The book was a bit repetitive in parts and could have been reined in with some proper direction and editing, but that’s a problem of the editor rather than the author per se. Despite these flaws it provided an interesting insight into how a company had become such a colossal success in spite of itself and a parable on what happens when you try and shaft distribution channel partners.
The Coca-Cola Company used interesting accounting arrangements and stuffed its distribution channel in order to deliver results. But this just moved revenue allowed them to book revenue early rather than creating business growth. In this respect is similar to the way IBM started selling rather than leasing mainframes to book sales early whilst personal computing ate into its business market. It used an off-balance sheet transaction to set up a separate distribution company and then buy up its partners bottling operations. Eventually this arrangement together with product disasters like New Coke and Dasani caught up with them
Unlike Enron these weren’t bad people, they were just trying to keep Coke enjoying the kind of success it had always been in a changing world. The changing world increasing dominated by savvy consumers and operators like Wal Mart that have a touch of the night about them. Where it gets interesting is how someone like Warren Buffett could get taken for the ride by the Coca-Cola Company.
It is full of high-drama like directors being called to meetings in distant aircraft hangars, being fired by key shareholders and then all of them going home in their own Gulfstream jets – quality, you couldn’t make Pop Truth and Power up, even if you wanted to.
CNY 2025 or Chinese new year 2025 is shorthand often used as a hashtag on social media to circulate songs, sales promotions and advertisements from across China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia. I started off this post into gathering some of the best examples of CNY 2025 advertising just after Christmas and there was a poor range of adverts just a month out from CNY 2025. Imagine if there were no Christmas adverts appearing by the third week in November?
Small businesses like the Davely Bakery Café in Malaysia had started promoting organic social content on their Facebook page by November 19. (In markets such as the Philippines, Hong Kong and Malaysia, Facebook is still big business.)
But where were the large company promotions this close to the festival? Brand campaigns only really started to appear from the second week in January onwards.
CNY 2025 themes that I took away from researching this post:
Increased emphasis on demand generation and sales promotions.
Less big brands advertising than previous years.
Campaigns were run over a shorter period. Roughly half the six weeks I would have expected for successful brand building campaigns.
Less of a focus on storytelling and deep emotional cues than previous years.
Lower production values as a whole than previous years.
A move towards bus wraps in Singapore for CNY 2025 campaigns. These were replicated in ‘bus simulator’ games popular amongst transport fans in Hong Kong and Singapore. This replication was less about a ‘brand gaming strategy’ and more about fan curated bus skins for absolute fidelity to their favourite bus routes.
Less emphasis on creative consistency than in previous years.
Shorter ads, each with a lot of 15-second edits.
Increased use of humour.
Increased use of songs, presumably to gain earned and shared media support – very hard to do successfully as a strategy when there are so many songs to choose from.
Lazy use of celebrities – I hadn’t see this in previous years doing this.
As a marketer, I saw things in CNY 2025 that I thought was good and things that I worried about in these changes between CNY 2025 and previous years:
Smarter memory structure building: fluent objects such as Kevin the First Pride nugget, the use of jingles and ear worm songs, the use of humour
Red flags for brand mental availablility: a lack of creative consistency, shorter ads and lazy use of celebrities. Shorter ads can, if done right be used to build brand, BUT, there are a number of factors to consider when doing it successfully. These include variety of formats, reach / marketing penetration, repetition, single-minded creative execution and the thumb-stopping factor.
Reading the ‘tea leaves’ I suspect that marketing budgets have been cut, and brands might not be expecting as much of an uplift this year as China’s poor economic performance affects its neighbours.
China
Apple
Apple continued its shot on an iPhone series. The Chinese New Year film is run in lots of markets but primarily made for China. I am surprised that this got past the censors. Time travel is usually a a no-no. It also reminds China’s currency economically challenged consumers of the 1990s go-go years of year-on-year double digit growth. The core aspect of the creative is the direct questions that younger family members receive.
CNY 2025 is the first time that Apple didn’t have a Chinese film maker shot its film. Finally, Apple’s film comes in at a whooping 11 minutes 59 seconds although a good minutes is the credits.
Bottega Veneta
Bottega Veneta’s Chinese New Year film is all about vibes. There were some interesting styling choices in the film. The older guy with the women’s hand bag. That most of it seemed to be around older alleyways that have been refurbished. The lady in the 1980s era Jaguar. Pre-1997, a number of more anglophile Hong Kong businessmen used to get driven around in Jaguar and Daimler cars with a large V12 engine – that spoke to old money in this film.
I was stuck by the lack of explicit references to new year, which you can also see in the Miu Miu film – what there is are more subtle cues.
