Governmental promotion campaigns are usually conventional, formal and boring. We had seen the Hong Kong SAR Government using prime time television for preaching – from the Basic Law to giving tips on how to keep ourselves clean.
The television as a channel for promotion is expensive, traditional and getting outdated. They are losing appeal to the younger generation who has now diverted to online channels, so there are calls for an innovative approach to get them back fold.
The Media Development Authority (MDA) in Singapore recently launched a video with the most senior officers rapping to urge for creativeness of the community. This video had sparked up much controversy and generated much noise as many Singaporeans rushed to publish comments on their own blogs, which in turn generated even more noise.
The MDA video was casual and funky yet at the same time portrayed a government body image. The comments from the public were diverse. Some Singaporeans thought that the rap video made their government looked silly and unprofessional, others (and a majority of them) thought this 'out-of-the-box’ approach, did reach out to the younger generation at least.
In the UK, Downing Street is steering away from its conservative image too. In May 2007, the then Prime Minister – Tony Blair, set up a ’10 Downing Street’ channel on YouTube and it has, ever since, became one of the official channels to broadcast messages to the younger audiences. Blair’s congratulatory message to the new French President was one of the most-viewed clips.
Following the success, the Queen has also established her own channel on YouTube – the Royal Channel. (www.youtube.com/the royalchannel)
The HK Tourism Board is also catching up on promotion technology. They are also on YouTube (http://youtube.com/hongkong) and have begun utilising Facebook – the most popular social network platform, to promote Hong Kong to a world-wide audience with a relatively low budget. In addition, they are using MSN emoticons to facilitate downloading of Chinese New Year e-cards.
There is also a strategic partnership with YouTube and Baidu (「 百 度 」– the most popular search engine in China), and possibly also Google and Flickr – the online photo album website.
When will we see the Hong Kong government catching up with the fad? Soon, as the grape vine said they are scouting for unconventional promotional ideas.
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