Date & Time : Jun 30, 2010 ; 14:00-18:00

Venue: 4/F, Hong Kong Productivity Council, 78 Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon Tong.

No. of participants: over 200

Overview of the conference

The eCMO Conference 2010 organized by Hong Kong Association of Interactive Marketing, was successfully held on 30 June 2010. It was the third time to hold eCMO conference since 2008. The conference attracted quality-marketing professionals and senior management from a wide range of industries to attend.

Mr. Francis Fong, Chairman of Hong Kong Association of Interactive Marketing in his welcome speech said HKAIM would hold more different track and field events in coming, like Lady 3.0 in August. He also introduced Dr. William Lo Wing Yan for opening speech.

Dr. William Lo Wing Yan in his opening speech said the digital age went fast. He said practice had to change, principles remained unchange, for instance, branding and rebranding were marketing strategies in both corporate image management and product identities. The digital world had changed the communications from one-way, top-down, persusaive models to interactive, community-based and user-driven one. Today marketers should realize what was happening in digital world and adapted to changing circumstances. 

Dr. Lo said marketers should utilize new technology for promotions, and marketing strategies should align with corporate goals. He shared community-based social marketing was challenging due to its influence on customer loyalty with word-of-month in community. On the other hand, the hugy business potential advanced in space exploration. Thus, marketers should find new ways to to attract and retain customers through the internet world.   

Ms. Susanna Lam, Research Director, Synovate said whatever in any marketing campaign; marketers should understand their target audience. She said there were four generations of Hong Kong people which were Baby Bommers, Gen X, Post 80s and Post 90s, who spent time on watching TV and Internet, rather than other media.

Ms. Lam said Internet provided up-to-dated and useful information; it became an essential for modern living. Post 80s and 90s spent more time on Internet than TV, and they "could not live without mobile phone" too. She said most of Hong Kong people used Internet for searching information and communications. She also pointed out that social network was the "natural habitat" of the Post 80s and 90s, so marketers should have their messaging appear within 80s' and 90s' virtual networks. 

Presentation Slides by Ms. Susanna Lam

Mr. Kenneth Wan, Business Director, GroupM Interaction said 5 out of 10 top websites in Hong Kong were social media websites. He indicated advertising budgets unavoidably shifted to those social media websites. Marketers should utilize cross-media approaches. Mr. Wan pointed out that the modern marketers, instead of replying on old media formats, now found themselves operating in a "test and learn" environment when planning and executing multi-faceted marketing campaigns.

Mr. Wan used HSBC eSTATEMENT campaign as an example, in which demonstrated intra-brand collaboration and word-of-mouth program through social media websites could induce rebranding. Mr. Wan highlighted that the essential formula for organizational success was optimal product mix which was determined by how the marketers listened and reacted to the customers, no matter if digital elements were changing all the times. 

Presentation Slides by Mr. Kenneth Wan

Mr. Andy Ann, Director, Hotmob Limited said all marketers who had little with little  technology knowledge were hungry for new online and mobile media solutions because of the ever changing of user behaviors. He said marketers should rely on technologies, ideas and solutions to move beyond advertising to interact with their customers (fans). Engagement-based media was more important than impression-based media .

Mr. Ann  pointed out that choosing  online media or traditional media to promote business was a conundrum faced by many companies. Mr. Ann advocated a composite approach. He cited that Darizi kept using effective traditional media to promote its brand and also employed social media which could help going where traditional media was unreachable. The community interactions on multiple platforms helped Darizi approaching more potential. He also mentioned that mobile marketing was direct, cost-effective and measureable way to reach consumers and produced one-on-one-experience anytime anywhere. Mr. Ann  indicated that millions of customers were now accessing social networking sites, bolstered by iPhone users who had downloaded social networking applications. It was believed that mobile would soon become the most popular way of accessing social networking sites and boom times were ahead for mobile app market too.  

Presentation Slides by Mr. Andy Ann

Ms. Angie Chung, Managing Director, Httpool Asia introduced Httpool was one of the fastest growing global online advertising solution providers, with a focus on emerging markets. She said the efficiency of reaching target by display advertising 2.0 did not only depend on marketing objective(s); but also behavioral segments, real-time optimization, accountability/ measurability of the data etc..  

Ms. Chung shared us some case studies that traditional linear campaign planning normally took two weeks to receive feedback but real time optimization though online mechanism could receive real time feedback from real targets. She said search engine marketing limited potential reach of target audience but display advertising was relatively effective because it increased brand term and search volume, and also improved site engagement. She said pay per visit model was not costly because of free exposure, and the result was measurable.

