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SCMP Reporter

Advertisements have increasingly become an annoying feature of our lives, as promotional messages fill up our e-mail inboxes and bombard our  mobile telephones.

Yet as an ever-present feature of our environment, both guiding and reflecting  current tastes and desires, they form a vital part of our history.

The Association of Advertising Agencies of Hong Kong (HK4As) is giving us a chance to indulge in a bout of nostalgia and  explore our love-hate relationship with  commercialism's front line as the industry group celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.

The association  launches  it celebrations with an exhibition, 'Making Brands Shine for 50 Years', at the Pacific Place mall from Friday to June 10.

'The advertising industry offers the community an occasion for collective memory,'  chairman of the association Royce Yuen said.

Well-known commercials on show include some for Marlboro cigarettes, Vitasoy drinks, HSBC and Hennessy VSOP cognac, not to mention Pepsi Cola ads featuring Canto-pop singer Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing.

'Hutchison Telecom's mobile services, such as  Tien Dey Seen and its CDMA service during the 1990s, were landmarks in the local advertising industry, with pop singer Leon Lai Ming promoting the services for over 10 years,' a marketer told Media Eye last week.

Hutchison Telecom  in 1994 was the first telecommunications operator in Hong Kong to appoint a dedicated spokesperson - Leon Lai - to promote mobile services. His last show in Hutchison's campaign was two years ago for the company's 3G service and also featured Miss Hong Kong Kate Tsui Tsz-shan, the marketer said.

Hong Kong CSL's One 2 Free, SmarTone, New World Mobility and PCCW Mobile have all followed Hutchison in appointing artists to boost their mobile-phone business.

HK4As celebration nevertheless  came at a time when the local advertising industry  was facing tough challenges, as brand owners  did not want to invest on brand building, one insider said.

'Marketers no longer present their ideas to a managing director, just to the head of the marketing department,' he said.

'This reflects how important advertising campaigns are in those executives' minds.'

Ticket to ride

Media monitoring firm Nielsen has from last month been given access to details of the advertising expenditure of Buspak on the 5,700 franchised buses that run throughout Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories.

Buspak is the sole advertising representative for all franchised buses in Hong Kong, including KMB, Citybus and New World First Bus.

Neilsen's co-operation deal with Buspak could help advertisers discover the effectiveness of bus advertising in Hong Kong where  four million passengers take trips via 600 routes every day.

Pre-discount advertising revenue from buses  was HK$59 million last month,  led by mobile-phone vendor Sony Ericsson, Dah Sing Bank and energy firm Esso.

A new Face

Next Media chairman Jimmy Lai Chee-ying once again steps into the front line, this time to promote the group's newly launched title Face; 12 years ago he starred in the television commercial launch for the Hong Kong Apple Daily.

Two consecutive full-page advertisements ran in Apple Daily on Monday. The first focused on a group of people and an issue of Easy Finder, with the slogan: 'Please throw the first  stone if you are not guilty.'

In the second ad, Mr Lai, together with a copy of Easy Finder, is shown bleeding after being hit by objects such as screwdrivers, chairs and stones.

The message was rather opaque to some readers. One market watcher deciphered the ads as showing that Easy Finder had some sort of guilty past in the Hong Kong magazine history and the ads asked readers or competitors to attack it.

Others, however, recalled the Biblical admonition by which Jesus turns on the critics of a woman caught in adultery. Hypocrisy, the message might indicate, is rife in Hong Kong.

Either way, Next Media appears to want a clean  break with the end of Easy Finder, which for a while in the 1990s was the city's most profitable and popular title, after the group faced pressure from its rivals and the public for an editorial style with a strong focus  on paparazzi journalism.

Face, which will appear each Tuesday, will replace Easy Finder as the group's young and trendy title. To establish the new brand name, the company gave away a copy to readers showing the last issue of Easy Finder, published a week ago. Based on the circulation of 120,000 copies at a cover price of HK$5 each, the gesture will cost Next no more than HK$600,000 in circulation revenue.

In spite of its critics, Easy Finder was the city's  third-most popular magazine for the year  to March. It had  more than 459,162 readers in the period, behind  sister titles Next Magazine with 663,034 readers and Sudden Weekly with 849,917.

frederick.yeung@scmp.com



Industry remembers those classic adverts