All of which is a world away from many luxury brands slapping a snake on everything this year.
Gucci
Gucci taps into the traditional multi-generational party and memories of ‘snake’ new years of the past. It’s probably the strongest bit of storytelling and the most cinematic of all the films that I have looked at this year.
Miu Miu
Prada sub-brand Miu Miu is one of the few stand out brands in a tough 2024 for the luxury sector. This Chinese New Year film is playful, borrowing from Asian mid-century set design and 1990s era Chinese electronica to tell a small story.
Hong Kong
Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola has a dominant position in the soft drinks market thanks to its dominance in distribution. The only places I could buy Pepsi was in my local Pizza Hut when I lived there. This year they focused on out of home posters to reinforce memory structures. The unusual aspect to the campaign was that it went up in early February at the end of Chinese New Year. That’s a bit like launching your Christmas advertising on New Year’s Eve. Not sure why that’s happened.
Giordano
Multinational clothing brand Giordano promoted a CNY 2025 collaboration featuring the Kung Fu Panda character on its social media accounts. The preponderance of red in the clothing isn’t only about it being a seasonal colour, but also you are supposed to wear new red clothing for the new year.
This social media film was run on channels in Hong Kong, Malaysia and other countries where Giordano has a presence.
Malaysia
100PLUS
100PLUS is an isotonic drink similar in function to Gatorade or Lucozade Sport popular in Malaysia and Singapore. Its advert for Malaysia promotes the drink as alternative to colas during new year celebrations. A secondary aspect is the opportunity to win a free prize draw. The blue in the outfits is to presumably signal the blue in the brand and packaging.
It’s slightly unusual in that it doesn’t feature multi-generational family members, which I suspect is down to a single-minded focus on teens and young adults.
Aeon
Japanese supermarket Aeon highlighted their CNY themed collaboration with Italian artist TokiDoki as a music video format that you could sing along too. It’s a little too mild to be an aggressive earworm of a tune.
Aglow Clinic
Aglow Clinic is an aesthetics clinic in Malaysia that treats a range of skin conditions including sun spots. They partnered with social media personality Roderic Chan to make this film. Considering the small size of the brand they hit well above their weight in terms of production values.
Aiken
Aiken is a Malaysian based beauty brand. The creative was done by the media buying agency and features Malaysian influencers as the talent in the advertisement.
Aiken wishes you Double the Brightness for a Brighter Year! is clever word play that implicitly links feeling beautiful and the promise of good fortune. This advert went out very late into the market for 2025.
Carina
Carina is a household tissue brand in Malaysia, similar to Kleenex in the UK and Ireland. It has gone down the ear worm route with its song. The montage of footage feels crowdsourced.
Eu Yan Sang
Eu Yan Sang did separate creative for Malaysia. There are higher production values than their Singapore creative and storytelling that ties back to creating memories and tradition being a key part of Chinese New Year. The advert sought to show that the family weren’t wealthy, but had food on their plate, good manners and retained their cultural roots. As a first-generation emigrant myself this one spoke to me.
First Pride
Tyson Foods First Pride range of processed chicken product including chicken nuggets and satay slices featured a simple sales promotion with a sweepstake format. The advert also introduced a fluent object ‘Kevin’ the chicken nugget on a TV advert.
Kevin had previously been shared only on out of home formats. It would be interesting to see if and how they make future use of Kevin.
Guardian
Guardian is the Malaysian brand of the better known Asian pharmacy retail chain better known as Mannings in Hong Kong and China. A UK analogue would be Boots. It has higher production values and evokes togetherness, good fortune and memory-making for our young protagonist. Click here to see on YouTube.
Haier
Chinese white goods manufacturer took an unconventional storytelling approach. it’s the kind of creative concept that could be used year on year, just changing the product line-up.
Harvey Norman
Electrical retailer Harvey Norman ties into the fact that bargains are a constant discussion around the table during Chinese New Year (and any other family gathering). The production feels rather low rent compared to other adverts here.
HongLeong Bank
HongLeong Bank took the story of two customers that fitted neatly with the festivities around Chinese New Year. It gives a good old tug on the heart strings.
Julie’s
Julie’s a is a biscuit brand that tries to focus on the human side of food. Given the visiting and gifting culture for Chinese new year – the opportunity is ideal for its brand. I was surprised by the high production values of the advert. The 3d animation is creatively consistent with work that they’ve put out over the past year. As a direction the CNY 2025 campaign is very different from their last festival campaign for CNY 2022.
Julie’s can continue to run this campaign after CNY 2025 is over due to the lack of overt seasonal themes in the advert.
