The Brief

China is the hottest market for luxury brands, which all want their share of the pie. The brand Qeelin is a new comer in the high-end jewellery sector, with a boutique spirit. Facing Cartier or Bulgari which have giant flagships in the biggest malls of China, the battle of the physical visibility was already lost. We noticed that the name Qeelin was inspired from the Qilin, a chinese mythological animal. Even though in China no one has heard about Qeelin as a brand, every chinese knows the Qilin as an animal.

Describe how the promotion developed from concept to implementation

To make the heart-shaking news of the Qilin existence credible in a country as big as China, we shot a puppet baby Qilin and we integrated it into ancient chinese photos and into a vintage-style video. We sent a first round of pre-written posts accompanied with either the video link or some retouched photos to a small circle of influencers of Weibo and Wechat and let them to spread the news, asking their communities “what is this animal”? “is it the Qilin”? and finally concluded “Is the Qilin alive”? To make sure people won’t miss any content and to amplify the conversation, we created the hashtag: #babyqilin# (#麒麟宝宝#)

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

With only 10 retouched pictures and one 20-second-long video, 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.

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

Qeelin’s DNA is to ally inspiration from chinese mythology with contemporary design, to seduce the new generation of Chinese people proud of their origins while keeping an eye on the Western trends. 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.