Creative Execution

The digital strategy was all about seeding the announcement in the right place to create the fastest and biggest echo effect. Our insight was that nowadays Chinese people mostly trust what their peers share on the social networks than official article nor advertising. That’s why to seed our trick we used a blend of the most popular social media in China: Weibo & Wechat, sending some retouched vintage pictures via a small circle of influencers, and a mysterious vintage video featuring the Qilin puppet to make the belief of its existence even more credible… And to make sure people won’t miss any content and to amplify the conversation, we created the hashtag: #babyqilin#

We drove China crazy. The hashtag of the campaign #babyqilin# became the most discussed topic on Weibo during two days right after posting the first pictures and the video. In the following days, spontaneous conversations were created with people asking for the truth ; some people even research the original photos to find out the trick, generating the belief this was a scientific conspiracy behind, hiding the existence of the Qilin for years! When we announced the identity of the brand behind the campaign, 2.1 million people attended the post-reveal on Weibo. All the posts of the campaign generated more than 35 million views, with a high qualitative level of conversation.

Qeelin is a high-end jewellery brand whose DNA is to ally inspirations from chinese mythology with contemporary design. Above all it is one of the rare brands in the luxury sphere allowed to be truly original: its ambassador is a puppet reproduction of the Qilin, a chinese mythological animal made of lion, ox and dragon. The Qilin has been a legend in China for thousand years, but except in front of temples or in traditional paintings, nobody has ever seen a living Qilin before. That is why we were the only high-end jewellery brand that could pull such a big trick on an entire country, by spreading the news of the real existence of the Qilin on the Chinese social networks, with the Qilin puppet appearing in ancient chinese photos retouched and into a mysterious vintage video.