Ogilvy & Mather Singapore is looking for young people from all across the creative spectrum to join the Lucky 8 internship programme.

Every three months, with the first wave starting in May, eight fortunate and talented creatives will be chosen. They will be tasked with creating disruptive thinking while working with some of the best minds in the business.

“To succeed in advertising you need passion, determination and courage. We are giving talented creatives from all corners of the world a chance to break in and be immersed in one of the most vibrant and diverse Ogilvy offices,” said Steve Back, Chief Creative Officer, Ogilvy & Mather Singapore.

To be in with a chance of succeeding, interested candidates need to create ‘a sell yourself video’ and submit that along with three pieces of their best work as well as their CV.

Go to www.lucky8.com.sg for more details.

Kwok is no stranger to O&M China, having spent the first 13 years of his career at O&M Advertising (1993-2006), firstly in Hong Kong and then in Shanghai and Beijing where he held various senior positions over the years including Managing Director of O&M Advertising/Beijing. In his most recent position, Kwok served as Chief Marketing Officer at one of China’s largest e-commerce companies, Dangdang.com, in Beijing from 2010 to 2012. Prior to that he was Managing Director of Euro RSCG 4D, China from 2009 to 2010.

Angel Chen, President of OgilvyOne China, said, “Billboard is a well known and highly sought after talent in our industry. As one of the first staff at O&M in China, Billboard made significant contributions to the development of the agency so naturally we’re thrilled that he chose to rejoin us. With his many years of successful managerial experience and his familiarity with Ogilvy, I’m confident that Billboard will be able to quickly step in and excel in his new role as he has strong expertise in client marketing strategies and deep insights into e-commerce. The team is very much looking forward to working with him again to achieve new heights.”

Billboard Kwok, Managing Director of OgilvyOne Shanghai and Vice President of E-Commerce OgilvyOne China, said, “Joining OgilvyOne is a real homecoming as I’ve spent most of my advertising and marketing career at Ogilvy. Driving OgilvyOne’s e-commerce services across mainland China will be my top priority.”

Having trekked through the Silk Road, Kwok is an avid traveler, badminton player, scuba diver and photographer. He is fluent in English, Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese Chinese and the Fujian dialect.

“The inversion of the images powerfully demonstrates that skaters see the world differently than other people,” said Ralphsmith.
A total of 3400 entry pieces from 40 countries around the world were received for this year’s One Show Design award competition. The competition featured 14 categories including Branding; Corporate Identity; Package, Industrial and Collateral Design; Self Promotion; Spatial, Outdoor, Print and Broadcast Design; Direct Mail, Public Service/Non-Profit/Educational; Craft, and Sustainability in Design.

One Show Design winners will also be featured in the commemorative One Show Annual, which will be released later this year.
Ogilvy Melbourne is part of the STW Group, Australia’s leading marketing content and communications group.

Credits:

Group Account Director: Matthew Rose

Executive Creative Director: Michael Knox

Senior Copywriter: Darren Winter

Art Director: Joe Hill

Retoucher: Steve Simmonds

Every candidate who attends will get 45 minutes of undivided attention with 3 top creatives from a number of the world’s best agencies.

“Portfolio Night is a unique opportunity for students who want a career in advertising to show their ideas to the best creative people. At Ogilvy, we are committing to offering a handful of internships to candidates that we meet in both Beijing and Shanghai. At my previous agency in London I hired a young man that I met at Portfolio Night six years ago and he recently moved to Shanghai and now we’re working together again here. So these are real, potentially life changing opportunities. There is nothing else like it, so beg, borrow or steal a ticket,” said O&M China Chief Creative Officer Graham Fink.

Ignacio Oreamuno, President, ihaveanidea, said, “We are thrilled that Graham and the Ogilvy team are bringing Portfolio Night back to China this year. As May 23 will mark the tenth edition of Portfolio Night, we aim to produce the best portfolio review event the world has seen to date, and the Ogilvy China team is just the partner to make this happen in Shanghai and Beijing.”

“ People don’t do what they believe in, they just do what’s most convenient, then they repent.”
(Brownsville Girl, Bob Dylan, 1986.)

