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5 Types of Advertising Design For Omnipresent Advertising in Hong Kong
Hong Kong is a unique and dynamic marketplace that blends together traditional and digital advertising mediums, catering to a vast audience with diverse preferences. As an advertiser, being where your audiences are and catching their attention in as many ways as possible with excellent advertising design to build a connection is important. That means you have to have a clear picture of who your audiences are and their behaviours and habits. This step, namely target audience profiling, is crucial as we discussed in a previous article on media planning.
The next thing to do is plan where you are going to meet them with your advertisements. This is where the term omnipresent marketing or omnipresent advertising comes into the frame.
What is Omnipresent marketing?
Omnipresent marketing means making sure your brand is like that "everywhere-friend" for your customers, popping up wherever they are—online, offline, you name it—with advertising design that’s unmistakably yours. It’s about tuning into what matters to them, using a mix of old-school and digital channels, and keeping things fresh with insights from data. This strategy is all about flexibility, adapting to changes, and ensuring your brand isn’t just another face in the crowd. Reinforcing constant and comforting presence in your customers' lives. In short, it’s creating those "Oh, there you are again!" moments across every touchpoint, making your brand a seamless part of their everyday journey.
Okay, once you have a plan on where you want to show up for your audience as well as a strategy in place, it is now time to talk about advertising design! In this article, we will explore 5 types of advertising design you need to consider in Hong Kong to achieve omnipresent status. Let's begin.
Outdoor Advertising Billboards & Digital Billboards (OOH & DOOH)
If you advertise in Hong Kong, you cannot miss outdoor billboards. The abundance of traditional billboards, posters, and LED screens in this city should give you an idea of how common and popular this advertising method is, despite the interjection of technology and online advertising.
The nature of this advertising method gives a large canvas for creative advertising design. Here are some examples of our favourite types of billboard ad designs:
Source: Marketech APAC
Right next to Causeway Bay's Times Square is a V-shaped LED billboard that allows innovative 3D advertising designs. Take Asahi's ad, for example, it featured a "naked eye 3D" beer can followed by a brand reel. The eye-catching beer can display was designed to capture pedestrians' attention while they wait for the traffic light. The brand reel to follow, then, delivered further brand messaging.
L-Shaped Naked Eye 3D LED Displays:
Another type of billboard advertising design you must consider is an interactive billboard. Whether it is traditional OOH or DOOH, you may want to include elements in your ad designs that allow viewers to interact with their smartphones. For example, placing a QR code for app downloads or site visits:
Source: AV Magazine
Source: The Korean Herald
The obvious benefit of this is making a rather hard-to-track medium trackable. It is challenging to measure the accurate number of eyeballs that land on the ad design but having something like a QR code can solve part of that problem. You will be able to measure engagement rates and downloads and even collect audience data. However, you still cannot measure all the views and interactions with your advertisement. If done right, in conjunction with other forms of advertising medium, you can definitely gauge the positive results of billboard advertising! That is why it is an important type of advertising design you may want to conclude in your plan!
MTR Advertising Designs
The Mass Transit Railway (MTR) is a primary mode of transport in Hong Kong, reaching a vast, diverse audience every day. MTR advertising designs can complement other channels by capturing the attention of commuters during their daily routines, ensuring your brand message is part of their everyday life. Ad placement and ad design options range from platform billboards, and train car stickers, to in-station posters and lightboxes. These options are available in all MTR stations so no matter where your target audience is, you can reach them.
Source: Treaezta Suhomra
Examples of MTR advertising spaces:
MTR opens the door to creative possibilities that can transform a daily commute into an engaging brand experience through intricate advertising design. From station domination with immersive 3D graphics and optical illusions to interactive digital screens that use augmented reality for personalized stories, the potential is vast. Advertisers can wrap trains and interiors to narrate a visual story, use platform door ads for synchronized displays, and even organize QR code scavenger hunts across stations for interactive engagement. Themed campaigns can align with local events, incorporating soundscapes and AR for a multi-sensory journey.
Bus, Tram, Taxi, Minibus Advertising Designs
Ads on buses, trams, taxis, and minibuses traverse the city while MTR takes care of the underground. Having these mediums in your media mix offers widespread and repeated exposure. It plays a big role in omnipresent marketing as it ensures mobility in your campaign, spreading your message across different districts and demographics, and enhancing brand penetration. And, the advertising design possibilities are endless. Vehicle wraps on double-decker buses, trams, taxis, and minibuses provide ample space to accommodate your creative ad designs while ad designs for vehicle interior provide opportunities for more detailed information as the viewing time is typically longer.
A great advertising design example in an omnipresent marketing plan is Dancesports Breaking For Gold 2023 campaign:
Source: Adintime
The principle of public transportation advertising, especially car body ads, is the same as billboards. Here we see a campaign that is visually striking with red colour and bright letters, as well as a QR code to boost engagement. This type of advertising design is optimal for buses, trams, taxis, and minibuses.
To maximize the omnipresent marketing potential, you should also consider buying tram and bus stop advertising as a package with the car body ads to reinforce your brand messages. An example would look like this:
Press Advertising Designs
Despite the rise of digital media, press advertising in newspapers and magazines is still influential, offering credibility and a targeted reach to specific demographic groups. Integrating press ads into your omnipresent marketing mix ensures you capture the attention of readers who value in-depth information, adding a layer of trust and authority to your brand. You can really have fun with the ad designs across different formats such as full-page, double-page, half-page, 1/4-page, front/back cover, and so on. As for different types of newspapers and magazines, the way to design your ads will be different. Tone, images used, fonts, colours, and such are elements that influence any advertising design.
One excellent newspaper ad design that we love is a little bit of a throwback. When Obama became president, the shaving brand Veet seized a rare moment and came up with this creative and humourous advertising design - a clever play on the word "bush":
Source: Bhatnaturally
Relying on simplicity in the ad design and a captivating message, this ad stands out from the busy newspaper editorial content. For press ads, this is often the practice - keeping things straightforward. If you are advertising in fashion or beauty magazines, having images that would stop a page turn is also crucial as these are highly visual and art-oriented mediums.
Staying on the topic of hair removal, here's another clever ad for a hair removal product in magazines:
Source: Digital Agency Network
Online Advertising Designs - Display Ads & Social Media
Online advertising, through display ads and social media, offers precise targeting, real-time analytics, and direct engagement with audiences. It's flexible and can be tailored to suit any budget. These are the benefits that other advertising methods cannot necessarily provide. Digital ads are crucial for an omnipresent strategy, allowing brands to stay top of mind where their audiences spend a significant amount of time: online. They complement offline efforts by providing a seamless consumer journey across all touchpoints. From banner ads on popular news websites to sponsored content and influencer partnerships on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, the options are vast and varied.
The nature of this medium allows advertising designs to be adjusted as the campaigns go. Many marketers often perform A/B tests that test different ad designs and creatives to see which ones perform best with the audience without costing a pretty penny!
For banner ads and other forms of display ads, the advertising design must be concise and include a clear call-to-action. For example:
Source: The New Yorker
Source: Disney+
As for social media ads, the ad designs can be visual-heavy, informational, and interactive. In most cases, a call-to-action will also be included. Let's see some examples:
In Conclusion...
Having an omnipresent marketing plan with great advertising designs is necessary for success. The media mix for every brand and every campaign differs. It all comes down to your target audience profile! In this article, we listed some of the most important media to cover in Hong Kong but it is not an exhaustive list. It is important to do your own research and really, once again, know your audience so you pick the ones that bring you results! Have fun creating!
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