The Campaign

Philips wants to be perceived as a leader in promoting health and well-being across Asia via its consumer lifestyle, healthcare and lighting products. The ‘+’ Project campaign was designed as an integrated marketing approach to engage stakeholders in Asia via social media and encourage users to submit ideas aimed at improving health and well-being. Initially introduced in Indonesia and Thailand, themes built on expertise in Philips’ three business units were: • Livable Cities – centering on raising the safety, sustainability and ambient aspects of a city’s overall livability. • Healthy Living – about healthier eating, enabling people to take better care of themselves and their families, and creating a more salubrious living environment. • Access to Healthcare – producing quality systems to provide affordable and accessible healthcare. The idea was then to bring locally-generated ideas to life through Philips-led teams, each working with a project budget of US$50,000. Urban Internet access was chosen as the ideal way to communicate with stakeholders and harness interest in improving living conditions, while existing Facebook and Twitter platforms were used to generate a buzz among Philips supporters. The result was a severalfold improvement in purchase intent, brand preference and advocacy – paving the way for the campaign in other Asian markets.

The Brief

The overarching objective was to create the perception of Philips among stakeholders in Asia as a company that channels innovation into health and well-being. Communications needed to convey a pooling of innovation from the lighting, consumer lifestyle and healthcare business units into community initiatives. Philips wanted to demonstrate an ability to respond to consumer needs by asking people to provide local insights that could be used to accelerate innovation to the benefit of the community. A need was also identified to improve brand differentiation, preference and advocacy, while developing the capabilities of local marketing and communications teams.

Results

More than 1,000 ideas were “crowdsourced” in Indonesia and Thailand, while the total number of people submitting ideas and voting for them reached 100,000. Regional and local websites in both Indonesia and Thailand attracted a total of about half a million views. And scoring a “first” for Philips, the ‘+’ Project was ranked No.1 throughout Thai social media, according to hashtag #PlusThailand. Research indicates that a third of the target audience population was reached, with tens of millions of citizens in Indonesia, for example, being made aware of the campaign. Over eight weeks, more than 5,500 comments were made and 8,500 conversations took place in Indonesia and Thailand on the subject of the campaign. Association of the brand with health and well-being improved severalfold, resulting in greater brand differentiation, while a double digit boost was registered in purchase intent in favour of Philips’ consumer lifestyle and healthcare products.

Execution

Events were staged to introduce the ‘+’ Project and act as platforms from which key opinion formers could endorse Philips’ efforts to improve the general well-being of local people. This enabled pre-identified public influencers to send out an online call-to-action to trigger submission of ideas, while existing Facebook and Twitter platforms were used to generate a buzz among established Philips supporters. Narrower search engine optimization campaigns, based on geo-modified keywords, were executed to capture the attention of local residents and health promoters. Local participants with winning ideas were announced by the media on a weekly basis, and new topics for online discussion and chatter were created to fuel further generation and volunteering of ideas. Top ideas for each of the three themes were chosen by a judging combination of public polling, Philips executives and external opinion formers.

The Situation

As a world leader in healthcare, lifestyle and lighting, Philips integrates technologies and design into people-centric solutions, based on customer insights and the brand promise of “sense and simplicity”. Best known for light bulbs in Indonesia and lifestyle products in Thailand, Philips recently widened its well-being portfolio to include professional lighting and a broad suite of home and hospital healthcare equipment. The golden thread running through the Philips proposition is innovation focused on the health and well-being of end users. A campaign was therefore required to demonstrate that the company actively helps consumers overcome the challenges to living better lives.

The Strategy

Nationwide programs were created and integrated to emphasize how leveraging expertise held by the three Philips business units could produce health and well-being benefits for societies in Asia. Crucial to this was engagement with the general public to understand local health and well-being issues and initiate a collaborative approach to meeting those challenges with innovative solutions. The ‘+’ Project was created to meet in-country challenges and encourage local initiation of solutions that could be championed by Philips to improve the health and well-being of people across Asia. The ubiquity of urban Internet access was chosen as the ideal way to communicate directly with stakeholders in Asian countries and harness interest in improving conditions that impact on health issues. This “crowdsourcing” of ideas via social media sought to capture local ideas and passion that Philips could channel into improving lives.