Hungry Ghost ad “too scary”

An OOH ad for newly aired horror film Hungry Ghost Ritual (盂蘭神功) was reportedly deemed “too scary” for MTR passengers.The ad launched at the end of June, features the lead actress Annie Liu with a rotting right eye in mega-size.Media coverage reported MTR officials had been requested to remove the posters as the frightening images might upset passengers.But when reached by Marketing, Iris Ng, associate marketing director of JCDecaux Transport, denied the alleged complaint.“This movie’s creative had undergone a normal censorship procedure which is applied to all advertisers,” she said.“Our guideline and suggestions are under the considerations of the suitability and acceptability of the ads presentation to be displayed in the MTR system; it takes into account the interest to the public in all age groups.”The posters are no longer on MTR billboards since last Sunday, two days after the movie was screened.June Chan, marketing and distribution manager at Sundream, the production company for Hungry Ghost Ritual, told Marketing it had already tuned down the ad visuals under MTR’s “rigorous creative censorship”.The original visual, which has been placed on social media and in print instead, includes a headless paper doll in between the two main actors in the film Liu and Nick Cheung. The final edition fixed in MTR billboards is a customised version.“MTR sometimes gives suggestions on ads’ creative. We need to persuade them to accept our creative ideas,” Chan said.“But at the end of the day this is a horror movie; the ad visual is designed initially to make a big impact on the audience, even when it has to be a bit scary.”When creativity is limited, product houses are turning to social media to seek higher acceptance on creativity and flexibility.“We see a trend that movie advertising is shifting more on social media, especially when we are targeting a younger audience group,” Chan said.However, the shift is sluggish because senior management in the film industry is yet to embrace new media as an alternate channel, she said.“This time we only spent less than 10% of the marketing budget on social media, while the biggest focus remains on television and OOH,” Chan said“But social media will definitely become more popular for movie marketing as it’s relatively cost-friendly, especially when our messages and stories are more well-presented in videos then still images.”