The Brief

Background:Yihaodian is an online grocery shop in China (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yihaodian) It is quite popular amongst the busy white-collar workers. However most people still used to and prefer to shop in traditional brick-and-mortar stores. Mission: Steal customers from the much bigger brick-and-mortar super store like Tesco, Metro and Carrefour.

Describe how the promotion developed from concept to implementation

Idea: We opened 1000 stores in China’s most strategic locations. And we opened them overnight. Those stores were made of pixels and bytes and accessible with a smartphone. Shoppers downloaded a location based (LBS) augmented reality (AR) app and followed these steps: 1) Locate the nearest store on the map 2) Approach and enter the store 3) Browse through more than 1000 products 4) Buy product and complete checkout process 5) Next day delivery

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

The combination of online shopping and traditional in-store shopping hit a nerve and Yihaodian's revenue increased 17% over a 3 months campaign period. The promotional video got around 2 million views across several video sharing sites. (Watch video here http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNDYxOTAyODEy.html) Hundreds of media covered the idea including highly influential local titles like China Daily and people.com.cn and international media like Wired, Bloomberg, FastCompany and others. The campaign generated an estimated 2 mio USD media coverage.

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

We replicated the grocery shopping experience in our virtual stores ( without the annoying music) and made it very easy to a) find a store on the way home from work and b) to purchase the good: right away. Each store measured 40 x 40 meters and featured over 1000 products. We placed the stores around China’s first and second tier cities on unclaimed urban areas large enough to fit the store. We focused on on high-traffic locations such as the Central Business District, large residential condominium compounds and near subway stations.