The only decent song on one of his worst albums (Knocked Out Loaded), it is nevertheless an unexpected place to find a piece of marketing insight. However what Mr. Zimmerman identified was a core truth about human nature – we don’t always think about what we’re going to do, or do what we say we would. Sometimes we act and then we repent, or change our beliefs to reflect our actions. That’s why getting people to act is at the core of the discipline we call Activation.

Activation is a relatively new discipline for modern agencies. However what is new is recognising it as a core marketing discipline and trying to raise standards of creativity, brand and consumer understanding to match. Promotions are as old as the hills; in fact the distinction between Above-the-line and Below-the-line comes from the way in which advertising and promotional costs were itemised on an agency bill in ‘the old days’. Although agencies have not seen it as particularly glamorous or exciting until recently, this was rather myopic given the importance placed on it by our clients, who recognised years ago that getting people to change their behaviour at the time of purchase decision was crucially important.

A couple of years ago we conducted a global study into how people made decisions when they were about to buy and were able to pinpoint 52% as the magic average number of changed decisions – about brand, quantity, category or even to buy at all – made by consumers around the world, when they were in store. As Bob Dylan recognised, people don’t always do what they say they will do – or even feel that they ought to do. All of us act on impulse, changing our mind for reasons that we keep to ourselves, and then rationalising the decision afterwards. This does not just apply to consumer goods and low-interest categories; in the automotive sector, for example, people will often start off the buying process with one marque of car in mind, but end up driving home in something completely different. One of the roles of car advertising is to help the buyer feel good about the choice they made. (Post-purchase reassurance, as it’s known.)

So, if everything else about communication in business is changing in this digital era, forcing us down new paths of innovation and creativity, what is changing in the ways in which we try and change shopper behaviour? After all, despite the growth of e- and m-commerce, aren’t the majority of shopping experiences still primarily physical, the moment when you have a tangible material interaction with the brand or service you’re buying? If one of the roles of Activation is to provide a real experience of the brand, how can digital and mobile technology make a difference? How is the digital revolution changing the way in which we are creative about the way in which we act in The Last Mile?

Firstly we need to recognise that the last mile is no longer a straight line. The mile has looped round into a circle, or perhaps a figure-of-eight or double helix. Google recognised this when they identified the concept of the ZMOT – the Zero Moment of Truth. Traditionally we experienced two moments of truth with a brand – firstly when we bought it and secondly when we used it. Now however the interaction with the brand can often take place much earlier as we research our choices, comparison shop for price, read expert or consumer reviews or just view cautionary tales from our friends on Facebook. This is the ZMOT – and the scary thing is that everybody else’s first and second moments of truth contribute directly or indirectly to our ZMOT (and vice versa). Hence the Last Mile experience loop described above.

Secondly people no longer cruise gracefully down a funnel from Attention to Interest to Desire to Action, in the classic AIDA sales formula. The decision to enquire further, to sample, to test or to buy can happen at any stage of the buying process, and in any environment. We are beginning to live in a world of always-on shopping, whether we like it or not (and most of us seem quite comfortable with the concept). Buying can take place at home, sampling can take place on demand, research can be going on in-store – movement within that last mile is becoming increasingly randomised.

It’s our belief that the most successful way to spark the consumer’s imagination and then activate their wallet is to combine the physical and the digital (or as some poor unfortunate soul described it to me recently, the ‘phygital’) in an experience which combines data, online connections and a physical experience. Used with imagination and innovation, digital and mobile communications allow us to do what we always wanted to do – but so much better. (One of my European colleagues, Rory Sutherland, once wrote ‘direct marketing is an idea in search of a medium, and the Internet is that medium.’ He was right, but not only about direct marketing.)

Let’s look at some examples of how ‘the things we used to do’ have been made better by the combination of new technology and – most importantly – a good idea. As David Ogilvy famously said, ‘unless your campaign contains a big idea it will pass like a ship in the night’. As our lives become increasingly subject to a barrage of ideas expressed in communications, you can be sure that only the good ones have the slightest chance of breaking through.

