Tag: Hong Kong

Hong Kong – In celebration of International Day of the Girl, commemorated every 11 October to promote the rights of girls, Kotex, the feminine hygiene brand, has launched a new campaign in APAC that aims to amplify girls’ voices, fight period stigma within society, and spark conversation on building girls’ bright future through education.

Titled ‘#GirlUnrestricted’, the campaign includes a region-wide video that encourages girls to embrace their uniqueness and experience girlhood on their own terms followed by local market activations. In Hong Kong, Kotex has also launched a dedicated website for puberty education. With informative and light-hearted videos, it aims to break the period stigma and to reassure girls of their possibilities.

Stella Chun, Kimberly-Clark’s general manager for Hong Kong, believes that a girlhood unrestricted is a girlhood full of possibilities and envision a more forgiving world where girls can live every adventure, and this is in line with Kotex’s purpose to remove barriers to girls’ progress.

Remarking on the East Asia market specifically, Chun said, “Girls in Hong Kong feel they do not have access to information about their bodies and health. Through our puberty education website and education programs, we aim to enhance access to information about female health for girls and improve key outcomes in the areas of education and health and wellness.”

Based on research conducted by Kotex, Gen Z teen girls in APAC are growing up under unprecedented pressure. It highlights that the classic struggles of puberty are amplified today against a backdrop of issues that range from climate change to cyber-bullying and unrealistic societal expectations.

Hong Kong – Creative and CRM agency Wunderman Thompson in Hong Kong has announced Maggie Wong as its new CEO. Wong is formerly the managing director of Publicis Worldwide and Leo Burnett Hong Kong.

The move comes after former managing director Matthew Parry makes the move to Australia, joining Wunderman Thompson Sydney to assume the same MD role. 

Wong brings with her more than 17 years of experience. She has worked with established international brands across various industries, including Expedia, Lexus, and Pizza Hut, as well as HKT, and Standard Chartered.

Aside from her previous role in Publicis, Wong has also worked as the managing partner at marketing communications agency The Gate, and the business director at architectural design firm Alan Chan Design Co.

Commenting on her appointment, Wong said, “Wunderman Thompson HK has established an excellent base with a diverse blend of talents and capabilities to turbocharge the next chapter of growth. I’m hugely excited to be joining the wonderful team and by the prospect of what we can achieve together.”

Meanwhile, Ewen Sturgeon, Wunderman Thompson International’s CEO, shared they are very excited to see Wong join them and bring her own brand of leadership, as she has the right focus on creativity, data, and experience to continue growing the Hong Kong office.

“Matt leaves to Maggie a strong and successful agency, with a great team and clients. And I’m thrilled that Matt continues to grow his career in the Wunderman Thompson network,” said Sturgeon.

Hong Kong – Following the company’s recent expansion to Australia, global audience and local intelligence company Adsquare has announced that it will now be expanding its presence to Hong Kong. Along with the endeavor, the company has also appointed Melvin Wong to be the company’s sales director for North Asia.

Through his new role, he will lead top-line growth across all company solutions, with direct oversight of the company’s sales and client relationships in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea.

Furthermore, he will foster existing relationships and will identify new accounts with a potentially significant impact on Adsquare´s long-term success.

Prior to his recent position, he has worked with global media platform Teads where he demonstrated a progressive 6-year-growth, starting as business developer in New York City to finally become Teads´s first sales manager in Hong Kong. Prior to that, Melvin acted as business developer at programmatic platform Triplelift.

“I’m thrilled and grateful to join the Adsquare team in APAC. Adsquare’s technology, capabilities, and data integrity are second to none, enabling key insights for advertisers and brands to drive effective and successful campaigns. I look forward to helping Adsquare further drive their footprint in North Asia,” Wong said regarding his appointment.

He will be reporting to Nicolas Méar, general manager for APAC at Adsquare.

“To support our expansion in APAC and bring a tighter focus on customer relationships in North Asia, we needed an expert with the knowledge and the confidence to help Adsquare remain competitive and grow even further. Melvin will be a key asset to help clients maximize their ROI via our data-driven solutions for targeting, measurement and OOH planning and activation,” Méar stated.

Adsquare’s Hong Kong office marks the company’s tenth office, alongside in Berlin, Düsseldorf, London, Madrid, Milan, New York, Paris, Singapore, and Sydney.

Hong Kong – HDcourse, the SEO optimization services and training provider, has launched free online SEO courses to help SMEs increase their organic SEO traffic.