KitKat
KitKat Malaysia have attached the Chinese New Year creative back to ‘have a break, have a KitKat’ for creative consistency. There is enough in here to say new year. But a sufficiently light touch that they could use it year-in, year-out – so long as the brand uses the same promotional packaging design.
If they had used snake imagery, it would be one-and-done.
Knife
Knife are a food flavourings brand from Malaysia. Their main advertising push is for Chinese New Year and they have made a constant effort to bring creative consistency and storytelling into their work. CNY 2025 is no exception to this approach.
https://youtu.be/Oxo8jP-67tE?si=aSnwKB5YVxoT96z_
Lay’s crisps
Lay’s (known as Walkers in the UK) highlight their role as a snack at new year’s gatherings. The ad promotes a new year themed sweepstake including mahjong sets.
Lotus’s
Lotus’s is a supermarket market chain. In Malaysia, the shops were formerly Tesco Malaysia and sold on to a Thai retail group. This film focuses on the stress of preparing for new year, together with sales promotions. Aside from holding red t-shirts with the ‘Fu’ symbol on them, this sales promotion video could be for any time of the year. The 1970s called and wants it’s ad creative back from this Malaysian supermarket chain.
Melinda Looi
Malaysian fashion designer Melinda Looi came up with a homage to Wong Ka wai’s In The Mood For Love. The advert nails the mid-century elegance but struggles to get the cinematic richness and tension of the original.
I respect that they gave it a good try and love their ambition; but it’s like Ted Baker trying to pull off the introduction to The Italian Job.
Mr DIY
Mr DIY is a hardware chain similar to Lowe’s in the US or B&Q in the UK. Their advert riffs on the heightened tensions of family get togethers and the relative popularity in Hong Kong film making of court room dramas – to add a bit of cultural relevance. It taps into the stressor of very direct questions similar to BRANDS Singapore campaign.
Mr Muscle
Household cleaner brand Mr Muscle had a Korean celebrity record a CNY 2025 specific message for their Facebook page viewers.
The advert features Korean drama and film actor Kim Seon Ho. In common with other Korean celebrities he endorses a variety of brands in Korea and other Asian countries. For some of the brands endorsed, they have had record sales which they attribute to working with Kim. It’s not sophisticated but will appeal to his many fans in Malaysia.
Munchy’s
Munchy Food Brands is a Malaysian snack brand. The advert itself is pretty self explanatory. Like Watson’s they are leaning hard into trying to create an ear worm to aid long term brand recall that’s complete with an EDM-style drop.
Nivea
Nivea looked to promote their men’s products as a way to solve for the stress of direct family feedback on how you look. It has been shot for mobile.
Pantai Hospital
Pantai Medical Group runs a private hospital in Malaysia that caters to more well-off Malaysians. The emphasis on healthy food in the advert relates to the central role that food plays in Chinese New Year celebrations.
Their elective treatments are likely to be quiet during CNY 2025, so they have provided the option for health-focused external catering. It’s an interesting product innovation for those close to their hospital in Penang. The behind the scenes clips at the end draws on Korean and Hong Kong productions. The best known in the West would be the blooper reels that used to appear at the end of Jackie Chan films.
https://youtu.be/2tKxHrCldts?si=WIQqF1PRPsyzdKEG
Petronas
Petronas is the Malaysian national oil company. There is a natural fit with CNY 2025 because children go home to see their parents and siblings. Later on during the celebrations they will drive to visit relatives. On the Malaysian peninsula you could be a long time in heavy traffic, so pit-stops for fuel and refreshments are pretty much obligatory.
Ribena
Brutally short creative with the tagline left right at the end. ‘Ooo Juicy Fu’ – the fu is a reference to the Chinese character fu symbolising ‘fortune’. It is creatively consistent with campaigns that Ribera ran for Ramadan and the previous CNY in Malaysia.
Shopee
Shopee is a mobile marketplace think Shopify, Depop or Uber Eats in an app. Like Watsons Malaysian campaign it relies on a ‘new years’ song. Why a song? Entertainment during Chinese new year features newly composed catchy earworms. These may come from film series put out as family entertainment for the new year like the All’s Well, That Ends Well series of Hong Kong comedies, or television and adverts.
