Insight
Head & Shoulders (H&S) has widespread awareness as China’s #1 brand in the overall ‘anti-dandruff’ category but it wasn’t happy.
While overall awareness and equity was ahead of any other competitor, brand awareness and preference for the new Head & Shoulders Men product was low among its core male target audience.
Despite more than a year’s worth of launch and other promotional activity, rival, Clear Men, held the upper hand among this key target.
With China primed for the World Cup, it would never have a better platform to reach its target of football mad young males. However, watching the World Cup in China, wasn’t as simple as it sounded…
For a start Chinese fans would have to sacrifice their night’s sleep to watch key matches live. To make that even less appealing, bars in China had to shut down by 2am owing to Government regulations. Most fans would be relegated to watching at home, probably alone.
The key brand insight was that H&S could win the hearts and minds of its target, if it could enable them to overcome these barriers and recreate the communal nature of the football experience. Doing so would require Mediacom to develop both new distribution models as well as securing must-see content for this audience.
Strategy
Mediacom knew that Chinese football Fans are passionate about the game and will go to great lengths to watch, support and comment on their favourite team and players.
The key insight was that these fans were also very collective; their passion is fuelled by other fans. They like coming together to cheer on their team and their favourite players.
The World Cup provided a unique opportunity for these fans to connect with others who shared their passion. They would rely on their fellow supporters to keep them going through the night, to help them overcome the time zone barriers and ensure they stayed fully immersed in the game they loved.
The strategy enabled them to overcome the barriers that threatened to prevent Chinese Football Fans from watching, enjoying and sharing dialoguing about the World Cup. In particular it would help them overcome both the time zone challenge as well as the 2am pub curfew, while still enabling them to have a social world cup.
H&S would provide ways for them to connect with other fans, to talk about the latest games and share their passion together.
In keeping with their social and connected lifestyle Mediacom would create a unique fan club where they could experience the ‘true power’ of the World Cup by enjoying different elements such as cheering together, sharing moments, voting in competitions etc. under one umbrella.
H&S would power the World Cup and connect the brand with men.
Execution
The agency created the Head & Shoulders Shili 实力Club – ‘True Power’ in Chinese – a special destination catering to Chinese Football fans so they wouldn’t miss out on the World Cup despite the time-zone issues.
Working with iVideo site PPTV, home to China’s largest pool of football fans, the first ever ‘Men’s Shili Club’ allowed the target to experience the ‘true power’ of the World Cup by cheering together, sharing moments, voting in competitions etc., under one umbrella.
Content on the Shili Club included:
1. Shili Highlights/News: For fans unable to watch the live telecast, this section had all the important information about the match so they could talk with their friends or colleagues.
2. Video repository: By partnering with key video sites, it offered a mix of official matches and clips designed for the hard-core football fans.
3. Shili Moment Collection: Football fans could choose exciting video clips and combine a “SHILI Moment Collection” using their own voice humorously as the commentary.
4. Shili Guess: Participants could win a trip to Brazil by guessing which team would win the Final.
5. Find your Fan Club: Fans could find the best location to watch games and even invite other supporters to join them.
6. Finally, Mediacom also launched the H&S Messi Mobile Game to allow competitive fans to maintain their energy levels during live game breaks. Results were sharable and they were given a chance to win H&S’s special edition shampoo.
Every touchpoint within the Shili Club linked fans to an immediate call to action to purchase a bottle of H&S online via an e-commerce portal.
Results
E-Commerce sales surged by more than 350% year-on-year, an unprecedented increase for Head & Shoulders.
The campaign transformed H&S’s media relationship with men:
• The ‘’Shili Club” had 80m page views
• The “Shili Moment Collection” garnered 13.9m impressions. Some of the funniest videos even saw people mimicking celebrity Stephen Chow in his unique style.
• The campaign drove 90m interactions in total
• Unaided Brand Awareness for H&S Men increased by 2%
• Media contribution to interaction rose from 28% to 33%, with mobile increasing its contribution from 2% to 10%.