#SMWHK Falls Flat

In case you haven’t checked your Twitter feed, scrolled through your Facebook timeline or logged on to FourSquare this week, stop what you’re doing and get connected: Social Media Week Hong Kong (#SMWHK) is finally here!

Following the success of last year’s inaugural Social Media Week, our team has been looking forward to this year’s line-up for a few months. As active users of a variety of social mediums, the opportunity to get involved with an array of social media events (40 in total) spearheaded by the Hong Kong’s digerati seemed like something we couldn’t pass up. 

Or so we thought until yesterday…

With our tweeting fingers at the ready, we dove into Social Media Week at Tuesday morning’s session, ‘Social Media Marketing with Celeb Endorsements’. Here, a spokesman from Alive.cn spoke about the monetary cost of social media celebrity endorsements, both in the UK and globally. Reps from Favspot and Glamabox also spoke, weighing in with what their companies were about with brief mentions about how they have used celebrities.

Although the speakers briefly touched on the tactical side of leveraging celeb endorsements, we left feeling short changed. Why? Having paid a HK$150 door charge we figured we’d come away with insight into things like, how celebrities influence consumer purchasing? How had these companies effectively incorporated their chosen celeb endorsers into their broader social media strategies? What sorts of reactions do consumers have to blatantly endorsed posts? What were their recommendations for softening those endorsed posts?

So, hungry for some deeper (and more expert) insight, we settled in at the afternoon’s event about using ‘Social Media for Branding and Revenues’.  Thinking this could potentially provide us with an update on trends and techniques we could share with our clients, we began listening to the spokeswoman from Glamabox… Who happened to be the same lady we had listened to earlier that morning… Delivering the exact same presentation…

With the addition of a brief overview about Gourmei.com (a sister company to Glamabox that was conveniently launching in 48 hours), we basically paid to listen to see a company deliver a sales pitch about itself and its products. No real social media insight whatsoever. Even when fronted from questions from the crowd, answers were vague and roundabout.

As busy PR consultants, time spent out of the office is taken seriously as there’s always so much do to and never enough minutes in the day. Unfortunately, these events ended up being a poor use of our time – not to mention, money.  

Now at the mid-point of Social Media Week 2012, we’re hoping Tuesday was just a hiccup and that the substance of the events ramps up.

We’re looking forward to iPhanatics event being hosted by Casey Lau at the IFC Apple store tonight. Having seen Casey present at HK Social before, we know this guy has his finger on the pulse of social media and knows what he’s talking about.

Will be sure to post about how it goes.