Mic Hero

Cornetto is the market leader for ice cream cones in China. Nonetheless, the brand set an aggressive business objective to grow sales value by 30% in 15 key cities through increasing purchase frequency. Ice cream advertising in China traditionally focuses on flavours, but Cornetto wanted to buck the trend and create a highly engaging brand-level activation.

Cornetto’s Chinese target audience of 15-25 year-old urban youth with middle to high household want to be popular among friends; they dream of overnight celebrity; they are heavy internet users (particularly IM) and have a passion for music. Within the target, 96.3% use IM regularly, 25.4% list karaoke as a preferred leisure-time activity, and all demonstrate a high affinity towards reality singing shows like ‘Super Girl’, China’s highest-ever rated show. Cornetto decided to draw a parallel between the shape of an ice cream cone and a microphone. So Cornetto sponsored an online karaoke competition in partnership with dominant IM platform QQ, where participants could upload their picture and rendition of their favourite songs, and then vote online or via mobile for the best entries. Shortlisted singers would be invited to Shanghai to perform and compete for the title of Cornetto ‘Mic Hero’, culminating in a live webcast concert event. Consumers who bought Cornetto could use the unique code under each lid to redeem free items such as ringtones. The online and offline adverts used a celebrity couple as the faces of the Mic Hero competition, which drove high interest and motivation to participate in the campaign. The grand prizes was a one-week professional voice training session in Singapore, a record contract recognition as the Cornetto Mic Hero of China.

More than 15,000 competitors uploaded their pictures and songs to the Cornetto Mic Hero website in 2008. The campaign site generated 70 million page views, and each day of the campaign, some 2,500,000 Cornetto lids were used to register activation codes and secure Mic Hero premiums plus extended voting rights. By the end of 2008 the Cornetto Mic Hero activation helped to achieve a 38% YOY increase in sales, beating the sales target.