainment, live music, corporate law and media - in different parts of the world, but today at like no other time I can remember, we are all facing exactly the same predicament. Times are extremely tough.

I have been a strong critic of sensation media organisations overstating the economic troubles in order to sell a few more newspapers. I assumed that that this was merely a tidal wave that would soon enough disperse. Oh how wrong was I.

I was lucky enough to be invited to listen to Stephen Roach, chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, present his thought to the Asia Society recently and let me tell you, this guy has to be the most pessimistic bloke I've come across. Here is a small snippet of what he said.

“Obviously we’re in a global recession. It’s a severe one, but it is a unique one. It is a post-bubble recession, brought about by the bursting of multiple asset and credit bubbles around the world," he said. Ok, sure. Got it. Easy.

“You were told by many that these imbalances were sustainable. Forget it. That was a crock. It didn’t happen and what were are seeing now is a very painful rebalancing of an unbalanced world and it’s only just begun.”

Roach described the current climate as "extraordinarily challenging and difficult" adding that there was little hope of a consumer revival in the United States.

“The US consumer, is as we say in the US, toast. Finished. Done.”

“We have seen the early signs of what that means. Consumption spending in the United States in the final two quarters of 2008 were the steepest two quarters of consecutive declines of personal consumption in history.

“This is the worst consumer recession that has every happened in the United States and its happening right now."

Welcome to 2009!