Art is capitalised by businesses large and small to draw target audience’s interests. When used right, it delights the senses and offers fresh perspectives on how audience perceives the brand.

Hong Kong is now a hub for international and local art events, from Asia’s most sought-after art expos to world-class performances that amass emerging creative talents. Our client, Lanson Place Hotel, Hong Kong, is the official venue for both Hong Kong Arts Festival and True Tales by Design, a four-day exhibition of select contemporary design objects. In line with its positioning, we helped Lanson Place Hotel, Hong Kong leverage participating art events as well as other notable seasonal happenings in the city like Art Basel and Art Central as part of its social media strategy.

Besides managing regular posts on Facebook and Instagram, our team also recorded and promote the events on Instagram Stories, a full-screen creative format that lets brands create dynamic photo and video sequences that expire after 24 hours. We select the best of Stories for Story Highlights, which serves as a quick profile for the brand. You can see these Stories via your mobile. Simply, follow @lansonplacehk on Instagram.

There is a misconception that high-end brands should stay aloof from current happenings. But with thorough understanding of the brand, connecting it with befitting topics of the town is an effective way to promote engagement. Talk to us for more ideas.

By now, cryptocurrency is not a stranger to the world. It has become one of the most polarising topics out there. Some see it as digital gold and to some, it’s fool’s gold. To help interested individuals understand what is cryptocurrency and the underlying Blockchain technology, NDNX Cowork Tech Hub, in partnership with Success Resources, brought Cryptocurrency Investor Summit to Hong Kong. On 28 January, over 600 people attended this full-day free summit.

NDN Group CEO Andy Ann was one of the speakers at the summit where he has shared his view on cryptocurrency and the potential of Blockchain. He stressed the need to understand two key points before fully understanding cryptocurrency.

First, Blockchain is the underlying technology of Bitcoin. It can support a wide range of applications and it is already being used for peer-to-peer payment services, supply chain tracking and more. Think accounting ledger that appears in the digital space. It is designed to store information in a way that makes it virtually impossible to change data without being detected by others. Therefore, it is tamper-proof. Today, a central authority like the government or bank verifies monetary transactions. Blockchain could replace these centralised systems with decentralised ones, where verification comes from the consensus of numerous users rather than one central authority. Any changes made on Blockchain are reflected across the entire network.

Second, one needs to grasp the genuine concept of money. Throughout history, we have used commodities like salt, cocoa, silver, gold, and in the modern economy, currency (i.e. banknotes, coins) as a medium of exchange so we don’t need to use the barter system. In fact, the banknotes we use today don’t have inherent value since it is considered as a medium of exchange. When you go to a shop and buy something, both you and the cashier agree that the banknote used, for example, a HK$100 note, represents a certain value.

You will ask, what dictates the value of a banknote? For centuries, currencies were tied to “gold standard”, meaning the value of banknotes depends on the government’s gold reserves and each can be swapped for the other. In 1931, Britain had dropped this tied and then the USA followed shortly because gold is scarce, and supply could not catch up. Nowadays, supply, demand, and faith in the government form the basis of currencies.

After the 2008 financial crisis, many don’t trust the centralised system (government, banks) anymore. In October 2008, a mysterious person who solely identify himself as Satoshi Nakamoto published a paper on “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”. Few months later the first Bitcoin was launched.

Today there are over 1,000 types of cryptocurrency. People need to understand the fundamentals in order to adopt this new technology. Just like buying a home or vacation package, people need to understand and do research before they take action. It is just a matter of time, when cryptocurrency will reach mass adoption.

New technologies come and go, but the ones that stay derive from the following term: Globalisation. Take internet in the 1990s for example, no one really understands what it is, then internet traction started to roll, several internet bubbles formed and popped, but yet realised its power to bind everyone for speedy communication. By the late 2000s its services and technologies had been incorporated into virtually every aspect of human’s lives. Today we practically cannot live without it. E-commerce, Facebook, Uber, online banking, WeChat are all by-product of the internet.

The new wave for cryptocurrency is surging, and will no doubt further enhance globalisation by revolutionising speedy yet trustworthy transactions.

Gone are the ages of push-selling strategies. Social media platforms are a level playing field for enthusiastic marketers to deliver engaging content. We believe social media, with the viral factor and analytics, is a perfect low-threshold tool for non-profit organizations to spread word-of-mouth. We were honored to share industry insights and ideas with Breakthrough, a charity focusing on youth service in Hong Kong.