HDcourse offers courses that cover SEO, WordPress, email marketing, and digital marketing. It supports short video teaching and is suitable for people who are studying on mobile phones and busy with work.

HDcourse shared a case study where one of its students from Malaysia had only 53,500 impressions and 1,240 clicks on Google, and following its classes, said impressions have grown to 583,000 and clicks to 15,000.

HDcourse said that through the free SEO teaching courses, anyone can have a jumpstart, promoting its classes to have 10 integrated factors that can improve the SEO of the clients and obtain organic traffic.

One of the factors is ‘Search Intention’, that helps businesses to know consumers’ intentions behind inputting certain keywords. Second is ‘Index’, which is having the search engine index the content of the customer’s website one by one. Next is ‘Backlinks’, which mainly refers to how many other people’s website links point to the customer’s website.

Meanwhile, ‘User Experience’ is the time the user stays on the website, and ‘Uniqueness of Content’ is the deep and rich content, allowing content optimization. ‘E.A.T.’ or ‘Expertise, Authority and Trustworthy’ is also a factor to improve SEO, which is enabling experts to write content to increase authority and professionalism, while ‘Freshness of Content’ is writing up-to-date news.

Furthermore, the ‘Click-Through Rate’ is adding numbers or attractive words to the title, which will help the search engine, while ‘Website Speed’ is the time to load the website should be within 2-4 seconds. And lastly, ‘Responsive Design’, which allows users to easily browse the same website regardless of the computer, tablet, or mobile phone.

Hong Kong – Southeast Asian women fashion brand Love, Bonito has announced the launch of its new local-centric website, which is accompanied by a month-long social media campaign and most interestingly, a five-week presence along Hong Kong’s well-known trams.

Said campaign, called ‘Travel in Style with Love, Bonito’, is the latest social media campaign of the brand where 500 lucky winners will receive a limited-edition preloaded Love, Bonito branded Octopus card and a Love, Bonito website shopping voucher. Love, Bonito will also be hosting month-long giveaways on its Facebook page.

As for the tram presence, three Love, Bonito branded trams will be travelling around Hong Kong island from today until 29 August. The trams will feature a QR code that Hong Kongers can scan to sign up for the Love, Bonito newsletter and participants can stand a chance to win a limited-edition Love, Bonito branded Octopus card pre-loaded with HK$50 and a HK$50 shopping voucher for the Love, Bonito Hong Kong website. 

Every week starting from the week of 26 July to the week of 29 August, 100 lucky winners will be announced every Wednesday beginning on 4 August to 1 September via email regarding the prizes.

“The new site will mark the introduction of the brand’s new and improved online experience, providing shoppers with a faster and more responsive website. In addition, the new site can also be saved as a mobile home screen application to provide shoppers with more convenient access to the website. We are thrilled to introduce these exciting new features first in Hong Kong and subsequently in other in-market websites in the future,” said Dione Song, CEO at Love, Bonito.

The Hong Kong website will feature all of Love, Bonito’s product lines including work, casual, occasion, The Staples (wardrobe foundations), LYLAS (bridesmaid & party), loungewear, Embrace (maternity), kids, intimates and special collaborations.

Hong Kong – As part of strengthening their presence in Asia-Pacific, streaming service Disney+ from global media enterprise The Walt Disney Company has announced that they will roll out to the markets of South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan in November 2021.

Said announcement was made during the recent calls of the company regarding their Q3 earnings.

In addition to this announcement, Disney+ Japan will also be expanded to feature additional general entertainment content in October 2021.

To date, Disney+’s presence in the Asia-Pacific region includes the markets of Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, India, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand.

According to Luke Kang, president at The Walt Disney Company Asia Pacific, the response towards Disney+ across the region has exceeded the company’s expectations, as consumers seek diverse entertainment content and are drawn to their portfolio of brands and franchises.

“We are pleased with the subscriber growth and partnerships forged in markets, and look forward to engaging with more consumers across the region – through unparalleled storytelling, creative excellence and cutting-edge content delivery,” Kang said.

Said endeavor by Disney+ best reflects the duties of Kang when he was appointed to the current position last December 2020, including duties of managing Disney’s media networks, direct-to-consumer offerings including Disney+, media distribution and motion picture businesses.

Disney+’s current content portfolio includes a wide selection of films and episodes of content from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, National Geographic and Star, as well as including local and regional content in the region. Globally, Disney+ is currently available in 61 countries and 21 languages across North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Latin America.

