LIFE WITH MIXED FEELINGS

TitleLIFE WITH MIXED FEELINGS
BrandBRANDS
Product / ServiceSCHISANDRA EXTRACT
CategoryA01. Best Fictional Program, Series or Film where a client has successfully created a drama, comedy or miniseries around a product or brand
EntrantMcCANN TAIWAN Taipei, CHINESE TAIPEI
Entrant Company McCANN TAIWAN Taipei, CHINESE TAIPEI
Contributing Company McCANN TAIWAN Taipei, CHINESE TAIPEI
Contributing Company 2 FROZEN TIME IMAGE STUDIO Taipei, CHINESE TAIPEI

Credits

Name Company Position
Jessica Yang Mccann Account Executive
Meredith Yuan Mccann Account Manager
Jeff Wen Mccann Business Director
Tracy Jheng Mccann Copywriter
Evan Fu Mccann S. Copywriter
Crow Hsieh Mccann Art Director
Stefani Wu Mccann Associate Creative Director
Paul Hung Mccann Group Creative Director

The Campaign

Advertising on television in Taiwan is an expensive business where brands with a limited budget may not afford and begin to turn to alternative methods to ensure their stance in the market. Use of media among Taiwan consumers has also changed; they spend a lot more time surfing the Internet to watch videos and use social network sites. They actually spend more time online than watching the television; television is no longer a dominating platform in the communication mix. As a result, many marketers would now shift their marketing budgets and look more into digital territory to create entertaining branded contents to attract target audience’s attention and go viral.

Results

Challenge/Objective: There are many brands of liver supplement in the market. However, Brand’s Five Flavor Berry (Schisandra) has relatively low product awareness that leads to lack of knowledge of the product among the consumer market. Although many people who work 9-5 become fatigue easily and are concerned about their liver health because of the long working hours, they do not take care of their livers. Another challenge is that there are too many liver advertisements on TV that use spokespersons or celebrities to lecture and educate consumers. As a result, these commercials look basically the same to consumers. So our main communication objectives and tasks are how we can stand out from the crowd to really move and relate to the audience, as well as how we can build awareness/relevancy as a liver health supplements. Strategy: Through exploring and discovering consumer insights based upon consumer research and tapping into Taiwan long-working-hour social phenomena, we came up with an unprecedented advertising idea and format. We gave life to ‘Five Flavor Berry’ with a never-seen-before ‘Five-Flavored Life Musical’ (describing Taiwanese white-collar workers) using relatable life stories and scenes of five selected occupations to attract and engage target audience’s attention and trigger their interest in the product. We want to make the consumers understand that with Brand’s Five Flavor Berry, there is no more fatigue but only easy play. The Execution: a huge project and big co-operation among many parties The production lead time is much longer than TV commercials. It took us more than 6 months to develop this musical. Also, we had to co-op with talented people from many different professional fields, including a director with musical background, a musical composer/lyrics writer, a dance teacher, and lots of performers with stage experience. To make the play go viral more easily, we even hired Internet celebrities to perform in the play. We have created two versions of the videos to put on YouTube: a 30” teaser video to create buzz before launch and a 10-minute complete version.

Our main target audience: People in Taiwan who work 9-5 or even longer (Taiwan places No.1 long working hours in the world); working overtime has become part of their daily routine. They often feel worn out by their heavy workload after a period of time. Essentially they become tired very easily and weak when facing an entire day’s worth of work both mentally and physically. Many people are concerned that the long hours and heavy workload have gradually been damaging their livers. So we decided to look into consumer insights to create an entertaining story that is relevant to their daily life to introduce the product (Brand’s Five Flavor Berry).

The film became very popular right after its release. Without any paid media support, we gained over 30,000 views and over 1,000 comments/likes on YouTube in the first three days, with 20% of the viewers sharing this video with their friends via social network. After the campaign ended, we gained more than 500,000 total views and thousands of likes and comments on YouTube and approximately 1,500 shares of this video. Moreover, there are many related discussions and news reports on the Internet and on news channels that helped generate buzz and spread the video. The campaign is so successful that it was awarded by Yahoo! as the best marketing campaign in May 2013. Though we had a limited budget, we were able to take an innovative approach and format to inform people about Brand’s Five Flavor Berry and persuade them to choose to take care of their livers to “PLAY”!