Brief Explanation

This is the story of how Rexona created the sweet smell of success in Hong Kong by raising awareness of body odour. Rexona was a leading deodorant brand but in Hong Kong the deodorant category has only 30% penetration as it’s mainly used in the summer and after sports activities. Compared to perfumes, deodorants weren’t something that’s always on our target’s mind to remove body odour. Our stinker of a challenge was to grow the category and make Rexona an “everyday habit” amongst the “deodorant dodgers”. “Image-conscious” Hong Kong consumers will do anything to avoid embarrassing social labels. We identified ‘Social Pressure’ was our opportunity to influence their behaviour. After all, on one wanted to be labelled as smelly! How did we do it? We ‘gamified’ a problem-solution approach in an entertaining yet educational way at the moments when deodorant dodgers were most vulnerable to social embarrassment. Our solution? “Rexona Police” – the Anti-Smell Agents of the “No Smell Association”, a new and powerful pressure group designed to activate consumers’ self-consciousness towards body odour and helped them “Knock off Body Odour”! Their task was to get consumers to RECOGNISE that body odour was bad, REVEAL the victims, and learn how Rexona can help RESOLVE the problem. Through this highly involving and entertaining educational process, we have educated the “fun-loving” HK consumers on the importance of using deodorant more frequently to avoid social embarrassment. Rexona effectively changed consumers’ behaviour and grew its volume sales by 8.4% compared to a year ago!