MEGA, MAGA, DADA OR NADA?

Sometimes you take a left when you should have taken a right, but those sliding door moments have their own plans and, if lucky, you go down a rabbit hole that opens up an escape hatch and you move away from everything you thought you knew- and need to get the hell out of what’s become serial predictability. It’s like how a nine year old from what was then known as Ceylon ended up in the cheongsam styled and rickshaw drawn city known as Hong Kong with his parents who had left everything they owned behind and were just hoping for the best. 

How they could afford to get me- a darkie- into Quarry Bay Primary School and then the very international KGV secondary school is something I still think about. I am always thinking about how pivotal it was for my future that they managed to do what they did. 

That stranger in a strange land had to learn fast about surviving those typhooned winds of change and letting them take the Burgher Jungle Boy to where they somehow wanted me to go. 

 Instead of going over well-covered personal history including ping pong diplomacy and who got what during the handover in 1997 and the leftovers afterwards, today’s Hong Kong is seemingly lost, confused, many showing an appalling lack of any initiative, and with the government preoccupied with the word “mega”.

This “mega” fixation is at odds with everything learned during my years in advertising about how Small Is Beautiful and not to be bamboozled into thinking that all that glitters is gold. 

Glitter often turns out to be fool’s gold and with the fur ball known as “social media” playing a major part in wreaking havoc on the sensibilities of the world including its ability to think and always be interested enough to explore the real world. 

When in the music industry, some of us felt that this online beast of burden had not been used with much strategic smarts, and which is why millions have been sold on acquiring nervous blue ticks, and working to KPIs based on algorithms and speaking and mainly arguing in Emoji. 

Social media, meanwhile, has given rise to the species known as Influencers and KOLs and a ravenous appetite for nouveau riche gaucheness. 

Couple this with accepting stupidity and the tartar sauce of the grifters’ deal amidst what appears to be the prolonged death throes of the Covid virus, something that many refuse to accept. 

Perhaps this is because they have been bitten and intoxicated by greed and rabid superficiality? 

One could be wrong, but it seems that some in the current Hong Kong government didn’t learn much about any of this, and to be frank, I am unsure what they might have learned and who from and from where.

My ex wife, Trina, rejoined the workforce after our daughter turned seven, and took up a job offered when visionary businessman Adrian Zecha offered her the opportunity to market a boutique luxury resort hotel in Phuket called Amanpuri. 

This small, almost luxury playpen from the genius mind of the visionary AZ quickly grew to be Amanresorts, the world’s most expensive and spectacularly beautiful resort group in the world. 

With a zero marketing budget, Trina took a Small Is Beautiful strategy and managed to create the “Aman Junkie”- those who fell in love with the Aman experience of tranquility- and created a product through word of mouth advertising with regular free coverage in upmarket magazines like Vogue and Conde Nast Traveller. 

Perhaps Rosanna Law, below, Hong Kong’s Secretary for culture, sports and tourism, should wrap one of her many scarves and have a little tete-a-tete with Trina about cost-effective and strategic upmarket marketing?  

What I am seeing today from the Hong Kong government is a scattergun approach to marketing with amateurish communications about “surges” in tourism that bring very little of value to the city. 

As for the “brand personality” of Hong Kong, it’s not unlike something the cat dragged in. This is what happens when those in the kitchen throw everything against the wall and hope that something sticks. 

I might be wrong, but I don’t think anything has stuck. It’s just more and more con-gee and desperate attempts at style trumping any real substance. 

Can Hong Kong survive with very different monthly exhibitions and horse racing twice a week? Is this considered strategic and attractive sustainability? 

Where’s the beef? Why would tourists care when there are far more choices available in Vietnam, Sri Lanka, the Maldives…? 

Should Hong Kong perhaps FOCUS on hosting a few carefully thought through events instead of taking in everything and everyone who comes through the door? 

Do those in charge of tourism in Hong Kong sometimes get themselves in a tizz and present nostalgia events for the local market and which have nothing to do with tourism, but think it does? Talking to one’s self is hardly smart nor relevant marketing. 

Surely, describing almost everything going on in Hong Kong as “Mega” is setting things up for a fall? Or is “Mega” starting to sound as dopey as the bigly regular doses of hot air emanating from the big orange squeeze box in the White House? 

 For Hong Kong, one of the biggest problems is when the community ignores most things being said because they believe it to be corporate waffle- and time wasting BS from amateurs when there’s no time to lose. 

One day, they might actually dismiss something that, with a little work, could have grown to become something special. But for any of this to happen, there’s a need for a team of experienced international marketing and communications specialists. 

The last time I looked, there was nothing of the sort around. Just more “artificial intelligence” and the usual serving of stale dim sum.  

Personally speaking, I embrace challenges- and making Hong Kong marketable, interesting and attractive to tourists is a personal challenge. Why? Because over the past few years, it often looks to be chow fan- a stir fried dumping ground for anything and everything. 

The city’s one time entrepreneurs seem to have been replaced by serial whiners and copycat thinking. And without a positive attitude, nothing can change, and no change means no new bananas. 

Right now, Hong Kong barely has a pulse despite a variety of “mega” events held at the much discussed and ballyhooed Kai Tak Stadium that apparently has to close by 10.30pm.

 If true, so much for anything like being “the city that never sleeps”. Hong Kong has become a snooze fest.

 “Mega” aside, what’s the media strategy and where are the venues, an audience and the ‘live’ music other than infrequent bits and pieces that are hardly anything even close to being fairly interesting. 

Which international artists would actually WANT to perform in Hong Kong and even if they did, why would tourists fly to THIS city to see them? 

This is why I mention the need for Hong Kong to have a definite product and brand personality.  

Hong Kong is not Singapore. Not even close. Who would have thought this would ever be said? But it’s true and what is needed if sticking to the Mega Mantra is everything ELSE to make “mega” truly mega with 3-5 days of NON STOP excitement. Can do, Hong Kong? If no can do, this makes “mega” sound just about as meaningless as being labelled an “influencer”.  

By the way, who ARE Hong Kong’s “influencers”, and who are they influencing OUTSIDE of Hong Kong and with what? 

A few weeks ago, I hosted a get together for some friends at the Poolside Restaurant of the Grand Hyatt in Hong Kong as an informal and polite introduction to my Garden of Hope project. It worked for what it was. 

 Now comes the job of working on creating a more inspiring and creative and engaging and even Lynchian world full of Hope, Happiness, Humour and Positivity without being some cornball comet of “wellness”. 

 This Garden is something I see as including eye rolls as opposed to egg rolls, midgets, The Man In The Blue Suit speaking backwards in a red room, and a dark short form comedy set against the backdrop of Hong Kong and amidst social media, the love for the smell of napalm money 24/7, and the often surreal world of horse racing and those who inhabit it.

Sometimes it’s good to shine a mirror on the problems and find solutions to these through WTF humour instead of being part of Whiners Anonymous. 

When I pull this off by using the city as the backdrop, somewhere that’s been my home for so many decades and I now see as a has-been where standards of everything have been allowed to drop to scary new lows, the weirdness of this garden might just have a positive rub-off effect on Hong Kong. 

 And this is where I came in...

Now, fire walk with me. 

 Copyright ©️ Hans Ebert May 2026