Watsons
Watsons is a Hong Kong-headquartered pharmacy chain with stores across Asia and a strong focus on health and beauty products. It’s parent company AS Watson is a set of diversified retail brands including:
Superdrug and Savers in the UK
Rossmann
Fortress (a PC World or Best Buy analogue)
PARKnSHOP, Taste, FUSION, GREAT FOOD HALL – grocery stores
Watson’s Wine
They have been teasing a song related Chinese New Year campaign for Malaysia to embed in your memory structures, but were only showcasing the song 2 1/2 weeks before CNY 2025. Rapid screening of sales promotions drown out the ‘Happy Beautiful Year’ themed brand building effort.
https://youtu.be/KpAXOYxxGvc?si=jzwNGGW5HXz8pbHk
Yakult
The Japanese yoghurt drink brand used some good fortune themed imagery to promote a brand sweepstake. A very simple execution that could be used again in future years.
Singapore
BRANDS
BRANDS is a food and supplement business. Traditional Chinese Medicine often recommends eating particular foods to treat different ailments, which is why BRANDS essence of chicken sits in a kind of ‘wellness’ space.
Their advert draws on the universal experience of very direct questions that people have to field from relatives when they go home for Chinese new year.
Eu Yan Sang
Eu Yan Sang run traditional Chinese medicine and related wellness foods shops and clinics across Asia. This Singapore ad focuses on the challenge of gift giving and the close link between good fortune and good health. Unusually, they’ve also run a second lot of creative promoting their CNY themed hamper designs as well.
https://youtu.be/dGc3_cDjtCA?si=pTA3fXpeL481jw-P
FairPrice
FairPrice is a Singapore institution. Like the UK’s Co-op, it is a supermarket owned by the National Trade Union Congress and is the largest grocery chain in Singapore owning both supermarkets and convenience stores.
The ad focuses on everyday Singaporeans with many of the shots modelled on HDB flats – Singapore’s public housing. The colour grading and small moments designed to evoke different types of nostalgia from the rituals of family and the Chinese New Year.
Hockhua tonic
Hockhua is a Singaporean local wellness foods brand who did a simple sales promotion for their hampers to be provided for the new year. The cut-off time then gave the brand a few weeks to assemble to the appropriate amount of hampers.
Lazada
E-tailer Lazada leads with sales promotions. The imagery draws on Fu xing, the god of good fortune who you would pray to in order to get a prosperous new year.
Ministry of Digital Development and Information
The government of Singapore used Chinese new year to reinforce a common Singaporean identity and celebrate the 60th anniversary of the city state. Sing-a-longs are a part of Chinese new year. The video featured a 1980s song that was originally recored by the artists in 1998 re-recorded by them for the government department encouraging t he citizens to look out for each other. The video was published just days before new year and relied primarily on the reach of the former prime minister’s Instagram account. It shares a common theme of small but joyful moments with the FairPrice CNY 2025 advert.
Thailand
This is the first year that I have covered a Thai market campaign. Thailand has a significant ethnic Chinese minority (between 10 – 15% of the population depending on which estimates you reference). Like Indonesia, Thailand integrated them for political reasons and many of them no longer have Chinese sounding family names – but the traditions live on. A second aspect is the increased role in the Thai economy that Chinese expats and tourists now play.
Central
Central is a premium department store in Thailand (think Peter Jones in London) and has a mid-tier brand called Robinsons (think Debenhams or House of Fraser). You have a stylistic version of the new year dinner and a cool grandfather who owes a lot to mature Japanese hipsters and The Sartorialist. The film has high production values and leans on vibes rather than storytelling, but is distinctive.
You can find my previous reviews of Chinese New Year ads here.
At the time, when the stabbing of three little girls happened in Southport, I was in Merseyside. Even though I was just miles away from the town, it felt like another country. The locals I was with and I watched on with detached shock as riots unfolded on newsfeeds.
The general sense was that ‘it couldn’t happen here’ But it had. This was usually followed by ‘despite what people see, this isn’t the kind of people that we are’. Yet Merseyside has long had a well-deserved reputation for organised (and disorganised) crime. Apart from a pier and a sea view that on a clear day allowed you to see oil rigs on the horizon, Southport is very similar to most of Merseyside. Rumours had swirled on neighbourhood WhatsApp groups about the attackers background. Secondly the vast amount of rioters being prosecuted, were not neo-nazis from out of town but local trouble-makers whose guiding idea was the joy of the fight. The police were able to arrest many of them as easily identifiable known faces. Pair the trouble-makers with good weather and an inciting incident and chaos ensued. There is continued latent anger for various reasons just waiting for an excuse to break out and the Southport stabbings were a vehicle.
The thin membrane of civility was punctured. The chaotic nihilism on display mirrored the 2011 riots, with less opportunity for profitable looting. Southport is ‘everyneighbourhood’. It represents an underlying volatility in UK society that is deeper than the hundreds of rioters on Merseyside. There is probably more Southport in many people than we would care to admit.