Take sampling for example. There is no better way to convince a consumer about the superiority of your product than to give them a taste. However it’s also expensive, hard to direct effectively and needs human promoters who can be difficult to manage and control. This piece of work from Germany not only utilised the geographic location app Foursquare to trigger sampling, but also even delivered it, not to the human consumer, but to their dog – allowing the animal to drive the consumer to purchase. Of course it could also have been done mechanically, but that would have lacked the sense of innovation and ‘coolness’ of using a fun piece of interaction.

It’s not just a question of location though. A similar use of a downloadable app in Ireland gave beer drinkers discounts on Budweiser when the weather got hotter – even giving out free samples when the mercury reached a certain high point. Because the app resided on your phone the discount or sampling could be activated wherever you were – walking past a pub for example. This was an interesting piece of work, not only because of the way in which it used technology to make the activation time and weather sensitive, but also because it used a combination of old and new media to surround the consumer with the message in a way that was both familiar and innovative.

Technology is also influencing point of sale of course, with many stores now having in-store TV channels, interactive screens and electronic couponing issued in-store. The danger of this technology is that it requires a high capital investment, is heavily controlled by the retailer and can become very cluttered and irritating for the shopper. However when it used with subtlety and driven by a big idea, it can be highly effective. Take this example from Ogilvy in New Zealand for Fair trade bananas. It’s amusing, it’s subtle and it is exactly on brief.

One of the most important roles of activation is to provide a demonstration of the product. If you can get the consumer to try it, there is a much greater chance that they will buy. However most people are either too busy or not motivated, and don’t really want to get involved. This is where technology has a unique benefit, drawing people in, and making them part of the demonstration in a way which is entertaining and enlivening. Mini, in the UK took an old idea – seeing how many people you can fit inside a Mini (a staple of Records Books for decades) – and brought it into the 21^st century by the use of virtual reality technology, here.

And finally activation is a great way to dramatise the product benefits in real life. Even here though, innovative uses of technology can pay off, as seen in this demonstration of Mercedes fuel cell environmental efficiency. By taking the car and make it (almost) invisible using photo-voltaic cells, a few people in real life saw the demonstration – but over 9 million checked it out on You Tube, not to mention the extensive TV news coverage it received.

There are certain key factors needed, in order to succeed changing people’s behaviour when they are in shopping mode, in-store, on the street or at home. Firstly it is important to recognise that shoppers are in a different mind state from passive consumers, and that mind state will also vary depending on what type of shopping they want to do and the purchase environment. Buying a Coke in a nightclub is a very different process and experience from buying one in a 7/11. Therefore we need to design communications with this in mind.

Secondly we need to create ideas that are tangible, involving and bring out a sense of playfulness or entertainment in the shopper. To quote David again, “you can’t bore people into buying your product.” It is highly likely that the store of the future will evolve into more and more of an entertainment destination – and therefore the dull store will fail, replaced by the convenience of online shopping. Take a look at this example from Daffy’s in Times Square, New York, and you’ll get the point.

Finally, as people suffer from digital overload, creating at the intersection of the tangible and the digital is the best way to create real involvement and therefore – purchase. To leave the last word with Mr. Ogilvy, “we sell – or else.”

By John Goodman & Daniel Comar
May 5, 2012

She will work with John Croll, CEO of Sentia Media, Chapter Chair to grow membership in the region and introduce new education initiatives.

“In an era where many Asia Pacific marketers report feeling like they’ve landed on ‘Planet Data’ without a map, AMEC is uniquely positioned to lead education on smarter communications measurement”, said McDonald, who helps Ogilvy clients learn to speak the boardroom language of effectiveness, drawing on her eighteen year FMCG client background.

John Croll, CEO of Sentia Media and Chair of the AMEC APAC Summit said: “Marion will bring senior global PR consultancy insights and knowledge to the growth of the APAC Chapter. She will be a key player in our work to educate PR professionals of the important of communications measurement.”

A digital specialist with in-depth experience in China and South East Asia, Searle was responsible for growing W+K Shanghai’s social media capabilities and ran digital and social media campaigns for Nike, Umbro and Fiat. Prior to that, as CIC’s (a WPP company) Business Development Manager, he helped promote and develop China’s social media industry and advised multiple Fortune 500 clients as to their social media and social business strategy.

