This year’s Young Marketer of Tomorrow (YMT) contest, sponsored by Classified Post premium partner Tap & Go by HKT (Hong Kong Telecom), drew a record-breaking number of participants, many attracted by the chance to work on a fintech project. Entrants had to propose creative value-adding and revenue-generating propositions for Tap & Go, a mobile wallet which can be used to pay online and offline retailers. Out of 107 teams consisting of 429 students in all, 61 made it to the semi-finals. The top six took turns to impress the judges with a 15-minute presentation, followed by a five-minute Q&A session. The prize presentation took place on March 31.
The Tap & Go app is driven by UX (user experience), according to HKT’s Chris Fung, senior vice president, financial services. Fung notes that those who apply to use the mobile wallet are generally driven by the desire for a positive user experience. Instead of simply offering short-term incentives, the brand thoroughly researched all aspects of the app to gain an understanding of user needs.
“With the rapid development of new and different technologies, customer tastes are continually changing,” said Fung. “Therefore, to meet the expectations of how our products will function, we decided to leave room for our real users, who are teenagers and young adults, to tell us what kinds of new features they are looking for. We also asked them about the look and feel they would prefer, about how it should be implemented,” Fung said.
Fung said that by partnering with Classified Post for this year’s YMT contest, the company hoped to share what they had learnt with the students. They hoped to encourage them to learn about the company, as well as the entire fintech market, and help them equip themselves with the tools to succeed in fintech.
The competition was important to HKT, because youngsters like the team members are a major target segment for the Tap & Go wallet app. “The entrants’ way of looking at things, and their unique perspectives, will definitely help us introduce more social elements and analytics to Tap & Go. It will evolve to become a more engaging and comprehensive mobile payment app that has more uses than simply making payments,” said Fung.
“The proposals we came across were distinctive across the board, and all of them demonstrated a high level of originality and ambition,” Fung said. “For instance, some teams chose to enhance the value proposition of Tap & Go from a consumer angle, suggesting we leverage the robust audience base of our mobile and entertainment platforms to create unique value-adding services.”
“Others recommended that we improve our merchant services by integrating various mini-applications like service booking and restaurant queuing, services which aligned with the direction of our other business, HKT Merchant Services, in a way that was fun,” said Fung.
“Others recommended different market segments that we should try to enter by developing new features involving, for instance, transportation. These ideas proved very fruitful for us, and we will take them into consideration while working on our product development roadmap,” Fung said.
Fung praised the final presentations, saying that they were all full of high-quality content, and noted that he enjoyed the diverse presentation styles of the teams. Some teams gave professional presentations, he said, offering solutions in a structured, systematic and coherent fashion in the manner of a consultant. Others were energetic and charismatic, and created an exciting atmosphere for the audience by talking up the idea like real entrepreneurs. “Overall, we were glad to see how all the different teams acquired their own unique personalities. But they all shared one great characteristic — a high level of confidence,” Fung said.
Ryan Wong, assistant digital marketing director at cpjobs.com, the event’s organiser, was impressed by all the creativity on show. Wong noted that “the goal-setting initiative was forged between parents and kids,” and added that he thought that HKT would implement some of the proposals in their marketing plans and product development. Wong also noted that participating university students came from many different disciplines this year, including law, computer science, and accounting.
“The teams were given a marketing proposal related to a fintech business, and some of them made mock-ups and videos to more vividly illustrate their ideas,” Wong said. “This helped all those present to understand their ideas and see the impact they could have. There was also room for competitors to hear perspectives on their entry from the other teams, so everyone learnt from each other. Participants also increased their confidence in public speaking,” Wong said.
Bradford Chan, sales director of cpjobs.com, was pleased to see such a diverse selection of participants, and noted that it consisted of a good mix of international students and Hongkongers. Chan also said the standard of presentations was higher than he had anticipated. “The presentations demonstrated self-confidence. Some participants thought outside of the box by doing some role-playing to capture the judges’ attention. Some of the visuals used in the PowerPoint presentations were very eye-catching, too. During the presentation for the semi-finals, one team even made a signboard despite the short amount of time. I think the finalists’ preparations were excellent,” said Chan.