US Firms Warn Against ‘Unprecedented’ Hong Kong Cyber Rules – Bloomberg – technology firms have warned that proposed cyber regulations could grant the Hong Kong government unusual access to their computer systems, highlighting the latest challenge to Western tech giants in the city. The Asia Internet Coalition, which includes Amazon, Google and Meta is among the bodies that have in recent weeks criticized new rules that officials say are designed to protect critical infrastructure from cyberattacks. Critics argue the proposals give authorities overly broad powers that could threaten the integrity of service providers and rock confidence in the city’s digital economy.
Brands Love Influencers (Until Politics Get Involved) – The New York Times – With the presidential election looming, some marketing agencies have started to pitch advertisers on new tools that grade the so-called brand safety of social media personalities. Some of the tools even use artificial intelligence to predict the likelihood that a particular influencer will discuss politics in the future. A tool recently introduced by Captiv8, a marketing firm that helps advertisers like Walmart and Kraft Heinz connect with influencers, uses artificial intelligence to analyze mentions of social media stars in online articles, and then determines whether they are likely to discuss elections or “political hot topics.” The firm also assigns letter grades to creators based on their posts, comments and media coverage, where an “A” means very safe and a “C” signals caution. The grades incorporate categories like “sensitive social issues,” death and war, hate speech or explicit content.
7-Eleven owner receives Japan’s biggest ever foreign takeover approach | FT – huge for Asian grocery retailing. 7-Eleven is the neighbourhood grocery store for Japanese and many other countries across Asia. In Japan, 7-Eleven is the dominant brand, combining it with Circle K would radically change the marketing dynamics. In a market like Hong Kong it’s effectively a duopoly with Circle K. The approach is likely more about 7-Eleven’s US filling station network. Expect the Asian business to be sold on (to private equity) if the deal goes through.
China will launch first satellites of constellation to rival Starlink, newspaper reports | Reuters – A Chinese state-owned enterprise (Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology) is launching the first batch of satellites for a megaconstellation designed to rival Starlink’s near-global internet network, a state-backed newspaper reported on Monday.It matches Beijing’s strategic goal of creating its own version of Starlink, a growing commercial broadband constellation that has about 5,500 satellites in space and is used by consumers, companies and government agencies.
Almost 11 years ago business academic Dominique Turpin wrote an article describing CMOs as ‘dead’. Turpin worked at the IMD business school in Switzerland and the article was a classic bid for thought leadership.
Alicia Tillman, CMO at SAP AG until 2021, at the time of writing CMO at Delta Airlines
It’s just the kind of thumb-stopping headline that drives readership of LinkedIn content where it was published.
… the decline in the CMO’s influence is alarming, especially at companies that claim to put the customer first but in reality are product-driven.
True, some companies have marketing in their DNA, especially firms that had a visionary founder with a great understanding of the customer. Examples include Ingvar Kamprad at IKEA or the late Steve Jobs at Apple.
But these are exceptions. The norm these days is that the CEO sets the overall strategy, the R&D and innovation teams design the product, and the CFO determines pricing and departmental budgets. No wonder some CMOs feel unloved and are considering a career change
Turpin goes on to explain what he believes that there are four causes, that together result in no CMOs.
Most CMOs aren’t focused on planning and delivering customer value
Short-termism has meant that organisations have become CFO-focused – a la ‘Neutron’ Jack Welch’s perception of shareholder value, rather than a balanced scorecard approach
Marketing impact is hard to measure
Organisations lack a clear understanding of what marketing is
Instead Turpin wanted to create a CCO role – chief customer officer. He saw that this role could sit with the CEO, the CFO or the former CMO. While the CFO as CCO might take the fuzziness out of marketing as Turpin put it, there would be a tension between their natural ‘ neutron Jack Welch’-nature and being customer-centric. What about the CEO? Turpin pointed out that they tend to come from engineering or finance. Both are efficiency focused disciplines with incremental short-term views. Again both are barriers to customer-centricity and would be largely blind to long term effects.
3G Capital
Move forward six years and a CFO-driven approach to running Kraft Heinz by 3G Capital saw a massive destruction of value some $15.4 billion from the $50 billion paid to buy out the business in the first place. The quarterly dividend got cut and shareholders filed lawsuits. The founder of 3G Capital talked extensively about the GE Way driven by Jack Welch as a key influence on their approach.
Scott Galloway
Professor Scott Galloway is a serial entrepreneur who is provocative, interesting and often right.