In his sharing, our Associate Account Director John drew participants’ attention to the importance of an organization’s core values in determining how its campaigns would be run. He talked about ways to carry out Breakthrough’s vision of encouraging youngsters to put love and care in action and to maximize the exposure of their work.

For non-profit organizations like Breakthrough, social media is an important platform to connect with like-minded individuals, form communities and motivate them to act and share ideas. In terms of content, John addressed the necessity of relating to the audience in order to build resonance and connection, encouraging marketers to bring practical value and produce those that can trigger emotions. These qualities will build the foundation for a post or video to go viral.

Participants were given a program logic model exercise, in which they were able to experiment with social media project planning — from identifying the root problem to reaching the ideal outcome. Our team also suggested digitalizing Breakthrough’s counseling services in preparation for the emergence of a new social media platform in the coming decade. It was truly a rewarding experience sharing our knowledge and skills with an organization that is making a difference.

In this fast-changing world, everything you can imagine changes by seconds. The topic of AI has been widely-discussed and its applications have been growing exponentially. In partnership with IBM, CoWork Tech Hub NDNX invited Joshua Zheng, Program Director of IBM Digital Business Group USA, to share his knowledge and experience in the AI field.

Joshua currently leads developer relations for IBM Watson, IBM PowerAI, and Data Science Experience. He spends most of his time talking to developers in various communities to help them build better applications using AI. Before joining IBM, he led software engineering at a data mining company in D.C., where he used machine learning to understand political dynamics around the world.

In his talk, Joshua highlighted the perks of AI technology. It helps businesses save cost and human resources by handling complex but mundane tasks such as research and data collection in the long run. AI applications keep coming up in the market, but one does not suit all. In order to be effective, AI applications have to be adapted to businesses’ existing processes and customized to solve specific problems.

Joshua rounded up the seminar by showcasing the daily operation usage of Watson Cloud APIs such as Watson Discovery and Watson Visual Recognition with designated programming. His stimulating sharing has immediately granted the audience at NDNX a deeper understanding of AI technology.

Do you have a social media crisis plan? Most businesses do not and that can lead them vulnerable to big problems. In social media, anything can spread like wildfire and even the smallest misstep can turn into a huge debacle.

It’s always best to be prepared ahead of time and have a plan for how to handle a social media crisis so you can protect your brand’s reputation. Follow our five steps to managing a social media crisis to create your plan.

Before you handle the problem, you have to know that a problem is occurring. It’s critical for your business to use a social media listening tool and constantly monitor your social channels. You can set up your brand name as a keyword so you are notified when anyone is talking about your brand on social media. There are many social listening tools now that make this process automated and easy to monitor. Some of the more popular ones include Hootsuite, Social Mention, and Mention.

The first step you absolutely need to take if a crisis breaks out is to respond on the platform where the crisis began. For example, if a viral tweet is running rampant, respond on Twitter. You can spread your message to your other sites but begin addressing the situation where it began. Silence will only make fans and followers more suspicious. The best course of action is to respond and then try to take the conversation off the public forum. If it is one individual person who is having an issue, provide a contact number or email and find a way to have the conversation offline. This way you can handle the situation without the entire world watching your every response.

Take responsibility of the issue immediately, even if the issue is not your fault. Trying to share the blame will not work in your favor. Accept responsibility, ask forgiveness and be committed to it. Don’t make the situation worse by apologizing for the sake of apologizing and then never fixing the problem because in this day and age, the truth will come out. Transparency is key.

This is when you take back a little bit of control of the situation. Create a website or a page on your website, with all of the information on the crisis. Include your acknowledgement and apologies, key facts, how the company learned of the situation, who responded, how you responded, next steps and contact information. This tactic will help you save you time and allow you to direct anyone with questions to the source instead of answering questions in real time. It also shows you are committed to fixing the problem.

Once you have handled the immediate situation, circle back with your team and use it as a learning moment. Evaluate what worked and what could have been done better. Look at response time, who was involved and determine if you were missing any steps in the process. Document everything and use it to strengthen your social media crisis plan and your social media activities.

Hopefully you will never need to use this social media crisis management plan. But in this day and age where information spreads at the speed of light, it’s essential for your business and your reputation that you are prepared to handle any social media situation.

Are you looking for result-oriented ways to gain popularity on social media? Contact us to schedule a free consultation!