ABO FIRST MONKEY IN SPACE

Silver Spike
TitleABO FIRST MONKEY IN SPACE
BrandSOHO CHINA
Product / ServiceSOHO GALAXY
CategoryA01. Best Fictional Program, Series or Film where a client has successfully created a drama, comedy or miniseries around a product or brand
EntrantOGILVY & MATHER SHANGHAI, CHINA
Entrant Company OGILVY & MATHER SHANGHAI, CHINA
Contributing Company 2 OGILVY & MATHER SHANGHAI, CHINA
Contributing Company POINTBLANK London, UNITED KINGDOM

Credits

Name Company Position
Ray Hao Ogilvy/Mather Advertising Beijing Abo
Larry Jin Ogilvy/Mather Advertising Beijing Group Account Director
Kweichee Lam Ogilvy/Mather Advertising Beijing Head Of Copy
Rocky Hao Ogilvy/Mather Advertising Shanghai Copywriter
Thomas Zhu Ogilvy/Mather Advertising Shanghai Copywriter
Elaine Jin Ogilvy/Mather Advertising Shanghai Copywriter
Martin Latham Ogilvy/Mather Advertising Shanghai Copywriter
Stephen Zhong Ogilvy/Mather Advertising Shanghai Art Director
Fiona Chen Ogilvy/Mather Advertising Shanghai Art Director
Raymond Tao Ogilvy/Mather Advertising China President Of Ogilvy China
Dirk Eschenbacher Ogilvy/Mather Advertising Beijing Executive Creative Director
Francis Wee Ogilvy/Mather Advertising Shanghai Executive Creative Director
Graham Fink Ogilvy/Mather Advertising Shanghai Chief Creative Officer

The Campaign

Branded content/Entertainment video is becoming increasingly poplar in China and is usually part of an integrated campaign. Most of these films use celebrities to draw an audience. They tend to be shot like mini movies or drama plays. Censorship in China is still rife, even on sites such a YouKu, content is heavily controlled by the government.

Results

Background: Soho China is one of the country's largest real estate developers. We were asked to use the launch of their latest space-age building, the Soho Galaxy, to raise awareness of an issue close to their hearts - China's growing copycat culture. To Soho China, this lack of originality is 'extremely damaging to the future of China's creative industries.' They wanted to make a stand. And of course, they wanted to sell some square meters in the process. Idea: We re-wrote history and brought ABO back to earth. ABO is the world's first monkey to travel into space, a true pioneer, and the surprising voice of this campaign. ABO returned to appeal for a return of the progressive, creative China he once knew. He made a series of appearances on TV shows and online, putting difficult and challenging questions to leading creative minds, provoking the nation to talk about the lack of original Chinese creativity.

The campaign started with a series of 'caught on camera' UFO sightings. These were uploaded in quick succession across the whole of China. Hours later, we released the news that something had landed on Soho's Galaxy building. It was not yet made clear what, who or why. We kept intrigue as high as possible, for as long as possible to get people hooked on the idea. Slowly, we started to reveal the story. By now, people were fascinated by the story of ABO and couldn't wait to hear what he had to say.

Abo's various appearances received millions of views, inspiring thousands to join an online debate. The videos' overall click view reached to 312,833 during the 2 weeks promotion period. Almost 1,500% higher than the average click view rate of previous SOHO videos - Weibo + Youku (Chinese twitter and Youtube) Overall Impression of the films: Over 43,008,550 (Weibo+Youku) Weibo fans of Mr. Pan increased around 5M after the campaign launch from 10M of Oct, 2012 to 15M of Feb, 2013. Mrs. Zhang Xin also gained around 2M weibo fans from 3.8M to 5.6M. By the end of the campaign, all 330,000 square meters of the Soho China's Galaxy building were sold out, proving people were not only speaking up for original creativity in China, but investing in it.