FISTS OF FUSIAN

TitleFISTS OF FUSIAN
BrandNESTLÉ
Product / ServiceMAGGI FUSIAN NOODLES
CategoryA01. Best Fictional Program, Series or Film where a client has successfully created a drama, comedy or miniseries around a product or brand
EntrantMERCERBELL Sydney, AUSTRALIA
Entrant Company MERCERBELL Sydney, AUSTRALIA
Contributing Company MERCERBELL Sydney, AUSTRALIA
Production Company SMITH & WESTERN Sydney, AUSTRALIA

Credits

Name Company Position
Harley Tesoriero Mercerbell Digital Producer
Jess Tham Mercerbell Digital Producer
Scott Forrester Mercerbell Head Of Development
Alisha Burr Mercerbell Senior Account Manager
Chelsey Peace Mercerbell Account Director
Sabrina Antoniou Mercerbell Group Account Director
Brendon Killen Brendon Killen Editor
Joe Harper Joe Harper Motion Design
Phillip William Mercerbell Senior Web Developer
Richard Lama Mercerbell Flash Developer
Carly Drew Mercerbell Social Media Manager
Maura Tuohy Mercerbell Digital Strategist
Dan Fowler Mercerbell Digital Designer
Rodolfo Sarno Mercerbell Designer
Ben Ient Mercerbell Art Director
David Barton Mercerbell Copywriter
Carmela Soares Mercerbell Digital Creative Director
David Bell Mercerbell Executive Creative Director

The Campaign

Branded Entertainment in Australia is a healthy industry, with more creative and strategic possibilities than barriers and regulations. Content integration is generally tactical - where a brand takes out a sponsorship within a show to have its product featured in an integrated way, or strategic - where the brand takes a controlling interest in the content or even produces an entire contained brand-funded show. Social and digital media are unlocking new opportunities for branded content, feeding into the budding discipline of content marketing, with 96% of Australian marketers saying they value content as part of the marketing mix. That said, campaigns are normally based on expensive content production and there are no examples of low-budget or interactive Branded Entertainment efforts - not just locally but even on a global scale. And this is one of the reasons why "Fists of Fusian" is such a unique idea.

Results

MAGGI Fusian was launched to capitalise on the growth of Asian inspired noodle flavours. But in a very competitive category, Fusian was struggling to differentiate itself and shake the perception that it wasn’t authentic. Our brief was to give Fusian an identity by creating a sustainable source of online content its "Generation Y" audience could relate to. Generation Y is the meme generation, "mashing up" and "LOLing" about things they like. So we let them bring our story to life. We bought a Kung Fu movie in Mandarin, broke it down into episodes and let people write the subtitles in English. Fans voted for their favourite clips and the winners became part of the first Kung Fu film written by the internet, ‘Fists of Fusian’. Our Facebook App was basically a “meme-machine” - a tool that allows users to create content under our brand umbrella. So far we’ve seen not just competition-themed videos but clips with social and political commentary, satire, pop culture references (someone captioned the lyrics of “Call me Maybe”) and party invites. To extend the campaign, we created a movie trailer to generate buzz on YouTube and uploaded funny videos to encourage submissions. The film’s backstory was brought to life on Facebook, alongside the best clips which fuelled the campaign and helped shape the story line. By involving our fans in the process, we ignited a conversation with our audience that satisfied their appetite for entertainment and Fusian noodles, one caption at a time.

We started by creating the community ‘Fists of Fusian’, offering the chance of being part of the first crowd-sourced Kung Fu movie. We uploaded a trailer to YouTube for awareness and drove them to Facebook, growing our community. Then we let the film’s story unfold episode by episode. On Facebook, we brought the film's background to life using shareable memes, attracting more fans. On an App, people submitted subtitles for the film. A voting system chose the winners, using social design to spread the campaign.

Thanks to ‘Fists of Fusian’ MAGGI Fusian noodles made massive leaps in brand awareness and perception. Not bad for a campaign that ran only in Australia and had a budget of less than $250,000. Brand tracking taken halfway through the campaign showed Fusian noodles achieved big gains based on the attributes of being ‘adventurous’, ‘modern’ and ‘a brand teenagers love’. And when it came to Generation Y, they couldn’t get enough of our campaign: - 454,527 trailer views - Over 4.1m viral impressions - 22,822 App views - 577 videos captioned - 66% of App users returned - Average 756 votes per episode The best part was that in every video they created, they were using their words to help MAGGI Fusian find its voice.