Tim Ho » Hong Kong

The DI Tweetup 2010

Tim Ho — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 08:51:08 +0000

Why Tweetup?

Some of you might have seen tweets about the Ogilvy’s APAC Digital Influence Summit lately. Ogilvy’s DI Summit is an internal event held by the Asia Pacific Regional team where all the digital experts from around the region will be attending a 3-day event in Hong Kong to exchange digital knowledge, connect and bond with other team

Although the event is not open for public, we would like to offer you a chance to meet our team, head of the global digital influence team John Bell will also be flying all the way from Washington DC! It is a very rare opportunity for you to meet all of us at once, in the offline world!

When?

Tweetup will be held this Sunday, June 27th at 7pm. Not the perfect timing for tweetup but due to the World Cup schedule, this is the only time when venues are available.

Where?

Tweetup will be held in RED Soho as usual.

How to sign up?

Here

See you there!

What I learned from the University Students

Tim Ho — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 08:53:41 +0000

University is always a fun place to be, I went to Hong Kong Polytechnic University to give a presentation on how Social Media is changing the advertising industry last Friday.

As I told the students, I was THE bad boy when I was in University. Never liked to be in class, drank at the bar during “5-minute breaks”, and of course, never paid attention to guest speakers. These students are very different, I was very surprised how fun, active and curious they were about social media and I really enjoyed the discussion with them. Below is what I learned through our discussions.

Is Advertising Dying?

Since they are advertising students, concerns came up during my presentation around the topic on whether the knowledge they are getting now will still be relevant when they graduate. I think traditional advertising agency model is dead, but advertising is not dying, it’s just changing and companies/ agencies are now forced to integrate everything to come up as a strategy to adapt to the new media landscape. Advertising students have to understand how the media is changing and how this “one big idea beats all” theory doesn’t exist anymore.

Learning VS thinking

I think education is only like a tool to get people start thinking, not necessarily about what it will teach. Although education systems from some countries were poorly designed that kill students’ creativity, education wasn’t meant to make people think in a certain way. The key is really to learn how to develop an interest over certain things, then learning will come easy.

What do the Pros think:

When preparing for this presentation, I asked a few experts on digital media and advertising about “How new media is changing the advertising industry” and these are their responses.

Thomas Crampton (APAC Director of Digital Influencer at Ogilvy PR):

“Formerly, companies bought media. Now they are media.”

Matthew Leem (Regional Account Director at Ogilvy & Mather):

“It’s killing advertising (agencies)”

Paul Lam (Account Executive at Ogilvy & Mather):

“Social media is changing advertising because it is directly reinforcing the emotional connection between the consumer and the product.

In the past, traditional advertising would simply sell a product to a consumer. But now the consumer has a direct input in what they experience with the “idea” of the product, which can be shared to anyone openly. It has become more than just some tangible product… Social media has created a direct relationship, where the consumer can express what they feel. This movement has made brands more honest and grounded.

No more glitz and glamour, but simple truths”

Nic Tinworth (Digital Director at Fluid Design + Marketing):

“A common challenge for both advertisers and marketers alike has always been identifying and connecting with the right target audience. Recent trends in Social Media use have caused an unparalleled business paradigm shift, and recent studies have pointed to as much as 80% of ‘decision makers’ finding their own vendors, rather than the other way round. Social Media use is now so mainstream, that if as an agency you aren’t using and engaging with it yourself, you’re not just missing opportunities for your clients, you are also wasting opportunities for new business. To put it into layman’s terms, agencies now have to ‘walk the walk’ and not just ‘talk the talk’.”

Poly U Students:

Thanks for the fun times, I really enjoyed it and it made me miss uni so much! Please free feel to contact me if you need help on your projects, or maybe a beer or six between and after classes.

You can download the pictures with this link.

Goodluck to you all!

Photos: Tweetup with Brian Giesen and Tom Smith

Tim Ho — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 15:51:30 +0000

Me and the the 3 special guests at Tweetup

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Thanks everyone for attending the Tweetup from last Tuesday (March 2nd), also hope our 3 guests Brian Giesen, Tom Smith and Jenny Armshaw-Heak had fun. More than 20 people joined the tweetup and I’m glad most of us had a chance to meet each others. Would also like to thank the venue sponsor RED SoHo and @GeoffTwitchen for arranging the “Tweetup Corner” for us!

Interview: Kevin She – Founder and CEO of SC Storage

Tim Ho — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 13:21:45 +0000

I was lucky enough to have the chance to interview the CEO and founder of the SC Storage (時昌迷你倉), Kevin She. SC storage was founded in 2001, the first storage company in Hong Kong, it is also one of a few Hong Kong successful cases using social media.

Kevin is passionate about social media himself, he doesn’t use social media as a channel to generate sales, instead, he chose to engage with local people who are active on Social Media, using Twitter and Facebook Page as main channels to develop real friendship with them.

As I mentioned in my presentation Social Media Basics for Executives, companies should never buy coverage on social media, they should actually engage with targets to build long-term relationships. No matter how much Kevin’s competitors invest in advertising, I would still go for SC storage when I need storage spaces because I’m connected with him through social media, and that’s the true power of social media for SMBs.