“The students were very proactive when it came to getting feedback from the judges after the competition ended,” said Chan. “The winning teams did that, and so did those who didn’t make it to the final. I really loved their proactive approach and their willingness to improve. Hopefully, they walked away with better networking skills, some experience at public speaking, and some experience of start-ups.”
The HKT Pay team from the University of Science and Technology (HKUST) proved to be the cream of the crop, winning the top champions prize. The team also took the best presenter award. They proposed to maximise the potential of Tap & Go’s PayMaster with a new feature called “Tap & Challenge.” This would allow parents to set goals for their children with Tap & Go that give clear and transparent rewards. The team also highlighted side-applications for peers and friends that could be used for social purposes.
Team leader Athena Wong said, “The brand was new to half of the team, so it took longer to research the information when we were generating ideas.” The team thought outside the box: “Many people think the digital wallet only targets the younger generation, but we took a different approach. Today’s youngsters still rely on their parents financially, so if we can bring in more young users, they may influence their parents to use the e-wallet,” Wong said.
“Looking back, the contest was a learning curve for all of us,” said Wong. “Apart from giving us a new topic to learn about, a topic which needed extensive research, it also taught us how to target customers and differentiate our proposals from the others.” The judges were genuinely engaged with helping the entrants: “I want to thank the judges, who raised questions to help them understand what we were doing, rather than challenging us. This allowed us to elaborate our ideas and clarify them,” Wong said.
“Young students should use this opportunity to test their limits. As the topic of the next competition won’t be announced until after the registration date, we face an exciting wait. Winning is not everything, because the process involves developing your research skills and knowledge,” Wong said.
Adding fun to The Club, the membership points section of Tap & Go, helped the Felicitas team from Hong Kong University (HKU) become the first-runner up. “We know that young people don’t have enough patience to accumulate points to redeem gifts,” team member Alvis Lui said. “So we proposed a faster way to use up the club membership points via ‘Club Auction’, ‘Club Lottery’ and ‘Club Exchange’. For example, Club Exchange is a platform to match redeemed gifts from The Club with a member who wants them, so there is a networking effect, and wastage is minimised.”
“Many existing mobile wallet operators have already offered ways to make a faster payment, so that in itself is not a big differentiator,” said Lui. “We tried to think of functions which are not in use in the existing market, and that’s how our ideas came alive. One judge’s comment caught my attention. He stressed that a presentation is not just a good speech or some pretty PowerPoint slides, but the accurate delivery of ideas in a 15-minute time frame. He meant that a presentation must be concise with clear points.”
“One judge questioned the legal position of holding an online lottery. That was our weakest link. Our research turned out to be too basic, and we hadn’t probed deeper due to time constraints. We now are fully aware that if a lottery is open to the public, a licence is required,” said Lui.
The Wild Boar team from HKU envisaged an online personal financial management system which used e-receipts to track spending and build better expenditure. It won third place (second runner-up). “I hadn’t used Tap & Go’s services at all,” said team member Kony Kwong. “At the start, we found out that it’s not a stand-alone company, as it’s attached to HKT. Business information about Tap & Go was scarce, and we ended up diving into HKT’s financial statements in order to gain a better insight. There wasn’t any direct way to collect its financial and business information. But the most challenging process was finding ways to sustain the idea,” said Kwong.
“We noticed that financial management apps currently in the market require users to input their data, whereas some small start-ups just use receipt scanning. But the user confidence in them is low. But Tap & Go can ride on HKT’s trusted reputation to integrate and collect this data to optimise users’ spending.” It was an educational experience, too: “Because of this contest, I know more about the Tap & Go brand. I saw how they made their internal decisions and how they generate ideas. After speaking with the judges, we got even better insights on how they run the company and what its general aspirations and directions are,” Kwong said.
“One of the reasons the winning team beat its rivals was its general speaking skills,” HKT’s Fung concluded. “Many teams managed to justify the investment involved in executing their proposals, but the winning team recognised the importance of time-to-market (TTM). They leveraged the existing product infrastructure to deliver unprecedented value to the users in a creative way. As the marketers of tomorrow, besides being able to dream big, the ability to act realistically in an agile manner, and to adapt, are crucial qualities which set them apart from the crowd.”
