Hong Kong adland leaders share their wishes for 2023

Last year placed the advertising industry in Hong Kong with a sea of challenges as the world learnt to live with COVID-19. However, industry players in Hong Kong adland have managed to cut through the clutter despite the deteriorating macroeconomic outlook.

According to the latest report of admanGo, local advertising spending recorded a 4% YOY in Q3 2022, with a total spending of 7.5 billion. As the epidemic slowed down, advertisers' ad spend in Q3 has gradually increased.

Hong Kong has progressively relaxed inbound travel quarantine since July, which has injected new vigour into local economic activities. In addition, the new issue of 2022 consumption voucher (phase 2) in August facilitated the promotion of various industries during the peak summer consumption season, said the report. 

Entering the Year of the Rabbit, MARKETING-INTERACTIVE reached out to several leaders in the Hong Kong adland to find out what their hopes and wishes are for the new year and what do they aim to change in the industry.

Jacky Ho, general manger, OMD Hong Kong

Though the economic outlook in the year 2023 is full of uncertainties due to endless COVID, war, inflation, and global recession, all of us are encountering a significant talent crunch. But in all the turmoil, one thing remains constant: our passion, professionalism, and dedication, all of us are moving forward and transforming ourselves at speed to stay ahead and to cope with all the challenges we face. 

In 2023, I hope for the reopening of China’s border, which will catalyse the growth of Hong Kong’s economy and the ad industry. Whereby agencies could retain our best talent to stay in the field or even attract back those who left to explore other areas. 

Furthermore, I hope the measures ease, so our agency life can return to normal. All the long-awaited activities and celebrations can be resumed, such as oversea workshops, company trips, annual parties, etc. These activities help create a workplace where people feel committed, valued, rewarded, and involved. We must reignite the work hard and play harder culture of agency in 2023!

Ivan Leung, general manager, Aloha Group

It is more important than ever before as an industry to put an emphasis on talent nurturing. The recent talent departures from the city only escalated the issue that was already there. Too often we as industry players focus too heavily on short wins by equipping our employees with minimal required standards to get campaigns going. It is understandable as everything in our industry is urgent and ad hoc. However, this is detrimental to our talents’ skillset levels.

I break it down the issue into three parts. Firstly, we need to work with universities to generate recognition on our industry growth potential. Our talent size is small (supply), but our offerings and provisions are widespread (demand). Untill this day students are still focusing their career paths on mature industries like finance. There needs to be education on our end to make universities recognise the massive potential of our industry.

Secondly, we need to open more internships and related opportunities for students to experience our roles and careers. There are too many misconceptions of what we do every day. It is important to start bridging that gap.

Lastly, there needs to be a spotlight on training and mentorship. Training does not have to be a weeklong sit-down classroom approach; but it does need to be ongoing. Our industry is unique in that staying updated and upskilling is essential for our campaigns strategies, so an emphasis needs to be put on challenging one another to do so. This mentality starts from the top and work its way to the ground level. Revenue and sales of course are important, but at the same time we need to work to uplift the industry together. I see no better time than now with our industry going cookie-less.

In 2023, my wish is for all of us company leaders to start looking at ourselves to make a difference and get the ball rolling to solve our talent pool issue.

Katryna Mojica, chief executive, Ogilvy Hong Kong

I think the overall ad industry looks positive in 2023, as more brands are turning to creative agencies for solutions to help them come back stronger. We especially expect to see a high number of pitching in the coming year.

It's true to say that every agency aims for a long-term partnership with a client.  It enables you to understand their business more deeply, make a meaningful impact on brand growth, take some calculated risks together to make significant leaps, and have a close relationship  that allows you to learn from and challenge each other. At Ogilvy, we have clients that we have partnered with for decades and are proud of what we have developed together.

Frequent pitching doesn’t nurture these conditions, and each one is a huge investment on the part of any agency. When you are a creative company, apart from an investment in time and resource, you are emotionally invested as well. You cannot help but get excited about the brand and how you could re-imagine it. So you are forced to prioritise even if you want to explore more opportunities.

At the same time, pitching isn't going away and seems to be getting more frequent. We always admire clients who are as invested in a good pitch process as we are - when a client invests the time in talking to you about what they need.  When clients provide feedback on the work you’ve done, it is also great. 

Andreas Krasser, CEO of DDB Group Hong Kong

There are many things I hope for in 2023, such as our industry at large coming together to address our talent issue. But if I’d be a little less greedy, I’d say I hope for marketers and creative agency folk to finally start speaking the same language.

While in the west, there seems to be a general consensus across the industry on what constitutes effective marketing (at least on a strategic level), Hong Kong still seems to be heavily divided on that matter. We all say creativity is important, but the definitions of creativity seem to be as different as night and day. One camp focuses on tech, short-term performance, and hyper-targeted messaging, while the other one preaches about emotive story-telling, long-term brand building, and mass appeal. Since Binet’s and Field’s ‘the long and the short of it’, we should all know however, that it’s always both: brand building and immediate sales activation.

