HKgolden.com: The online medium Hong Kong marketers can't ignore

CEO Lam Cho-Shum (pictured) spoke to Campaign Asia-Pacific in his Kowloon Bay office last Friday, sharing his candid views about his online forum, the opportunities and challenges of working with advertisers and agencies and how he plans to sustain his company's growth.

A boyish looking 34-year-old, Lam started his career in 2001 after the dotcom crash, working in a local software house and later becoming—like many of his peers—a self-employed programmer. In 2008, he joined up with five friends, all with IT backgrounds, to buy HKgolden.com, an IT website that was established in 2000. At that time, Lam said the site had a discussion forum  which he described as being “undervalued with a poor brand image" and very few advertisements.

Before the acquisition, the forum site had 1.5 million daily pageviews. This month, Lam expects 6 million. Most of the site's users are in their late 20s, and 70 per cent are male.

The forum carries weight in social media and in the marketplace, with opinions expressed on the site echoing far beyond. Print media and local TV dramas have even started to incorporate slang terminology that originated on the site.

Despite such influence, Lam is well aware that advertising on HKgolden.com falls short of its competitors, such as discuss.com and uwants.com.

One of the reasons is that HKgolden.com allows a high level of freedom for its members to express their views. This applies to sensitive topics including politics, but more importantly, from a marketer's point of view, to products and brands. 

"We need to convince advertisers that in the social media world, if netizens express negative comments about your brands, they actually want you to improve the products or services," Lam said. He advised marketers to be more open-minded and not to resist new media. "If you see a website where all the customers' feedbacks are positive, then everyone knows that it is not the true picture,” he said.

Lam believes that some of the older senior managers in 4A agencies and brands are still afraid of such new media. But he sees hope that younger people, who have grown up with online media, will be more receptive as they start to take the decision-making baton.

The CEO is pleased that in past few years HKgolden.com has formed more marketing partnerships with big brands such as Microsoft, Sony PlayStation, MTR and Bossini. When Sony PlayStation launched the PlayStation 3, for example, the forum organised a contest between male and female teams of gamers. The campaign not only spun off a physical marketing event but also generated lots of online buzz and earned-media coverage.

One HKGolden.com user is known for his talents with changing the lyrics of songs and altering photos "often in a cheeky way", Lam said. Noting this, Microsoft organised a song-lyric alteration contest with online voting when the company launched Internet Explorer 9.

Lam talked about the unique culture of the site's users, and drew a parallel to the low-budget Hong Kong film Vulgaria (低俗喜劇), directed by Pang Ho-cheung. Although considered vulgar by many, the film was a blockbuster success in 2012. Likewise, HKGolden.com's members exert an influence despite writing in colloquial language. The forum generates something like 70,000 messages daily, and has helped some of its members become real social influencers. For example, 向西村上春樹 has gone on to write several books and has accumulated a large Facebook following. 

Lam said it's 'survival of the fittest' in the business. "People don't dare to say what they really want to say in real life," he said. "But on the internet, they can wear a mask to hide their identity and speak the truth."

Lam said Hong Kong people should cherish this freedom of speech. Unlike in the Mainland, Hong Kong people can still criticise anything. That said, the company has also had to contend with some libel suits due to member comments made on the forum.

In the 13 years running the forum, the user-generated content has included a wide spectrum of interests including sports, film, music and even plain chit-chat. "In the traditional media world of newspapers and magazine, ideas can be led by the editors," Lam said. "But in the new media, one throws an idea for the forum to discuss and everyone becomes an 'editor'. Many brands have hired PR staff to do online forum clippings, especially when they have a new product launch so as to monitor what people say and adjust their marketing plans accordingly."

Lam has recently been accepting more media interviews and acting as a brand ambassador for HKGolden.com. He believes the brand's image has improved and more people are accepting it as a media player, although there are some old-school advertisers who still think of the site as "not suitable for children", he added.

Hong Kong has 4.5 million netizens, and the forum has about 800,000 to 900,000 users. So Lam sees lots of room for growth, and is eyeing partnerships with film production houses and shopping malls for promotions.

For any business to be successful, people are the most important factor, Lam said. "We have a critical mass already, and we can partner with the right parties to offer our majority male members things like insurance, credit cards...and other special discounts," he added.

Lam highlighted that the internet is an real-time interactive platform and advised marketers not to waste that opportunity. "Unlike TVC, which is often one-side, the internet can do many crossover branding events to bring online elements to real life," he said.

A year ago, Lam said that the company received a buyout offer, but he and his shareholders rejected it. “We feel that our business is still moving upward," he said. "You only give up the business if it is not doing well.” At the moment Lam said he has no wish to sell the business, unless the buyer can help to bring the forum to the next level and maintain the platform's freedom of speech.