“This high calibre appointment highlights the crucial role Indonesia plays in our regional and global social media offering,” said Thomas Crampton, Asia-Pacific Director of Social@Ogilvy. “In Patrick, we have an entrepreneurial leader and digital visionary to grow our business and lead innovation with impact well beyond South East Asia.”

Indonesia is the world’s third largest Facebook nation, one of world’s biggest markets for Blackberry and is sixth in the world for Twitter users.

“The appointment of Patrick Searle represents Ogilvy’s commitment to Indonesia and the development of innovative social media programmes for our clients,” said Katryna Mojica, Head of Ogilvy & Mather Indonesia. “While social media is heavily in use, programmes tend to be short-term and promotional in nature. There is so much more opportunity to use social media as a strategic tool that can build long-term equity for brands. We look forward to Patrick joining the management team.”

Patrick Searle commented: “The establishment of Social@Ogilvy not only highlights how integral digital and social has become to our clients business, but also Ogilvy’s strong commitment to helping their clients understand and capitalise on this. No more so is this true than in the case of Indonesia, one of the world’s biggest users of social media, and I look forward to helping our clients grow to become digital and social media champions of the region.”

Social@Ogilvy is a worldwide practice connecting all of the agency’s social media experts to deliver solutions across all areas of business.

Singapore took bronze for its Health Promotion Board work ‘From Anti-Smoking to Pro-Quitting’ and bronze for KFC’s ‘Flame Grilled’ campaign.

Two markets won one awards each with Malaysia taking home a silver for MILO’s ‘Next Games’ campaign and Australia won a silver for its ‘Share a Coke’ campaign.

Last year, a large group of millionaires from Wenzhou decided to head overseas. Chartering a plane that would take them on a whistle-stop tour of America’s high streets, shopping centers and outlet malls, they were on a shopping mission. But they weren’t going to buy bagfuls of luxury goods for just themselves. Much of what was on their shopping list were watches, handbags, perfumes, pouchettes and jewellery that had one singular purpose: to cement their guanxi.

The World Luxury Association announced in a report that Chinese travelers spent $7.2 billion abroad on luxury goods during the week-long holiday, up nearly 29% from the previous year, making the Chinese the most powerful purchasing group in the world.

About 72% of Chinese people interviewed believed that luxury goods overseas are cheaper than at home. A total of 69% travel because of the wider choice available and 45% enjoy the products’ authenticity and the service at overseas outlets. The fact that China Unionpay is almost universally accepted in most luxury outlets worldwide, and stores hire Chinese-speaking shop assistants makes it easier for them.

Wenzhou is China’s capital of capitalism. According to the local government statistics, 93% of all businesses in the city are in the private sector. These entrepreneurs have been phenomenally successful. Last year, one in every three Chinese tourists overseas was from Wenzhou, and one-tenth of China’s luxury cars ended up in this city of 8 million.

As he waited in the airport departure building, a gentleman named Mr. Wu did a quick rundown of what he was wearing and carrying. “We all like LV (Louis Vuitton) for bags, since everyone knows this brand.” His bag was Louis Vuitton, his shoes by Gucci, and he wore a striped cotton sweater by Paul & Shark with a $600 price tag. “Very expensive, but it’s worth it. I bought the bag at the LV store in Wenzhou, but now I need many more! And with the dollar at an all time low against the renminbi, I can buy more” he adds, with a beaming smile.

Wenzhou’s luxury shoppers display a characteristic of Chinese shoppers that spans product categories and city tiers: a blend of status consciousness and deal-seeking.

In our recent study, ‘China Beyond – Change and Continuity’, we found that lower tier consumers care more about their status being recognized by others, and brands are the most important determinant of status. But tier two city shoppers are more likely to compare prices before they shop: and their source of knowledge is a combination of going online and asking their friends who have bought the same goods.

