On the corner of Percival Street in Causeway Bay is an unremarkable low-rise building. The 30-year-old-plus residential block is clearly in need of a coat of paint. Many of the windows are still metal casement and television aerials bristle from the roof. Telecommunications firm Sunday has a shop on the ground floor, while through the darkened windows of the third floor you can see the faux chandeliers of the Aladin Mess Pakistani and Indian restaurant. The tenants on the remaining floors have an uninterrupted view across busy Matheson Street to Times Square.
Hanging from the windows of a fourth-floor flat is a hand-painted sign on a white bed sheet. Proclaiming 'advertising space for rent' in Chinese, the sign lists the contact details for a Mr Cheng. A call to Cheng (who will not give his full name) reveals he is the owner of the flat. He has leased the inside and now he wants to lease the outside; for how much, he won't say. He says he got the idea after a man asked if he could rent the space for him. In true Hong Kong entrepreneur style, Cheng, who speaks with the wavering voice of someone in his twilight years, declined the offer and decided to take matters into his own hands.
'Late last year, before I put a banner there, someone asked me to rent the space to them. But I refused because he wanted to build a big billboard, which I think is too dangerous,' he explains.
Through luck rather than design, Cheng owns a flat that stands in one of the world's busiest shopping districts; a place where millions of consumer eyeballs pass each day. The building may be shabby, the rooms may be noisy and rental income may be low, but according to advertising industry executives, Cheng's little patch of exterior-wall real estate could net him as much as $10,000 a month.
Hong Kong's shopping-district skylines are a discordant symphony of signs bearing brand and restaurant names that compete for space and consumer dollars; and it's getting worse. Media research firms ACNielsen and Mindshare estimate double-digit growth in expenditure on outdoor advertising in 2004 compared with the previous year; a trend that looks set to continue.
Carving up the city's landscape is big business. For every billboard on a wall, roof, fence or facade, there have been hard-fought negotiations between owners, tenants, management companies, space-buyers and advertisers. Securing the rights to a site can take several months as advertisers search for the legal owners of a space, discuss the compensation package (fixed fee or percentage of monthly revenue), negotiate distribution of the fee if several owners are involved, receive planning permission for the erection of a sign, and then find a willing advertiser.
