The Campaign

The Alpenliebe brand found itself becoming increasingly disconnected to its main audience – Chinese youth. It was known, but not known for anything in particular. As fresh, vibrant confectionary brands launched in China supported by creative communications campaigns, Alpenliebe was at risk of being forgotten. To shore up its flagging brand perception it decided it needed a movement to inspire Chinese consumers. Insights told us that the Chinese youth of today showed signs of disillusionment with the daily grind of modern life – they were looking for warmth. So the agency strategized an integrated social media campaign, ‘Sweeten China with Small Acts of Kindness’ to provoke a natural outlet from the relentless pressures of China’s economic progress. A movement was born, in which people were inspired by, engaged in, celebrated and shared everyday acts of kindness. The Alpenliebe brand was now synonymous with ‘kindness’ and the campaign generated 8.7+ million unique visitors, 65.6 million+ page views and 1.1 billion+ online impressions. 151,000 kindness stories were shared across all digital platforms, including 3,270,000 shares and comments. An AVE of 1,720,000 USD was achieved, and perhaps most importantly, a 16% spike in revenue.

The Brief

Our research revealed that the relentless pressures of economic progress coupled with family expectations and the ever-widening gap between aspirations and reality, led many 18-30 year olds to seek out comfort and warmth. This was evident through Chinese popular culture. It revealed that kindness and human potential is one of the most important opportunity areas in which brands can bring about positive change in China. So, our goal was to enhance the emotional connection between Chinese youths by driving ownership of ‘kindness’ and as a result, increase awareness and improve sales.

Results

The sales value (revenue) increased by 16% and Alpenliebe’s growth rate in the milk candy category is now 63% ahead of the industry average. We generated 8.7+ million unique visitors, 65.6 million+ page views & 1.1 billion+ online impressions. 151,000 kindness stories were shared across all digital platforms, including 3,270,000 re-shares and comments. We achieved 55,000+ Weibo followers and 95,000+ SNS brand page fans, and 330+ articles across mainstream & lifestyle media, including 13 TV reports, with a total ad value of 1,720,000 USD. 3 in-depth feature reports were produced by one of China’s most popular entertainment TV programs “Entertainment Live!”, aired at prime time in over 200 cities and towns, including 10 minutes air time on popular TV talk show, “Super Close Distance”, with an episode rating rank of 2. 300,000 copies of Kindness Bible were produced to tie up with Alpenliebe candy’s Chinese New Year sales promotion.

Execution

The small acts of kindness digital-led campaign began on renren.com. We asked fans to share acts of kindness, upload images and videos of their personal acts of kindness and vote on their favourite to form part of a ‘Kindness Bible.’ We shared this movement on KaiXin001 and Sina Weibo, and created videos for Tudou on 8 stories of everyday kindness – such as a passer by helping someone to park their car. We partnered with the World Kindness Movement and 1kg.org to build offline activities to integrate into our social media movement, including kindness trips to 6 schools. This was supported by a grass-roots blogger and KOL engagement campaign, to create ‘ambassadors’. Our campaign culminated in the launch of the Kindness Bible at a World Kindness Day event and episodes on popular TV programmes, ‘Live Entertainment’ and ‘Super Close Distance’ on the ‘Sweeten China with Small Acts of Kindness’ campaign.

The Situation

Alpenliebe, a rich, milky, caramel candy, is Perfetti Van Melle’s flagship brand in China. Perfetti Van Melle entered China 15 years ago and became the number two candy brand. However, recently the confectionary market in China had seen an influx of local and international premium confectionary brands. These brands, especially those from Japan, appealed to audiences as they were perceived by consumers as energetic and vibrant. In an increasingly squeezed market, Alpenliebe found itself being recognized by consumers, but not being known for anything in particular. This was a worrying position for the brand, especially with young consumer consumption rising.

The Strategy

The Alpenliebe brand was already positioned in the territory of sweetness & care, and drawing on our insights, we decided on a campaign that would uplift it to true kindness. We created a social media movement to inspire millions of Chinese youth to share, appreciate and engage in everyday acts of kindness. We decided to ‘Sweeten China with Small Acts of Kindness’. Our integrated campaign would seamlessly join together offline activities into an online social media call to action that would appeal to a mass audience by avoiding pegging the movement to a specific cause. The social media tactics incorporated renren.com and KaiXin001 (Chinese SNS) Tudou (video sharing site) and Sina Weibo (microblog) in tandem with grass-roots blogger outreach. This was seamlessly integrated with offline activities such as kindness events, traditional media outreach, broadcast tie-ups and KOL involvement.