The Campaign

Philips wants to be perceived as a leader in promoting health and well-being across Asia via its range of consumer lifestyle, healthcare and lighting products. The ‘+’ Project campaign was designed as an integrated marketing approach to engage stakeholders in Asia and encourage users to submit ideas that aimed to improve in-country health and well-being. Initially introduced in Indonesia and Thailand, themes built on expertise held by 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 for people in Asia. 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. The result was a severalfold improvement in purchase intent, brand preference and advocacy – thereby paving the way for the ‘+’ Project campaign to be rolled out in other Asian markets such as Singapore and South Korea.

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

A total of more than 1,000 ideas were “crowdsourced” in Indonesia and Thailand, while the total number of people involved in 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. Association of the brand with health and well-being improved severalfold, resulting in greater brand differentiation and a widening of the perception that Philips cares for the communities in which it does business. In addition, a double digit boost was registered in purchase intent, brand preference and advocacy in relation to 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 activity enabled pre-identified public influencers to send out a call-to-action designed to trigger submission of ideas, while existing Twitter and Facebook platforms were used to generate a buzz among existing Philips supporters. Meanwhile, 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 ubiquity of urban Internet access was chosen as the ideal way to communicate directly with stakeholders and harness interest in improving conditions that impact on health issues. 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. This “crowdsourcing” of ideas sought to capture local ideas and passion that Philips could channel into improving lives.