On CMOs Galloway said
“If you’re the CMO that shows up and says ‘I need more budget so that I can do a brand identity study, can spend money on advertising and get invited to great conferences and hang out with people who are more interesting and better looking than me by spending media dollars that are less and less impactful’ then you’re like the second lieutenant in Vietnam — you’re dead in 18 months or less,”
There is a lot to unpack in that statement, but it doesn’t spell the end of the CMO or advertising.
Pax Americana to Pax Australis
In this post Galloway taps into a wider criticism that we’ve seen of American marketers over the past few years. When I was in college American professors and marketing thinkers set the tempo for the profession around the world. As Mark Ritson recently wrote
In the 20th Century marketing was American. The discipline, the theories, the textbooks, and the approach. To arrive at Wharton in 1994 was to see a future that was not just untenable in the UK, it was one nobody back home was even aware of. Marketing was a decade ahead of anything in the UK. The American marketers I met, academics and practitioners, were so advanced it made my head spin.
Text books by the likes of Philip Kotler and David Baker, were perceived wisdom of old white academics. None of this thinking was evidence-based; beyond anecdotal successful case studies.
One of the ‘secrets’ that marketers and CMOs at large FMCG companies like Mars, Proctor & Gamble, Kellogg’s and Unilever had was access to Australian based marketing science research. This was primarily via their long-term sponsorship of the Ehrensberg-Bass Institute in Adelaide, Australia.
This body of research in turn shook up wider marketing thinking when Professor Byron Sharp published How Brands Grow. (There were other important works as well such as the UK based publications from the UK’s Institute of Practitioners in Advertising – notably The Long and The Short of it and Effectiveness In Context).
While marketing outside the US was shaken up by the works of Sharp and Binet, the US continued onwards in its marketing the way it always had.
Mark Ritson’s recent column on the state of American marketing caused international furore in the marketing community, despite Marketing Week being a UK-only publication. Ritson complained about American marketers lack of awareness about the importance of marketers effectiveness.
This comment on Mark Ritson’s post sharing the article, while humorous has a lot of truth in it:
Okay, okay. Stop throwing big words like vituperative and effectiveness at us simple-minded Americans. Sure, we handed the keys of marketing over to software engineers at the turn of the century. Maybe that led us to a fair bit of myopic strategery here in the very exceptional United States of America.
Based on the comments I’ve read, when asked to define effectiveness the answer provided is essentially #IYKYK. Why let a golden opportunity to school American marketers on the wise ways of the world beyond our ample shores slip through your fingers?
I don’t care if you call it Marketingwirksamkeit or efficacité du marketing, what matters is more than just numbers on the scoreboard, but how the points were won. Just the other day I was reading a scholarly piece on the effectiveness of meme marketing by the faculty of Griffith University in Queensland. It hit me. My American, effectiveness ignorance has blinded me. I now lag behind the rest of the world.
While the US obsessed over marketing technology, the rest of the world was attempting (imperfectly) to more knowledge about marketing efficiency and the marketing technology stack. Having worked in the technology sector, it was the last place I would have gone for marketing lessons. At best, marketing as a function was sales support.
A case in point in this mis-application of focus was the relative performance of this year’s Super Bowl advertisements. I realise that this delve into marketing efficiency has at least made the case for a dramatic change in US-based CMOs. But not so fast, CEOs don’t think that their CMOs and marketing teams are performing that badly.
CMOs: from the dog house to the boathouse
American agency Boathouse have been doing an annual survey of CEO attitudes to marketing and their CMOs. The third edition of this survey was published in January this year.
Some of the highlights of the report include:
CEOs identified what they want their CMOs and marketing teams to address: driving growth, market share/sales, differentiation, improving brand reputation, and “transforming company narrative.”
49 percent of CEOs believe their marketing team is “best in class.”
40 percent of CMOs are rated “best in class.”
One point I found quite interesting was that half of CEOs believe the short tenure many CMOs have “is a sign of success, not failure.”
CMOs’ perceived trust with C-suite stands at 43 percent and 41 percent with the CEO. This has doubled over the three years that Boathouse has been running this research project
In a bit of an odd note: CEOs believe CMO loyalty is growing, stating that “in a dramatic shift from 2021, the CEO’s perception of CMO loyalty is growing, [as] 8 in 10 CEOs perceive CMOs would take a bullet for them (up from 3 in 10 in 2021).”
76 percent CEOs are “integrating A.I. into their organizations” and 90 percent believe that 90 percent of their CMOs are engaging with AI for the benefit of the company in areas such as “content, analytics (about two-thirds), and customer experience or research (half).”
TL;DR CMOs don’t sound as if they will be disappearing in the next 18 months or so as Galloway believed.
