Results and Effectiveness

With “Arm-swinging-guy”, consumers struck gold and we achieved our goal; F305c became the talk of the viral world. Over 15million people in China watched him on ku6.com, with the video spreading further onto YouTube and sites worldwide. There were over 700,000 searches for “arm-swinging-guy” on Baidu.com and almost 1million on google. Just under a million clicks were delivered through pages/banners, 1.8million virtual F305c’s sent as gifts from Kaixin, 258,000 Motion Buddies were purchased and over 13million interactions made with them by their owners. While exact sales cannot be shared, F305c share of market increased by 330%, far exceeding planned targets.

Creative Execution

Taking the unlaunched F305c model, a handicam, in-house talent and a purple line subway from Dongsi to Datunlu-East, the agency set off to create intrigue. Posing as innocent tourists, we filmed our “talent” playing motion-bowling with his mobile-phone. To titters from other passengers, he “lost” the handset through the closing doors. This rough video was posted, unbranded, onto China’s main video-sharing site ku6.com to activate pre-launch buzz, with friend-friend seeding starting the gossip-snowball rolling. At launch, capitalising upon huge interest in “arm-swinging-guy” (as he’d become known), an animated, bowling Sony Ericsson F305c motion-buddy was created and introduced into “Chinese Facebook” Kaixin, creating a link to our video and a platform for tangible product information. Users could either buy the mascot as an online pet or purchase an animated F305c and send to friends. Links from the now infamous video to product discussion pages/banners drove POS interest.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

By launching the F305c with motion-sensitive gaming into a market cynical about mobile-gaming, Sony Ericsson China not only faced the perpetual challenge of overcoming dominant competitor noise to launch a new model, but they also had to create credibility and demand for mobile-gaming without the luxury of “traditional” TVC support materials and national budgets. Going beyond the standard insight that “social media is booming amongst young Chinese consumers”, we learned that, while they want to be seen to be informed individualists, our digital natives still seek affirmation from friends by being the first to discover, share and initiate discussion about new, digitally-driven experiences. If we could create a digital activation that provided new and valuable material for these online gold-panners, we would harness the viral power of China’s massive online audience to spread the word about the new Sony Ericsson F305c and its impressive mobile gaming capability.