Link to the video we talked about during interview, the TV ad that went viral on Youtube: Cantonese Only

Photos: The Last Tweetup 2009 – Hong Kong

Tim Ho — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 09:36:31 +0000

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As promised, here are the pictures taken from The Last Tweetup of 2009 in Hong Kong by @bethebutterfly, @spikehk and myself.

Below are the tweeps who attended:

@timho	@Tortue	@dda
@mercuryplanet	@unitedcolorz	@littlefatchick
@gregorylent	@SpikeHK	@bethebutterfly
@kevinshe	@westling	@nictinworth
@AndreMartin	@ThinkMaloney

More people from outside twitter joined as well, please remind me if I didn’t get your Twitter handle.
Thank you all for joining, we had a great night and let’s meet again in 2010 for the “First Tweetup in 2010″?

Also if anyone has more pictures from that night that you would like to share on here, please let me know.

The Last Tweetup – 2009

Tim Ho — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 14:47:22 +0000

W:

Everyone!

W:

The last tweetup in 2009. Let’s all drink, meet the people behind the avatars, and celebrate! @dda and I have also been talking about having “dirty noodles” (Hong Kong local noodles) in Wanchai before the tweetup, feel free to contact me for more info.

W:

9:00pm. Monday 7th December 2009

W:

Canny Man in Wanchai. (Venue Confirmed)

W:

2009 has been a great year
2010 will be better
I will be traveling after Monday
@Tortue will be visiting Hong Kong for the first time after he abandoned us for Taiwan
@AndreMartin will leave Hong Kong for a year
Our Hong Kong Twitmaster @JayOatway will leave Hong Kong for Christmas Celebrations soon
Why Not?

RSVP Now!

HK: Local Social Media Success – Ease House Cafe

Tim Ho — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 05:01:26 +0000

Most of the social media projects I deal with at Ogilvy are for global brands, it’s interesting to learn from local successful cases like this one. It’s a cafe in Mong Kok with a wide range of comic book collections called Ease House Cafe, where they target mainly to young comic lovers.
As a small cafe located on the 25th floor of a building, 21 year-old owner realized it would be hard to spread the message out if he used traditional marketing tactics, so he went digital.

They use Facebook as a channel to grow fan base and increase loyalty by keeping their fans updated on news and special deals, also partnered with a local cafe directory site up4cafe to offer readers coupons.
Recently, they are having this “Blog for free dinner” campaign, where they encourage bloggers to write about their Cafe, they will search on Google every month with keyword “Ease House Cafe” and pick a blog that’s index high enough on the search, sounds like a small scale blogger engagement, a very smart idea to get themselves quality organic search results, but personally I would also go for keywords like “comic books”, “hong kong” too. (in Eng & Chinese).

With limited resources, many local small & medium business owners in Hong Kong are afraid to invest time and money on this new media, but with all the recent success here in Hong Kong, I think business owners should really reconsider and make a move soon!

Event: Geeks Need Booze

Tim Ho — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 12:16:26 +0000

Time flies! To be in my home town working in a fun environment with great people (Thomas Crampton, Jean Francoise Amadei and more) for 4 months really made me feel like it was just a few weeks. It’s time for me to head back to Toronto.

I decided to create a casual gathering (a Tweetup) for all the social media lovers here in Hong Kong to relax, to have fun and hopefully connect interesting people who haven’t met each others in person before (Twittersphere is full of talented people).

Date: 15th August 2009
Time: 9pm till done
Location: ~~Soho or Lan Kwai Fong (To be confirmed. Suggestions are welcome)~~ Tantra Bar, Basement Floor, 25 Stauntons Street, Central, Hong Kong.
Requirement: As the name of the event suggests, drop your iphone/ blackberry for Booze!

~~Please register with the form below.~~ Sorry, registration deadline has passed.

People who have registered:

Hong Kong: More female than male use Internet in 2009?

Tim Ho — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 15:46:11 +0000

It’s not a surprise that Internet usage grows in Hong Kong over time, what’s interesting is that according to a study by HK Internet Project, the number of male Internet users dropped by 2% from 2007-2008.

In 2008, Hong Kong has slightly more female than male with sex ratio of 0.96male/female. And in 2009, estimated sex ratio will be 0.94male/female.

As the growth of social media, Internet is no longer for geeks, and many female internet users are very active on social networks, will the number of male internet users continue to drop in 2009 while more and more female start to engage online?

David Ogilvy Day in Hong Kong

Tim Ho — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:11:31 +0000

After the Dobblr lunch from Island Shangri-La Hotel, I had to quickly rush back home, get casual, and went back to Ogilvy office where they had buses there picking everyone up and took everyone to the venue which was at Gold Coast Hotel Hong Kong. It was a fun evening that gathered almost everyone from the office to relax and have fun while celebrating for David Ogilvy’s birthday on 23th June.

Before the release of the official pictures, I have some unofficial ones taken by Jean-Francois Amadei, Ada Leung, and myself. Also, Ada Leung has more pictures from this event which she uploaded to her Facebook Album.

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