2007 Export Award
Christina Brown, Travelex Regional Manager, Asia Pacific with Phillip Castella of Yellow Tail Wines
A marketing strategy that tapped into the Chinese psyche to maximise foreign exchange business at Hong Kong airport has won the export prize at the National Multicultural Marketing Awards, presented at a dinner in Sydney hosted by the Premier and Minister for Citizenship, Morris Iemma.
The Australian office of the world’s largest foreign exchange retailer, Travelex, has had spectacular success in exporting marketing ideas to Hong Kong, with the help of the Sydney company LOUD Multicultural Marketing.
Travelex asked LOUD to devise a campaign that would increase the average amount of money exchanged within the airport per customer of 1300 Hong Kong dollars to 2000 dollars.
Research indicated that the well-accepted enthusiasm in Chinese communities for games of chance or luck coupled with their interest in genuine gold could work in this campaign.
The company identified customer’s behaviour when exchanging currency, their mindset when looking for an exchange bureau and their motivations for choosing one exchange operator over a competitor.
A “peel and win card” was offered to anyone exchanging $2000 HK which promised the chance of winning gold coins valued at $2600HK.
The offer was backed up with striking and persuasive posters within the airport evoking the nostalgic value of Asia as a destination and the excitement of travelling by air to exotic Asian destinations.
Over the course of the campaign there was a dramatic increase of 228 percent in the amounts of money exchanged at the airport. Travelex saw this as an incredible result because no other airport promotion had ever achieved anything like this level of increase.
Congratulating Travelex on its campaign the Chair of the Commission, Stepan Kerkyasharian said: This is really taking multicultural marketing to a higher level - studying cultural mindsets and exploiting cultural habits and inclinations is getting very sophisticated. This is delving deeply into the ethnic psyche to achieve marketing and sales results. It shows we have really moved on in this game.
“And another really pleasing and impressive aspect of this success story is that this is not about exporting product to Asia it is about exporting know-how and skills. All the research, insights, concepts, translations and artwork were developed in Sydney then exported and implemented in a foreign marketplace clearly demonstrating where Australia companies can go when they tap into the expertise we possess in large quantity in society”, Mr Kerkyasharian said.