The follow-up story about crazy ads on Nov.16

I was too tired yesterday, and I didn’t find the ads on Sun, TakungPao, so I didn’t post anything. I tried to find the the ads in the newspaper our department doesn't have in the HKU library, but unfortunately, they don’t have those paper, and even fewer than our department.

First of all, I explain the incident from the cost point of view. The man who is called Gu Mingjun (see the man in the pix), cost 1.1 million (over 140 thousand U.S dollars) to place ads in at least 15 Chinese newspapers in HK on Nov.16 (source: HK Economic Daily News). That is called roadblock strategy in the advertising campaign. The newspapers where the full page ads were placed in the front page included MingPao (cost 176,000 HK$, please refer to its rate card at:

http://www.mingpaonews.com/adbanner/ratecard/mingpao/index.htm

), SingTao (145,000 HK$, please refer to its rate card at: http://www.singtao.com/ratecard/html/singtao.htm), am730 (free paper, its rate card doesn’t specify the price of full page B/W ads in the front page, but it mentions the B/W full page ROP ads, and the 4 color full page ads in the front page. So I guess it is 100,000 HK$ or so. Source: http://www.am730.com.hk/ratecard.asp ), Economic Journal （信報）(it doesn’t have website, so I didn’t find its rate card). Excluding some tabloids and free newspaper which ads price are relatively low, ads in the five main stream broadsheets, such as MingPao, Oriental (99,800 HK$), Apple Daily (cost 115,000 HK$, source: http://www.appledailyadvertising.com/crm/rate_eng.htm
), Sun (60,000 HK$), SingTao, cost the man nearly 600,000 HK$, accounts for approximately 54% of its total budget.
Secondly, everybody may ask the same question: why did the man do that? According to the accounts of newspaper in HK yesterday, the man decided to place ads to support government, because he was angry that the chairman of Next Media, and a legislator of Democratic Party fabricated a 78-year-old man who placed ads to appeal to universal suffrage in the Apply Daily(see the color ad on the left). The next day after he placed ads, he went to police station and complaining service of Legco to report that the legislator fabricated news(ads) (the pixs related to the stroy can be seen at my another blog).
I used to be an advertising professional, so I clearly know advertising campaign should have a specific objective first, and the advertising effect depends on that objective you specify (that's what DAGMAR theory says). And then, you should know your target audience you want to appeal to. And then, you choose the appropriate media based on the relevant research (such as your target's reading habit, what're their favorite newspapers, etc). However, the man's ads cost so much money, and were placed on all the Chinese media. What I only can say is he must be crazy. Or, his money is too much, and he wants to throw off by meas of "donating" to media. Next, I give some clues from media's accounts.

Thirdly, we might ask another question, was it worthy of doing that? In other words, what was his true motive to do that? Some media said that he has been planning to privatize his two public companies, so he might just want to attract the attention of whole society, especially both HK government and Beijing government.
At last, we also want to ask what HK wants to embrace after the having freedom and run of law with HK's characteristic. If people just have freedom, that may be what the savage primitive society was like. If people just have run of law, that may be what the feudal society was like. Of course, If people just have the democracy at the low level, that may also be what the under-developed society was like, such as ancient Roma, and Athens. Democracy is the daily life style, not the slogan, or show arts. The ads war in HK implied politicians in the two camps including some so-called democrats are exploiting the will of general public. The barriers of full democratization in HK are not only from Beijing, but from their own elites in HK.