Hong Kong – Harbour City, the premium shopping center in Hong Kong, has partnered with Disney and Pixar to launch a mega event ‘Pixar Fest’ developed through a new marketing strategy and with a new event format.

‘Pixar Fest’, which will run until 15 August 2021, aims to enhance the consumer experience, create noise, and maximize social shares.

Harbour City is taking the extra mile to introduce something innovative to the audience. Mainly, the mega event has taken full advantage of Harbour City’s layout, installing 12 photo spots at every corner across different zones and levels. For example, the 5.2 meters high Pixar Ball and Lamp has been installed at Ocean Terminal Deck, while enlarged versions of Pixar movie characters have been set up in the atrium.

Apart from taking pictures on-site with the movie characters’ statues, the mall has also leveraged the technology of AR to entice visitors. Harbour City has selected five AR checkpoints in the consideration of mall layout. By downloading the mobile app ‘Harbour Cityzen’ for free, customers can experience ‘AR Fun’ in the onsite installations.

Furthermore, in order to keep the customer-generated content and maximize organic shares, Harbour City has released weekly new surprises to customers, such as limited-edition souvenirs and exclusive products. 

And lastly, Harbour City has created a series of interactive activities, including an online game connecting the real and virtual world across offline and online platforms. The mall has also partnered with booking platform KLOOK for online pre-registration of Pixar’s movies and shorts, to promote the mega event to targeted audiences with its big data.

Hong Kong – HSBC’s mobile payment platform, PayMe, has just launched a new campaign, featuring today’s most popular actor and singer in Hong Kong, Keung To.

The new campaign, which was created in collaboration with creative agency Ogilvy, stems from PayMe’s pride in being the only e-wallet designed specifically for the people of Hong Kong.

Titled, ‘Hong Kong’s Wallet’, the ad centers around a music video showing Keung To in ‘PayMeow cat ears’, singing the catchy PayMe song that highlights the message ‘dine-shop-play anywhere, anytime’, and dancing with PayMeow, the brand’s chubby feline mascot, and his group of dancers.

Furthermore, the campaign includes a series of print and social executions, directing people to ‘PayMeow Spin and Win’ – the in-app game in PayMe that gives users a chance to receive rewards of up to HK$500 in their PayMe wallet and other prizes when they spend HK$100 or more at PayMe for Business merchants. It also includes a PayMeow dance challenge on Instagram with special giveaways signed by Keung To.

Jaslin Goh, HSBC’s head of marketing, CX, and design, said that PayMe has become a part of Hong Konger’s lives, where for instance, they often hear people say ‘pay me lar’ among friends, becoming the country’s wallet. 

“So we asked ourselves who’s best to collaborate with our adorable mascot PayMeow with the magic of bringing people together to enjoy the PayMe cashback promotion?” said Goh.

Meanwhile, Buji Ng, the group creative director at Ogilvy, commented that Keung To is undoubtedly Hong Kong’s favorite singer who is making a strong influence in peoples’ lives.

“Therefore, we paired him up with PayMeow to make a music video debut, creating an unprecedented performance for our audience. More fascinating activities are coming up to engage everyone in town,” said Ng.

HSBC’s PayMe said that the campaign will be running until 30 September 2021.

Hong Kong – Global news company reporting on China and Asia, The South China Morning Post (SCMP), has launched today its new Global Subscription product to provide unparalleled intelligence and insights on China, tailored for enterprises and corporate organizations.

The new Group Subscription packages offer holistic solutions that combine comprehensive news reporting and industry insights, that illuminate global trends as the epicenter of global economic growth continues to shift towards Asia. 

Through SCMP’s new product, group subscribers can access all the latest news coverage on international trade, finance technology, geo-economic policies, as well as the environment, sustainability, and governance trends. Meanwhile, exclusive member benefits will include policy briefings, research and industry reports, access to flagship events and conferences, and invite-only conversations with a community of globally influential senior executives, China experts, and SCMP editors. 

Ang Jin, SCMP’s senior vice president, said that it is increasingly essential to understand nuances in global trends to keep ahead of the competition in a fast-changing environment.

“SCMP’s Group Subscriptions are designed for professionals to make well-informed decisions with customized news and industry intelligence and to help navigate complex economic, business, and political issues. As a product aligned to organizational needs, we believe it is an investment that will see invaluable benefits in return,” said Jin.

Just recently, SCMP has also launched a global brand campaign to communicate its ‘Understand China, Understand the World’ value proposition, demonstrating its mission to lead the global conversation about China. It aims to position itself as an important resource for readers looking to acquire a more complete understanding of global trends.

Hong Kong – With the pandemic situation in Hong Kong now gradually easing up to open to the local and global economy, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Hong Kong are also slowly opening up, with business confidence rates seeing a steadfast growth among the local SME sector during the third quarter, new data from the Hong Kong Productivity Council (HKPC) shows.

According to their latest index alongside Standard Chartered Hong Kong, the SME Overall Index has risen for three consecutive quarters, this time by 4.4 to 46.6, hitting a three-year high since Q3 of 2018.

All five component sub-indices stipulated in the index also rose in Q3, among which the ‘Global Economy’ sub-index recorded the most significant surge again, from 43.6 to 52.8 which made an impressive leap from the low of 7.9 in the same period last year. Together with the ‘Recruitment Sentiment’ sub-index which rose to 50.9, these are the first two sub-indices to surpass the 50 neutral mark in the past two years. Eightof the 11 surveyed industries have recorded two-year highs in their industry indices. 

The sub-indices of ‘Information and Communications’, ‘Real Estate’, and ‘Social and Personal Services’ are the best performing industries, with their respective indices all over 50.

On investment sentiment in the coming quarter, most SMEs are planning to spend more on ‘Information Technology’ and ‘Product & Marketing Promotion’. While 24% of SMEs plan to increase investment in ‘Information Technology’, 20% of local SMEs would like to boost investment in ‘Product & Marketing Promotion’ – both are one-year highs. Meanwhile, 63% of SMEs surveyed expected an upcoming increase of ‘Raw Material Cost’, which is 5% higher than the previous quarter.

For Edmond Lai, chief digital officer at HKPC, the results of the index reflects the stableness of the pandemic situation in Hong Kong during the survey period, and that the SME sector is bound to its ‘steady U-shape rebound with the outlooks of ‘Global Economy’ and ‘Recruitment Sentiment’ being positive’.

He also noted that the survey showed that SMEs are ‘flexing their muscles’ to pick up their business as fast as possible by increasing investment and expanding staff size.

Meanwhile, Kelvin Lau, senior economist for Greater China for global research at Standard Chartered Bank Hong Kong, commented that the latest SME Index readings confirm that Hong Kong’s business conditions have not only further improved over the past quarter, but that such positive momentum is also likely to carry over to the start of second half 2021, boding well for more economic recovery ahead. 

He also added that the are seeing confirmation as well of such recovery being broad-based, with all five component sub-indices and eight of the eleven industry sub-indices posting quarter-over-quarter increases. All this, however, is still not enough to push the overall SME Index back above the 50 neutral mark for now, meaning that SMEs are generally still operating below normal levels.

“Looking at the breakdown, the improvement in ‘Global Economy’ sub-index remains the biggest driver of positive sentiment this time, while ‘Recruitment Sentiment’ sub-index also returned above 50 for the first time in two years, boding well for Hong Kong’s unemployment rate to extend its recent nascent downtrend. That said, improving global prospects have not translated into much better confidence among manufacturers, exporters and financial services providers this time; rather, we see prior underperformers such as retailers playing further catchup – probably supported by the continued unwinding of social distancing measures since the first quarter,” Lau explained.

He added, “Our latest survey results also reflect still-high cost pressures, especially those for raw materials; that has in turn pushed prices higher for finished goods and services, confirming that some pass-through of higher costs onto buyers is indeed happening.”

In addition, the survey also explored SME perspectives and planning in response to the economic recovery in 2021. Around 7% of SMEs surveyed said their business fared better than before the pandemic, while 31% of them claimed to be close to returning to the pre-pandemic levels. The business performances of ‘Information and Communications’, ‘Real Estate’ and ‘Financing and Insurance’ industries are the most satisfactory amid the pandemic, with ‘Accommodation and Food Services’ being the most affected – 81% SMEs surveyed reported a setback in business. The most popular actions taken proactively by SMEs to achieve business rebound are ‘Product/Service Improvement’, ‘Market Promotion’, ‘Online Expansion’, ‘Productivity Enhancement’ and ‘Use of Digital Technology’.

Furthermore, the survey found that SMEs are placing high hopes on ‘Global Economic Recovery’, ‘Re-opening of Cross-Boundary Travel with the Mainland’ and ‘Relaxation of Social Distancing Measures; to fully grasp the opportunities from market recovery. Yet they also saw the constraints of a severe worldwide epidemic situation and geopolitical tensions, with 37.3% of SMEs surveyed indicating their intentions to raise prices to cope with inflation and offset cost pressure.