Results and Effectiveness

The results of ‘2012 Dandruff Doomsday’ branded social gaming app was an innovative digital first for China and became one of CLEAR’s highlights of the year. In just eight short weeks, the campaign delivered over 33 million impressions and captured the enthusiasm of 16 million users of QQ, as it became part of their daily gaming routine. Embedding the brand into the game successfully tied-in the functional benefits of the new product, increasing online awareness by 17% and driving message association by 20%. Brand attributes also outperformed expectation as audience perception of CLEAR as the expert in scalp care rose by 14%.

Creative Execution

In 2011, the hottest topic widely discussed was the prediction game on what will really happen in 2012’s prophesized doomsday. Clear’s obvious move was to chime in on the prediction making 2012 the year of ‘Dandruff Doomsday’, with its revolutionary dandruff eradication efficacy. Therefore, an online social game ‘Dandruff Doomsday’ was conceived. To make ‘Dandruff Doomsday’ game into an instant blockbuster, we partnered with QQ, China’s biggest social networking platform, to create the 1st branded social game APP ‘Dandruff Doomsday’ on QQ’s largest social zone – QZone. We maximized audience engagement by promoting the game across QQ’s platform and its partners with the proposition of dandruff eradication messaging built into gaming narratives, rewards, sampling and leaderboard challenges to showcase audience achievement. ‘Dandruff Doomsday’ was also cross integrated into other in-game ads, challenges, badges, gifts, missions, interactive assets, avatar & micro-blogging themes.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

We were tasked to take a relatively low interest category and find a way to not only engage our target audience in a compelling way, but also communicate Clear’s ‘3 layer scalp effects’ dandruff eradication efficacy. Looking at the online and SNS habits of our audience we leveraged two key insights: • They leverage on a combination of knowledge, wit & humor as their social currency to gain recognition amongst peers in SNS. • They use online casual / social gaming both entertainment but also a way to sharpen problem solving skills. Secondly, to help them move up their career ladder, they seek ways to sharpen their skills and often found that online social gaming not just delivers entertainment but also excellent in honing their problem solving skills. The Clear brand leveraged social currency, topical news, social gaming and strong product message to develop the “Clear Doomsday Online Game”.