TRAPPED IN THE AGE AND CAGE OF STUPID.
It’s not about pining for the “good old days”, but, instead, wondering who there is in Hong Kong with the chutzpah and creative and strategic talent to, paraphrase the Beatles, take a good song or even an okay idea for a piece of communication, and make it better, better, better?
From the terrain I survey and by now something that I know pretty darn well, I see arid land- perhaps a few smart people, but having very little in the way of creating communication skills. Hong Kong in 2026 needs this to break with the tradition of going to the same old well, and looking old and withered.
Instead, this amazing little city that has grown up the hard way and has worked damn hard to be what it’s become should be talked about positively for all the right reasons and not through advertising clichés we have seen year after year after year and decade after decade because the bottom appears to have fallen off and the heartbeat disappeared.
Who I do believe will be able to re-energise Hong Kong in different ways and have it seen with sparkling new eyes and minus the almost serial negativity: Pharrell Williams, Gorillaz, especially Noodle, and, most definitely, having Jessie Buckley in that mix because she’s so full of joy and I love her love of life to bits.
As a former ad guy with DDB who worked with mentors in the agency like the brilliant leadership of Keith Reinhard, and, on the client side, Daniel Ng who looked way beyond the obvious when taking the McDonald’s franchise he had the great foresight to own, and intuitively knew what would work in Hong Kong.
One example: The ballsy confidence to persuade McDonald’s headquarters in Chicago to take their Quarter Pounder off the menus in Hong Kong. This move was almost sacrosanct. Daniel wanted to use the marketing dollars saved to promote the far more popular Filet O’Fish. This had to do with simple economics. But persuading McDonald’s headquarters to do so was something else.
So, Daniel came up with the story about
the Quarter Pounder being too expensive to produce, which was true, and also wasn’t selling because its chopped onions gave Chinese people “stinky breath and flatulence”, and was why Burger King failed in the city because their flagship product- The Whopper- came with raw onions. The fish burger was far more “economical” in many business and commercial ways.
Was this McBollocks from Daniel? I never asked, but the Quarter Pounder left the building.
Daniel was one of the city’s original game changers at a time when the game needed changing. He pushed and cajoled and challenged us to understand what the local consumer would be attracted to and wanted as opposed to his underlings trying to second guess what would keep HIM happy.
The marketing meetings with Daniel were chaotic, erratic, therapeutic, sometimes neurotic and always loopy breakthrough fun resulting in some huge wins.
I miss him dearly and owe him so much.
This week, someone asked if I had seen an anti drugs PSA- Public Service Announcement-produced for Hong Kong by the Narcotics Division of the Security Bureau featuring the ubiquitous singer actor-dancer- horse owner Aaron Kwok.
The celebrity also happens to be the Hong Kong Jockey Club’s Ambassador for the Year of the Horse though his ambassadorial activities must have escaped me and the horse has bolted.
As for this latest pastiche of cornball oddities meant to be seen as a deterrent against young people taking drugs and maybe entering the dark web, one can’t help but wonder if those involved in the making of something with the theme, “Stand firm, knock drugs out” and some “Shindig” shimmying by Aaron Kwok and pastelly dressed dancers, were high on the ganga weed?
When looking at the algorithms behind this PSA-731 views in two months- it’s barely caused a ripple or a pimple. And why would it? It’s a mosh pit of nothingness and another example of clients and their committee members having apparently worked to produce something that is in line with their thinking.
If Daniel Ng was still around, he would have said something like, Let’s show them what needs to be done.
Maybe too many not knowing anything, especially about what some of us working in an international advertising agency at a young age learned about the importance of consumer and business markets and their objectives, signing off on strategies and were damned proud of what we produced because we were passionate “mad men”and our work spoke for the products we advertised. They also might have said something about ourselves without us even knowing it.
Today? Maybe it’s social media tartare and soggy cornflakes, but bad habits have been picked up along the way together with bits and pieces of everything and nothing.
All this is happening while living amongst the debris of clutter and clickbait and memes and the TikTok world and thinking that “being creative” is something that anyone can do because everyone can post whatever the hell they want on “social media” and receive some emojis as a form of dopamine approval.
When the kindergarten of hires in companies and unnecessarily complicated organisational structures with most built on the fragile back of The Peter Principle, the end result is work with no strategy and so much simply thrown out for public consumption and often completely missing the target and not even being seen.
This is not to say that we need to create a Picasso, but there is the need for a creative counter culture capable of giving what is still an amazing city like Hong Kong with numerous possibilities to make a powerful statement on the global stage built around a RELEVANT product- no one wants clichés- and is actually seen in a world often too busy scrolling.
What’s been desperately needed in Hong Kong and elsewhere for almost two decades are communications that make people think and then inspire others who suddenly see what else can be done.
Maybe we’re thinking so hard that we’re not thinking at all about how Think Big might be over and more potent could be when we think small and with a focus and a purpose?
Maybe we’re even seeing the end of “advertising” as we knew it because the technology has become The Idea- and the fallout out from this is going to be something interesting to watch or where some of us become part of positive change.
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