It is through this process of judging value that they make trade-offs. Qi Jin, a 29 year old former Army bodyguard turned entrepreneur I met in Jinzhou in Liaoning province splurged Rmb 200,000 (USD 31,000) on a shiny new Yamaha superbike, not available in China. It was the only one in the city; but he and his wife bought most of their clothes – including the fake Puma T-Shirt he was wearing – for a hefty discount online. The same businessman who picks up youtiao (fried dough) for breakfast and carries a flask of green tea with him to work could well order a bottle of Chateau Lafite Rothschild for 50,000 renminbi (US$7,862) when entertaining business partners.

In making brand choices, we are finding that the heart often wins over the head. Take a seemingly mundane product category like OTC (over-the-counter) analgesics. In a commoditized market, we created a campaign that recognized the heroism of Mr. Shi, an unknown schoolteacher. After suffering from the tragedy in his own family years ago, Mr. Shi had decided to devote himself to a bigger family: the numerous homeless, abandoned kids in the society. Brick by brick, Mr. Shi – who was wracked with back pain, built a school all by himself and provided an opportunity for orphaned children to study. We positioned GlaxoSmithKline’s (GSK) painkiller brand Fenbid as his ally which enable him to overcome his pain and realize his heroism, and the brand’s market share, which had been declining before the campaign, increased by double the target set by GSK.

The exodus of Chinese mothers from local infant formula brands, upon discovering many of them to be tainted by melamine, to MNC brands, was another emotional reaction, which persists two years on. Particularly in Tier One, Two and Three cities, where income levels are higher, families are taking no chances: it is here that we find that they are willing to pay higher for foreign brands because they trust them – a belief underscored by our research.

The power of emotions does not apply to foreign brands alone. The Wenzhou-based youth fashion label Semir is a popular second and third tier city brand. While wealthier consumers might be more concerned about status, for young people, brands are often about displaying an attitude. Many of them, belonging to the post 90’s generation in China, are resisting the pushing and prodding of their parents to perform and achieve. During the Beijing Olympics, the constant urging that China and the nation’s athletes were going after gold, made many of them somewhat cynical and wary of the halo effect of glory. After all, they knew that almost all the athletes had been groomed and trained for this, and for every gold medal winner, there were a hundred thousand who didn’t make it to the podium. How could a brand like Semir tap into that insight? It had to be through attitude. Our campaign showed young folks who hadn’t a hope of making it to the games taking their loss in their stride, with a cockiness that proclaimed, “So what if I’m not a great sportsperson? At least I look good!” The campaign struck an emotive chord and was rampantly viralled. It drove up footfalls into Semir stores, and average sales per store went up by 30%.

Much of that emotional connect and trust is built by sharing experiences and opinions about brands, often online. China is the only nation in the world where the number of online friends one has outnumbers the number of real life friends. The top basis for liking a brand is positive word-of-mouth, with 46% of all respondents in our recent study citing it. In first and second tier cities, we found that positive consumer comments online drive purchase intention among 63% of our respondents.

Recent research amongst China’s Millennials – its post ’80s generation, by Edelman and StrategyOne concurs with our observations:
90% of them share their brand preferences online.
72% are brand loyal – once they find a company or brand they like, they keep coming back to it.

It is interesting that such brand loyalty translates into bulk-purchases. The common response to times of financial crises, or inflation – as China has been experiencing recently, is for consumers to buy lesser quantities. Not so here! With their high savings rate, Chinese consumers would rather hedge against inflation than deprive themselves. In many daily-use categories – where brand loyalty has its own rewards, they are buying things in bulk. In many of the homes we visited, it was not uncommon to find cartons of beer, juice, bottled tea, detergent powder, diapers, pencil boxes, tissue and toilet paper stacked high. Some of these were bought on group buying websites. There’s nothing to be ashamed of in admitting that you’ve snagged a deal, because the chances are quite high that the brands will get in touch with you when they have the next offer going.

It is no surprise then, that 62% of the post ’80s generation are willing to share more personal information with their trusted brands.

60% of them have written about their positive experiences with a brand. For many young people, purchasing a brand and participating in activities sponsored or supported by the brand is a form of self-expression through affiliation.

And, in a display of candor, 53% of them have also written about their negative experiences. Many of them hope that companies will pay heed to their criticism. They feel emotionally let down when their trusted brands fail them. The extreme reaction of the BMW owner who had his car towed by oxen when the company failed to address problems with his car is one such example.