So, rather than taking one or the other side, I hope we can all agree on what Mark Ritson calls marketing "bothism". And by that I don’t mean to try to make every sales activation also a brand story, and every brand initiative to also include a sales push. No. I mean let’s make room for both, the big, mass-targeted, emotive brand work that doesn’t try to shove products or promotions into people’s faces, as well as the more frequent, often digitally focused sales activations, targeting specific audiences.

Anson Leung, business director, Pontac

Moving onto 2023, I hope there won’t be any more wave of pandemic. Speaking as a human being, of course I would hope the COVID-19 pandemic to be over the soonest. It’s adversely affecting every major aspect of the world, and everyone is paying a big price fighting it.

Looking at the bright side, speaking as a digital marketer, the COVID-19 pandemic may not be a pure evil; it taught us an important lesson and showed us how adaptive we could be. Marketing is all about being flexible, to think quick and act fast, to adapt to changes and come up with solutions.

The pandemic had affected the market in so many bad ways: people are forced to stay home, retail industries facing serious recession, clients cutting budget, campaigns being put on hold, etc. Yet Hong Kong marketers are smart and flexible enough to turn things around: investing in virtual events and metaverse, making good use of data analysis, promoting e-commerce, etc. These proved that we are capable of dealing with anything.

Simone Tam, CEO, Dentsu Hong Kong

At last 2022 is over, if I had to make a quick short wish, it would be please do not give us a repeat. But as long and dark as the 2022 tunnel has been, there seems to be a ray of light shining through from the other end. And that gives me hope, enough hope to snuff out the voice of the pessimist in me and let out the optimist at long last.

So my first wish for the 2023 New Year genie is quite simply growth. Both business and personal growth. I hope 2023 will be the year where we stop putting things on hold and just go for it, driving our businesses to new heights. And on a personal level for us to all do the things we have missed out on over the last year, simple things, being able to gather with a big group of friends and finally be able to use my leave days to go on a holiday, because we can only grow when we are with other people and when we are in new places finding new sources of inspiration. 

Wish number two – I wish that everyone will be bolder. I want everyone to just swing for the fences and come up with crazy big innovative ideas. The crazier the better. And of course for clients to be brave enough to buy them. 

And for my third and final wish – is for everyone to follow their hearts in their careers and have the courage to block out all the voices and just tread their own paths. Here is to a big bold 2023!

Jeffrey Hau, co-founder & CEO, PRIZM Group Hong Kong

As we are recovering and heading to post covid normality, we will definitely be facing economic instability and business headwinds in 2023. It is predicted that finance will tighten up paid media and marketing spending as shoppers will tighten their wallets as well. It becomes crucial how marketers maximise campaign effectiveness and stress on conversion measurement.

I believe making the most out of martech and adtech stack will be the key to achieve this, especially its omnipresent to see under-utilisation and low adaptation of martech tools in Hong Kong when compared to other markets.

Certainly brands have long been collecting data and gaining insights thru analytics, but reporting is usually the endpoint, and what we really need to kick off is the transformation of insights into action. In the coming time, the enablement of personalisation with automation at scale shall be the focal point. That will require the setup of tools that detect signals that tell us when and what the consumer is doing next.

However, rolling out martech tools is easier said than done especially with the talent crunch we are experiencing, so another new year wish is a happy marriage between IT and marketing. From the lessons learnt in the past few years, working with an agile approach in 2023 should no longer be a buzz word, as spontaneous deployment of handy tools and how we react to changing circumstances will define quick wins.

Terry Tsang, director, Narrow Door

Every year I will gather my team for a new year vision.  This year’s theme is memento mori, Latin for “remember death”.  It might sound like the weirdest business direction, but we don’t run a normal business either.  In 2023, we will try to live it as our last year on earth.  So, we will not hesitate but to give our best in every project with no reservation. 

We will treat our friends and families even nicer and quickly restore any broken relationships before we carry the regrets into our graves.  We will constantly remind ourselves that our existence on earth is tiny, fragile and temporal.  Nothing should make us proud except our good intention to treat others well, fair and just.

While every analysts forecasts a grim 2023,  we remain hopeful and continue to bring positive changes whenever it is possible -  be it to help a NGO with financial needs for a fund raising campaign, to create job opportunities for creative talents who have been out for work for some time, to collaborate instead of competing with other agencies in a pitch situation…etc. We hope to see big brands taking an even more leading role in helping businesses who are still struggling from the soon-to-recover economy, incorporating social responsibility, sustainability and fairness into daily operation protocol.   As for our Government, priority should be given to help the small businesses to strive in the post-covid era, by opening the border soon and reconnecting to the world of opportunities out there.

For those who remain in Hong Kong, we will stand together as one and create a better Hong Kong like never before.

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