The moment the World Health Organization lifted Hong Kong’s travel advisory due to SARS, the island’s Tourism Board set about notifying Canada’s Chinese population.
As the epicenter of the SARS outbreak this summer, Hong Kong faced devastating losses in the tourism business. An estimated 300,000 Chinese-Canadians visit Hong Kong every year. That’s almost 30% of the total Chinese-Canadian population. Many visitors return frequently to visit family, conduct business, or just see the sights. The gravity of the situation and the loyalty of this group lead Hong Kong to make Asian North Americans the target of a Chinese-language campaign for the first time ever.
The Hong Kong Tourism Board chose Dynasty Advertising in Markham, Ont. to produce targeted advertising immediately after the SARS outbreak. The print, radio and television campaign appeared in Toronto, Vancouver, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles for two weeks in late June and early July.
‘There was only a small window of time to turn things up…after the emotional upheaval SARS had created in Canada and Asia,’ says Dynasty Advertising’s director Albert Yue. He compares the problem in Hong Kong to the problem Toronto faced earlier this year, ‘multiplied by 10.’
The agency designed a contest tying into the Hong Kong Tourism Board’s international ‘Hong Kong Welcomes You’ campaign created by FCB Worldwide, which handles the account in Asia and Europe. Similar to Toronto’s ‘You belong here!’ Hong Kong Welcomes You was designed to show the island as a safe, exciting tourist destination. The campaign ran for two months starting July 13.
Upbeat television spots, combining Hong Kong imagery with dance music, ran nationally on Fairchild Television and on Omni TV during the first two weeks in July. Full-page colour ads appeared across Canada in Chinese-language dailies Ming Pao, Sing Tao and the World Journal, also announcing a contest that would send 30 winners on a trip to Hong Kong to participate in Hong Kong Welcomes You week. The ads directed participants to a Web site where they could vote for their 10 favourite things to do in Hong Kong (out of 30 options.)
The same print ads appeared in the American versions of the three dailies. All of the magazines distribute in New York. Sing Tao and the World Journal also cover Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle and Hawaii.
‘The results were overwhelming,’ says Yue. Total entries from Chinese-Canadians were 19,332 while the U.S. logged 9,633 hopefuls. Hong Kong’s tourism board reported a return to a ‘very healthy state’ of traffic.
A related promotion gave visitors to the Canadian Travel Trade Roadshow a chance to enter to win a trip after receiving stamps from 10 different booths in their Passport to Hong Kong.
The effort marked the first time the Hong Kong tourism board has directly targeted Canada’s jet-setting Asian community. ‘In the past, they have not promoted themselves in a big way because they know that they will go back anyway,’ Yue says. ‘The dollars are usually spent in the mainstream to entice the English market to visit Hong Kong’. Like the Toronto campaign, the ads avoided explicit mention of SARS or the end to the World Health Organization’s travel advisory. According to Yue, news outlets were doing this job for them at the time.
A mainstream campaign promoting Hong Kong as a tourist destination will roll out soon.