C-suite without powerful CMOs get punished.
You could argue that CEO are the ultimate arbiters of CMO success, failure and tenure. But the reality for public companies is the large investors who can vote the CEO of most companies out of office. The key influencer in this decision process is the equity analysts who sit within, or advise client organisations such as fund managers.
Even if CEOs don’t think that their marketing is important enough to have a CMO, their shareholders will. Equity analysts have indicated that they rate brand strength and marketing as more important than reported profit, or leadership quality.
Given that most of the c-suite can’t speak or do effective marketing, they really need their CMOs. Companieslike3GCapital and Reckitt Benckiser have been punished in public markets for failing at marketing, despite operational and financial excellence. Unilever has been punished for its focus on ESG at the expense of brand building and is even under regulatory investigation.
CNY 2024 or the Chinese new year is celebrated across east and south east Asia as it marks the new year according to the lunar calendar. It is as important an advertising spot as Christmas in the UK or the Super Bowl advertising slots in America.
This Saturday marks the new year. This year is the year of the dragon, it is a time for family and for cementing relationships through gift giving. Packaging and promotions will lean heavily on red, gold or yellow colours signifying good luck and general positive vibes.
The packaging can often be very ornate as this example by Shanghai design agency The Orangeblowfish for client Chow Sang Sang shows.
In many small businesses red or Christmas decorations are often left up and enhance the lunar new year decorations. Corporate florists will bring in miniature orange trees that are also a symbol of the season. (Pro-tip, don’t try one of the fruit).
Given it’s such an important time in the marketing calendar, you see some of the most creative campaigns conducted in the region. Here’s a sampling of this year’s advertisements broken down by country.
China
China’s ‘Galapagos Syndrome‘ social platforms mean that it’s really hard for me to share campaigns with you here. In addition, many of the main advertising agencies no longer seem to share their work on more accessible platforms in the west any more. Each year it becomes harder to write a post like this. It’s almost like they’re ashamed of it.
Amushi
Food brand Amushi worked with Leo Burnett on an advert that conveys the main elements of new year celebrations. You need to watch it on Campaign Asia.
Apple
Apple has done some really interesting Chinese new year films documenting different aspects of Chinese new year and this focuses on the trials of childhood and the magic of new year. The protagonist is ‘Little Garlic’, a young girl with special shape-shifting powers.
Coca-Cola
By January 2nd, Coca-Cola already had year of the dragon cans for sale in Beijing. They created a mini-film around a family gathering, but its on WeChat. Contact me if you would like me to share it in-app with you.
Lululemon
I am guessing that Lululemon’s campaign was planned to be running across Mandarin-speaking markets as well as appealing to Asian Americans. The theme of spring is an analogue for the new year, but it is a celebration of traditional Chinese culture rather than lunar new year traditions per se. Michelle Yeoh is Malaysian but has global recognition amongst Asian cinema fans and her Hollywood appearances.
The problem is that Lululemon has fallen foul of Asian Americans and this ad might have its media spend pulled outside Asia? If it happens it would be a shame, as this is the most ‘high concept’, artistic and cinematic of the ads that I have watched so far.
Nike
Nike in partnership with Wieden + Kennedy Shanghai have been turning out high quality Chinese New Year adverts for a number of years now and this year was no exception. It took me so long to get a copy of it, that it almost missed going into this post.
If you have been in a rush to do your Christmas shopping you can empathise with the struggle of getting ready for lunar new year and the vignettes are really nicely done.
Prada
Prada did a photo shoot which is shared on Sina Weibo microblogging platform. The photographs were designed to emulate the classic mid-century elegance of Wong Ka wai’s film In The Mood For Love. This also ties into the popularity of Wong Ka wai’s recent mainland Chinese TV series Blossom set in Shanghai during the early 1990s that is similarly visually rich.
Hong Kong
Hong Kong usually doesn’t have a rich source of lunar new year video advertising. You will see print and poster ads though as sales promotions are the main driver of marketing activities.
Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola HK
Coca-Cola Hong Kong went with really short takes, a celebration, fireworks, a branded giveaway and dragon-branded cans make it feel as if the creative was literally dialled in. Where’s the magic that’s integral to the brand?
Watsons
Hong Kong’s ubiquitous pharmacy and beauty care retailer has a brief ad promoting their new year sales promotions and the potential to win a Mofusand co-branded ‘Jenga’-style game – which would be ideal when you have young family members over for CNY 2024.
Their associated web page has promotional price offers containing 688 which its considered to be lucky.
