“Observe and think more.”
- Stephen Chung
Stephen is the Founder and Director of Secret Tour Hong Kong, an advertising company and Vane Communications, e-PR agency in Asia, also the Advisor of World Vision Hong Kong and StashAway.
Stephen graduated from Journalism at Chinese University of Hong Kong, then worked at the copywriter in companies including Metta Communications, McCann Worldgroup and Leo Burnett. After accumulated enough experiences, Stephen founded Secret Tour Hong Kong in 2012. It helps clients to tell brand stories that worth spreading by creating first-hand experience through different touch points, include LG Electronics, Ocean Park, Sony, Moov, HK Express, Expedia, 3HK, Bupa, Sincere, Mabelle, New Town Plaza etc., now focusing in helping bank and insurance companies.
First, safe approach is never safe. Competing for information retention, the information overflow causing us unable to use one size to fit all. Stephen would never repeat previous ideas. To survive in the industry, we need to promote ourselves to be the first--not to look for previous cases, but to create. Second, marketing can be anything. Not limited to campaigns in the malls, we do marketing by just a cup of coffee. In Preface cafe, by making coffee fitting the weather and your mood of the day using big data, that big data service could be promoted. Third, cobranding is the trend. Cobranding is the best way of showing the synergy of 2 sides. For example, N21 and Maruko chan collaboration brings N21 customers and Maruko chan lovers together. All these solutions Stephen have made shown us the above marketing skills.
“Thank you so much, Stephen, for sharing with us as a guest lecture today! I enjoyed it a lot, especially the campaign ideas that you have initiated for your clients, like digging out free air tickets from the 6-meter Ice Wall and the “I am not fine” Exhibition for Pfizer. As a student with a Marketing major, I always push myself to think creatively and come up with new ideas. But as you mentioned that “Being creative is not a talent, but it is more a personality.” To build this personality, we need more input than ever to produce more quality output which Stephen suggested doing gaining more input by observing and thinking more. For me, my input mostly comes from interacting with people thus exchanging our stories and insights. However, a creative idea might not be executed at the end of the day given that it might not be feasible. Therefore, instead of only focusing on being creative, having a well-planned idea is far more essential when it comes to gaining clients’ trust and executing.”
Tsz Kan Tsang - Student from ENTR3100
“It was interesting to hear about Stephen’s sharing! He even shows how a relatively small budget can be used to create a unique and innovative approach to advertising – for instance the breakup tour that only requires a HK$9,000 budget. Apart from his creative mindset that can create great storytelling for each of the campaigns or marketing strategies that he created, he can transform “ideas” into “actions” well – especially when he described how he created a detailed implementation plan and precautions slides when presenting to the client, on top of his idea. A lot of people might have great or unique ideas, but not everyone can do well in terms of implementing the idea into reality, and this is what I learned from him and can be applied to any career path that I will take later on (in the workplace, or even as an entrepreneur, we have to be able to learn on how to convince clients or other stakeholders well, and preparing everything in advance by laying out the implementation plan even before being asked). He also has ambitions to make an impact and do what he truly loves (#passion and #grit) – it is interesting to hear how he initially wanted and planned to be a lawyer and ended up taking journalism then going to a marketing career path. We need to also be flexible and open-minded, as our initial path or career does not determine our future (an important thing to keep in mind!)”
Celine Husada - Student from ENTR3100
Find out more about the visual record of this class on MIRO:
Read more on how student think after the session:
