The Campaign

Nowadays branded content is one of the popular new approaches for brands, both international and domestic, to engage consumers in China. However, struggling with the balance between brand's role and content itself, most brands so far have found their efforts bringing little impact compared to the expectation put into them. The reason behind is that Chinese consumers are very sensitive about if the content is 'too obviously commercial' or the brand/product itself is 'too weirdly placed'. All of this makes 'authentic' and 'believable' content the biggest challenge in front of anyone who aims to engage consumers with branded content in China. On the other hand, as TV media is becoming overly expensive, internet has become the the main channel for brands to publish their content, which, in result, requires a meticulously crafted digital media plan another key factor to unleash the full engagement value of branded content.

Results

In the world of fast digital content, the proper 'family portrait' lost its role for a meaningful faminy reunion during Chinese New Year. COMMUNICATION OBJECTIVE: Find a way to bring 'serious photography' back as mainstream topic. Make people take more efforts in their photo taking practice CREATIVE APPROACH: It is an increasingly cynical society where more and more Chinese people do not trust commercial messages. Thus we chose to tell a real life story that can engage people. We shot a mini film about how family misunderstandings had made parents and children drift apart. And then we brought the three generations back together through the bonding power of family portrait. CREATIVE EXECUTION: The campaign was divided into 3 phrases: Create awareness and interest - with the launch of the film, we first asked people whom they were waiting for in the coming reunion. We created an online platform and motivated people to share their thoughts about the family union and importance of coming together by using the 'family portrait with the missing member' as a trigger. Create engagement – we encouraged people to express their desire to have a soulful family portrait for this New Year. We showcased the family portraits that people shared online Reward - Top 7 family portraits that received maximum positive response were made a special offer. Nikon organized a certified professional photographer who would go to their home and take a family portrait for them for free. MEDIA STRATEGY: We made three important choices: Internet: We invested the entire media budget in digital. 89.4% of the budget went to Tencent, (owner of China's largest online social networks) Influence:We invested the rest 9.6% of the media budget to recruit key opinion leaders online. Integration:We integrated Nikon-owned social platforms viz. micro-blogging, video sharing and WeChat.

We decided to use the 'family portrait' as the vehicle to push people for more efforts in their engagement on CNY so as to bring the 'family' back to the 'family reunion'. We shot a mini film about how family misunderstandings had made parents and children drift apart. And then we brought the three generations back together through the bonding power of family portrait.As a result, the film received 1,874,607 views, and it was voted as 1 of the 7 most touching Chinese New Year brand films, the only one from digital camera category (Source: SocialBeta.com).

Outcome With only 13% of last year's campaign media budget, Nikon achieved 3 times more engagement performance compared with last year: The campaign film received 1,874,607 views, and it was voted as 1 of the 7 most touching Chinese New Year brand films, the only one from digital camera category (Source:SocialBeta.com) 3,520,812 topic conversations were generated, among which only 23,204 conversations were directly linked to online opinion leaders, indicating strong interest from the public 53% of the total conversations mentioned that people are either going to take a proper family portrait this year or they have already done it because of the campaign 471,258 consumers shared their family portraits or stories with Nikon CCTV Channel 1 and Channel 13, as well as 15 newspaper titles, reported the campaign, generating PR value estimated to be more than US$ 2 million. (Source: Nikon) Nikon's D-SLR category sales grew by 5.5% in the campaign month, turning around 3 months of consecutive negative-growth. Comparing the media cost per camera sold with last year's performance, Nikon made this year's media investment 4.35 times more effective. (Source: GfK;CTR) As a result, Nikon managed to move its total market share from 24.9% to 26% .(Source: GfK)