Macau
Macau government tourist board
I am not even going to try and explain what you are about to see. It’s special. But once you watch it, it can’t be unseen. I will leave it at that.
Malaysia
Astro
Astro is a Malaysian satellite TV and OTT broadcaster. As is common with other media businesses in Hong Kong and Singapore they rolled out a song to celebrate Chinese new year. This video showcases their varied broadcast talent.
Cetaphil
Cetaphil is a range of skincare products from Galderma. Chinese new year means looking your best, including new clothes. This combined with gifting is why the holiday makes so much sense for Cetaphil.
Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola made use of high profile 3D OOH spaces such as this one in Malaysia with a very traditional dragon motive. It’s nicely executed and fits into the magic of the brand.
Eu San Yang is a traditional Chinese medicine retailer originally from Malaysia, that now has branches in Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore. It’s advert talks about relationships particularly assumptions like ‘I thought’ or ‘I took for granted’. Click the link, as they aren’t allowing embedding. It touches on the tension between tradition and modernity that is generational and is quite meta in the way it references lunar new year adverts as a popular trope in the dialogue between father and son.
Loong Kee
Malaysian dried meat brand Loong Kee put together a music video featuring ethnic Chinese influencers and celebrities.
Mr DIY
Mr DIY is kind of like Homebase or Wilkinsons but with an extended product range. Their film has a Christmas Carol type transformation to it. I’ll leave it at that for you to enjoy.
This comedy clip explains the universal insight above really well.
Pepsi: Finish The Unfinished
Pepsi’s campaign is built around the insight that during new year meals and celebrations there are lots of partly finished cans of drinks left around. The idea of finishing something is an important part of Chinese new year, echoed in the series of Hong Kong family entertainment films released for the new year called ‘Alls Well That Ends Well‘. The original film was released in 1992 featuring Maggie Cheung, Leslie Cheung and Stephen Chow – and spawned seven sequels. The advertisement connects with a gold cup giveaway that is also tied into this the theme of ‘finish the unfinished’.
Petronas
Malaysian government-owned energy company Petronas promotes its corporate brand with a short film that riffs on the harmony of Chinese new year. They were careful to cast talent from the countries three main ethic groups: Malays, Chinese and South Asians.
Tune Talk
Malaysian mobile provider Tune Talk focuses on filial piety and the high level of change that’s signified by the Dragon in the horoscope. At first when I saw the ad I thought that it would be warning about online scams, but the story is much more straight forward. It’s fun and high energy, just what you need for lunar new year.
Watsons CNY 2024 campaign – Enter The Dragons
Watsons is part of AS Watson, the retail arm of CK Hutchison Holdings and the owner of Superdrug. They have their own branded pharmacy stores with a large range of beauty products throughout China, Dubai, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Macau, the Philippines, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Ukraine, Vietnam and Malaysia as you can see.
Yee Lee
Yee Lee is a Malaysian manufacturing and packaging company – imagine an analogue of Unilever and Tetrapak. Their products include food, bottled water, oral care, household cleaners, and industrial products. It also manufactures corrugated cartons and aerosol cans for a wide range of customers. The music video is notable for its use of rap lyrics. Also, notice how the cast is older than Loong Kee’s music video.
Yeo’s
Yeo’s is a local FMCG brand with a range of products including drinks, teas, instant noodles, canned food sauces and dairy products. Every household has some Yeo’s products in the pantry or the fridge. This advert neatly captures the stress and joys of new year celebrations.
Singapore
Mediacorp
Mediacorp is a Singapore government-owned commercial media company that would be analogous to the BBC in terms of the media footprint, and Channel 5 in the way it takes advertising. Chinese new year songs are a thing, with new ones launched each year. Mediacorp’s song is also an advertisement for its talent and the company’s OTT service – kind of equivalent to BBC Sounds and iPlayer.
SingTel
Singapore’s dominant telecoms provider SingTel have a reputation for delivering high quality Chinese New Year ads and this year was no exception. This time the ad focuses not only on reunion, but also remembering those people who we can no longer enjoy CNY 2024 with Mr DIY’s campaign we see greater than expected evolution of a senior citizen.
Taiwan
7-Eleven
Convenience store 7-Eleven created a 30-second spot to promote its range of Chinese new year products.
Here are the examples that I found in previous years:
I work alongside Craft Associates and together have helped a number of clients including Oxford Nanopore Technologies on their successful China GTM approach and SK-II on their content strategy for Hong Kong. I have also worked with the team to help advise Chinese enterprises on going international over the years in the consumer technology space.
Whether you want to advertise to a Chinese audience, or advertise a breakfast cereal to people in Wolverhampton, you can contact us here.
