Results and Effectiveness

- Brand awareness increase by 9% after the campaign - Sales increased 10% Year on Year - 400,000 people joined the party - The campaign awareness was 39% among target audience, higher than the Budweiser(22%) and Heineken campaign (25%), which ran at the same period. - 140 Weibo KOL (with total 328 Mil. Fans) participated in our campaign, generating 10,547 retweets and 1,977 replies. - More than 6,500 people wrote down their end of world wishes and 2,300 downloaded our mobile app.

Creative Execution

It all started with a ‘Countdown to the End of the world ‘, which we ran across paid video platforms, vertical websites and Carlsberg’s own website. This was supported by traffic generating OOH campaign that featured a QR Code, driving beer lovers to the campaign Hub and mobile APP. To really generate buzz we asked our fans to tell us what they wanted to do before the world ended, in their own end of the world wish list. 3 days before 21th, Dec, further amplified the campaign on national TV channels with first and last in break ads during prime time. On the day that the world was meant to end, we hosted parties across 5 cities to celebrate, where Brand May Day performed. On 22thDec, when the world didn’t end, we launched another TV campaign to celebrate that all survived the end, using footage from the party.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

In China, Carlsberg is dwarfed by massive local brands and the might of Budweiser, which out spends it by a ratio of 5:1. What Carlsberg needed was a way to create a bang in the market armed with a small budget, a neat strap line of “ Have Fun不准不开心” and a partnership with Pop Rock Brand May Day. With a budget like ours, we realized we needed something ‘bigger than the brand ’ to create excitement among the Chinese beer drinkers. Our plan was to build a ‘ Live’ event that captures the nations imagination. We look at search and social buzz volumes and saw that, for many months Chinese youth had been getting excited about December 21st – The end of the world as predicted by the Mayans. This gave us a brilliant communication platform for Carlsberg. “ Welcome to the end of the World… Have Fun!”