In their search for identity, many Chinese people struggle with notions of what is international and what’s Chinese. Running parallel with the advance of international brands and popularity of foreign culture – in the form of dress, music, entertainment, sports and technology, there is a growing sense of China Pride.

In the same lower tier cities where a majority of our respondents agreed with the statement “I appreciate our traditional cultural heritage and feel that our lives should be guided by them,” shopping malls are awash with giant posters of foreign models promoting fashion brands, cosmetics, automobiles and mobile phones. Our respondents preferred international celebrities over local, or Hong Kong / Taiwan stars. Many of the brands featuring these international models were local brands, and they seemed to be signaling that the brand was being used by foreigners, and therefore must be very good.

And it is in the big cities, as a kind of reverse trend, that we have found brands inspired by ethnic craft, traditional Chinese medicine, the cultural revolution or Imperial China, becoming increasingly visible and favored by consumers. The home furnishings brand Emperor, and skincare brand Herborist, shown here are just two of the many examples that you will now find in upscale malls in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and Guangzhou.

Leading international brands are catering to Chinese tastes, or respecting their wallets: Hermes, by collaborating with top designer Qiong Er, to create the Shang Xia luxury line; Louis Vuitton’s Spring-Summer 2011 collection was an ode to 1930s decadent Shanghai, with silk cheongsam and panda themes; Hewlett Packard collaborating with Vivienne Tam to create a line of netbooks that was inspired by the Jin dynasty based opera ‘Butterfly Lovers.’ At the other end of the market, we find that the state-owned bicycle company Forever has been taken over by a group of twenty something enthusiasts, who are on a mission to bring back the freewheeling cycling days of the cultural revolution, with a twist: their bicycles draw upon minimalism, and are yet they are very trendy. In a market where bicycles still outsell automobiles two to one – and sometimes anger against the ‘spoilt rich kids in fast cars’, it is indeed smart strategy, not unlike Semir’s.

Today, there’s so much pressure on Chinese households that many folks are seeking to retreat and hunker down. We are observing the first phase of reverse migration. Those who moved to the big metro cities find that they can no longer afford to buy houses, and high inflation is eating into their savings. Some of them are now returning to their home provinces and setting up their own business, using the experience gained in the big city. At the very least, they find jobs easier to find since they’re better qualified than those who stayed back. But having stayed in the big city and after being exposed to more brands and a certain kind of lifestyle, they are keen to make the most of their time after they return. The result: a take-off in leisure activity and leisure and entertainment brands in the second tier cities. Lower tier residents showed the greatest desire to travel both within China, and overseas in our study. So this desire is not confined to only the wealthy classes!

These families are spending more on doing up their homes, buying cars for weekend trips to the countryside (sometimes to buy fresh fruits and vegetables – a smart money saving move!), and on their child’s education. They are very concerned about environmental pollution (which ranks #2 after food safety in their list of concerns) and will spend more on those products that are healthier.

These themes are then reflected in their choices of favorite television commercials. The WildAid ads, which feature basketball superstar Yao Ming and diving diva Guo Jingjing exhorting people not to have shark fin soup, were often mentioned by families we interviewed as their most memorable ads.

Across the board, our study showed that TV viewers liked ads showing family warmth, funny ads and story telling ads. Logical communications, such as ads showing product features, came in fourth. An emotional connection, often rooted in the family, is a surefire way to bond with Chinese consumers. One of our advertisements for Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) shows a woman working late in her office, alone, panicking when the phone rings and her son asking ‘Mama, when are you coming home?’ Moments later, her husband and son walk in through the door with KFC takeout, enjoy a meal together, and when they leave, the son asks ‘Dad, can we do this again tomorrow?’ The brand eases the mother’s tensions, and strikes a deep chord.

In a nation of 1.4 billion people, 520 million of whom are on the internet buying 48000 pieces of merchandise every minute, there are no easy answers. At Ogilvy Discovery, by keeping track of the changes – in big cities and small, we can indeed prepare you better on your journey to build brands in China.

Kunal Sinha
Chief Knowledge Officer
Ogilvy & Mather China