HKTB Wades Into Branded Content Collab To Woo Southeast Asian Visitors

HKTB backed Extreme End, is a collaboration with Celestial Tiger Entertainment and will be a follow-up to The Ultimate BROcation, which screened on action pay TV channel, Kix, in late 2016.

Extreme End follows a similar concept to The Ultimate BROcation, but with a more gender-inclusive angle in terms of cast and audience. Casting is currently underway for four celebrities—one each from Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Philippines—before production begins in July.

The Southeast Asian tourism market is particularly competitive with HKTB figures revealing that the number of tourists from Southeast Asia, including Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Philippines, has consistently exceeded 3 million in the past two years. More specifically, total visitors from Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Philippines increased by 2.8%, from 2.386 million in 2016 to 2.453 million in 2017.

The new series, poised for release in Q418, will also be shorter, down from a five-part series of one-hour episodes to a four-episode series of 30-minutes each.

Q416 had seen a record US$900k investment from HKTB, this was over 11x its usual outlay of US$79k and the challenger tourism board has also experimented in various content concepts of differing formats using influencers with varying personalities.

The Ultimate BROcation was targeted for the Southeast Asian male audience featuring the hi-jinks adventures of Filipino-American entertainer Billy Crawford, Thai VJ and DJ PK, Malaysian rapper SonaOne and Singaporean chef Bjorn Shen. While its I Never Knew mini-series of influencer stories about HK’s hidden gems – used international creators EvanTube, Fung Bros and Rima Zeidan.

This investment is much needed too because HKTB has some stiff competition: 4 other state tourism organisations rank above Hong Kong in ASN’s Index for the category (6.8% share, ~US$13.5m) since Q315. Furthermore, competitors like the Singapore Tourism Board (4.3%, ~US$8.6m) have been playing up the role of the city-state as a world-class sporting events venue, which includes the F1 Grand Prix, HSBC World Rugby Sevens, International Champions Cup and SMBC Singapore Open in its calendar.

This category contributed US$207m to 935 Sponsorship platforms in Asia in the last 3 years with a dropoff from Q217, with spends registering below the quarterly average of US$17.3m+ here as the lure of international sporting properties and icons rise…For example, Malaysia Tourism Board’s partnership with the La Liga in 2016 and ongoing endorsement with Uruguayan footballer Luis Suarez.