|
Advertising
meets teh tarik
By
Nancy Chin
Brace yourselves,
mamak-shop lovers. Your sanctuary of gossip and
chilling out is being invaded. Frequent trips to
mamak hangouts have led an entrepreneur to come
up with the idea of advertising via tables. The
new advertising concept places stickers with a maximum
dimension of 20in by 20in each on tables.
Advertising company TableView (M) Sdn Bhd’s
chief executive officer Kelvin Hong thought
of the idea while having teh tarik and watching
a TV commercial at a mamak restaurant with a friend.
“I noticed that sometimes while waiting for friends
or their order to arrive, customers do not have
much to do and there is a wide, empty space right
in front of their eyes. I thought it would be a
good idea to bring advertising to the tables,”
he says.
Hong, who has worked in advertising for the past
15 years, reckons that mamak restaurants are a good
place to advertise as they cater to people from
different walks of life. “Mamak restaurants are
the heart and soul of Malaysians, from factory workers
to top executives. It is therefore up to one’s
creativity to communicate advertisement messages
to them,” he stresses.
One advantage of the new concept is the longer exposure
rate compared with that of other forms of advertising.
“People normally spend at least half an hour
per session in a mamak restaurant,” says Hong,
adding that through the concept, brands get additional
exposure and consumers are kept informed about new
products and services as well as the latest consumer
promotions in the market.
But having advertisements on the tables will not
help if the messages are static. “With this concept,
advertisements can be interactive. For example,
we have a table advertisement where viewers can
call a number to win prizes,” he says. Among
the early advertisers are Panasonic, Intel and 20th
Century Fox.
Not rocket science
TableView’s game plan is to work with anchor
organisations. In the case of the mamak restaurants,
it has inked a five-year exclusive-rights deal to
advertise with the Malaysia Muslim Restaurant Operators
Association (Presma).
Under the partnership, TableView will have access
to 1,600 Presma members who are restaurant owners
in the Klang Valley, Penang and Johor Baru. So far,
around 900 slots (each table is one slot) have been
taken for advertisements. The partnership entails
profit-sharing.
“It is a simple business model. When we first
tried selling the new concept, some mamak restaurants
rejected the idea because they thought we were trying
to sell advertisements to them. But they agreed
to be our business partners after we explained that
they would get a certain amount from letting us
place our clients’ advertisements on their tables,”
he adds.
Profit to the restaurants depends on the location
of the operations, the duration of advertisement
exposure and the amount of slots taken up. Each
table advertisement costs around RM30 to produce
and is scratchproof and waterproof. To avoid a clutter
of advertisement messages, which can be confusing
for recipients, TableView places only one advertisement
per table.
Hong is optimistic about the business and expects
the company to rake in between RM2 million and RM3
million in turnover by January next year. “New
brands need awareness. Established brands need reinforcement.
This form of advertising is an ideal medium to introduce
new products as well as remind consumers of a familiar
brand,” he points out.
Asked about the concept, Hong says some of his friends
told him they had thought of it before. “But
nobody dared to try,” he says. Next month, the
company will introduce a loyalty programme in which
2,000 loyalty cards will be given out. Customers
will receive one stamp for every RM10 spent at a
participating mamak outlet. Mamak diehards who collect
10 stamps can redeem the card for a free meal worth
RM5.
“To date, 30 mamak stalls are participants of
this programme. With the 10 stamps, you can go to
any of these stalls,” Hong says.
|