Presentation Slides by Ms. Angie Chung

Mr. Ralph Szeto, Business Development Director, CMRS Digital Solutions Limited mentioned social media was not new to market. He said Facebook integrated blogging, instant messaging, email and web album but all the content itself were user-generated. He explained traditional media was medium to simply connect brand and customers but social marketing facilitated user engagement and two-way communication.

Mr. Szeto pointed out the difference in tradition advertising and advertising in digital age. He explained social media could be used for product branding and building the relationship between brand and audience. In case of UNIQLO grid, the total number of customers kept on increasing within three years and it was benefited from customer engagement. It was definitely essential for marketers to align their social media tactics with customers' perception and to think outside the box by rolling out communications with users across multiple media. No doubt, social media was becoming an important part of the marketing mix. To drive sales goals effectively, sales channels were significant too.

Presentation Slides by Mr. Ralph Szeto

Mr. Bill Luan, Technical Program Manager & China Country Lead Developer Relations, Google said mobile users would be more then desktop users in coming 5 years and mobile users were growing fast. He said there was a huge market for mobile users and iPhone and Android platform gaining USA Mobile Internet usage while RIM, Windows Mobile and Palm were losing market shares.

Mr. Luan said App Store had changed the market. Mobile application could provide location-based services, transparent pricing, deep discounts and immediate gratification nowadays. He then introduced Android platform and told that the market share was rapidly growing. He explained the advantage of Android platform and Android Market, and told that AdSense for Mobile could auto display highest paying ADs, publisher could control AD appearance and position. Lastly, he explained the importance of HTML5 on mobile devices and everyone should keep the big trend in mind.

Mr. Alex Chung, Director, Samsung Electronics HK Co. Ltd. shared how Samsung could attract more customers to love their brand in eMarketing. He said the Samsung brand was now ranked 19th worldwide, but high brand value did not mean customers love their brand; therefore how to make customers loving their brand was a challenge.  He said Internet was a good platform to build a well-loved brand and it could build customers’ loyalty and confidence.

Mr. Chung explained what was well known and well loved and it was a different approach. He said brand echo was important and it could touch customers' emotion for their need, as delivering consistent brand message was a must. He said promoting online was interaction, impressive, interesting and sharing. He shared Samsung’s HyperReal campaign and told that online AD could draw traffic to the site. He also said through rich media could deliver message to customers in social media.

Mr. Kevin Huang, CEO, Pixel Media said consumers "lived" in an analog and a digital world, marketers should use every single touch point to deliver message. He explained the meaning of branding and how was branding done online. He used various case studies and told that online branding could be done by various methods.

Mr. Huang said CTR was a wrong channel to measure branding online because customers did not click does not mean they did not see the AD. He shared how to measure online video, rich media and branding online, but also measuring between control and exposed group. Finally, he demonstrated two case studies to take the brand further by line cross over promotions and said make the brand live memorable and measured it correctly.

Presentation Slides by Mr. Kevin Huang

Dr. DOU Wenyu, Programme Leader, BBA in Marketing Information Management, College of Business, City University of Hong Kong shared trends for new ideas for mainland markets. He said Mr. LIU Chuanzhi - Chairman of Lenovo was a legend in China IT industry but Mr. LIU mistakenly scrapped its Internet operations in 2000. He said marketing today was Internet marketing because China had 384 million Internet users and 46% of users were using mobile devices to access Internet.

Dr. DOU said China Internet users were increasing and most of them were youth to middle age but there were considerable regional differences.  He said online music; news and search engine were in the categories with the highest number of users and 108 million online shoppers in China with 250 billion Yuan transactions in China. He said Chinese consumers were using multiple sources of online information to learn about products; therefore marketers should focus on social networking sites.

Presentation Slides by Dr. DOU

Mr. Steve Lau, Vice-Chairman, Hong Kong Association of Interactive Marketing shared about information service website branding. He shared the marketing skill was different between service marketing and product marketing in information service branding. He said in information service website, correct and excusive information was the most important and it should provide value added functions.

Mr. Lau said word of mouth and community was hot but ADs was relatively ineffective. He said information quality, website efficiency, user ability and privacy was the key for information websites. He shared 61% of Internet users favorite information technology website while 97% of them were  browsing free website and it normally took aroud 3-year time to engage relationship with users. He said Hong Kong Internet users spend lots of time on Internet; they concern websites? domain name, web design and logo. Finally, he said marketers should use social website to narrow the gap between Internet users because users prefered interactivity.

Group photo of all guests, speakers and sponsors

Conference drew a full house

 Coffee Break and Demo Session

 FULL REPORT in Pdf