The Campaign

With more than 90% reach on TV, housewives have been constantly targeted by most of TV advertisers in Vietnam. As a result, housewive’s favorite TV programs are often heavily cluttered with commercials. Though craving for more content, our housewives have started to look for a commercial-free solution to enjoy their favorite shows with the least distraction. This has fueled rising demand for digital content among our target audience. Most of the content creators at this frontier, such as Zing TV or HayHayTV.vn, offer re-air programs from popular TV shows, with commercials removed up to 90%. This solution only allows audience to quench their thirst for their favorite content. Consequently, in an indirect manner, they have declined to engage with the advertising brands. Therefore, we found 100% original branded digital content a huge untapped opportunity. While TV remains important to P&G’s media mix, the shift towards digital content has suggested that traditional commercial messages alone will no longer succeed.

Results

We wanted the audience to positively welcome the upsizing idea without any hard-sell, so we invented “Ms Joy” and made her the internet sensation. The character was played by Hong Van, one of the most famous comedians in Vietnam, and also a mother of two. The comedy series features 4 webisodes, showing how big savings could help you out in everyday life. Such information needs time to be memorized. As such, we created an interactive platform that could rapidly build virality and reach millions online: - Our webisodes were exclusively broadcast via Youtube. Through Pops, we could reach millions of our target audience by targeting their content interests currently available in the network's database. To grab their attention, we cut a thrilling action-charged trailer for each webisode to promote it via online banners; - In each webisode, P&G products' functional benefits were cleverly woven in funny yet awkward situations, so that users would not find hard to believe. The solutions were then introduced by Ms Joy later, when she happened to be there. Her witty twist was key to make the instructions more memorable. - Ms Joy also helped to direct viewers to her Facebook's page through an onscreen link. That social engagement backbone kept the talks going throughout the campaign with posts updated everyday, mostly focused on smart shopping tips with other useful information about the products; - After 4 weeks, via Facebook, we invited our fans to the ultimate event at 4 key supermarkets with Ms Joy. Our fans were surprised at the end: for every big pack purchase, each shopper will get an educational toy for her kids. This meaningful reward with zero influence from hard-sell promotion is exactly what we wanted our housewives to feel when they buy the big packs: the ultimate joy for being smart.

Comedy is the most demanded content on digital. However, searching for the right show among millions from the internet is the challenge, epecially for housewives, who are less tech-savvy. Through Pops' database and network, we pushed our comedy series to current subscribers without them actively looking for it. Once watched one webisode, the viewers were invited to watch another, via re-targeting. Social buzz also helped with content discovery. Together with online PR, we asked Ms Joy's fans to register on Facebook after each webisode. The everyday interactions boosted our engagement on Facebook, thus maintained our buzz throughout the campaign.

Ms Joy’s YouTube channel garnered more than 4 millions views. Each webisode’s engagement rate achieved at 35%, given our content is 3-minute long; Our Facebook’s engagement peaked at 16%. The participating brands’ unaided awareness reached 10% increase for the top performing brand.The sales of big-sized packs exceeded our expectation by 20%, with net of sales increased by 4 points. The biggest success for us is to move sales with almost zero investment in traditional promotion. Consumers were truly engaged with our message, and for the first time, they bought products for more of the goodness the brands offered.

“Big Packs, Big Savings, Big Joys” by Procter & Gamble Vietnam is a branded “edutainment” program where we combined consumer education with comedy to make the hard-to-absorb idea become extremely appealing. This time, the objective was to boost big-sized sale units across the P&G’s key brands in Vietnam. With consumers tightening their pockets due to slow economy, they didn’t seem open much to the idea of upsizing, even with promotions. However, hardly anyone ever says ‘No’ to entertainment. While comedy programs take up 73% of airtime in Vietnam, “comedy” is the most searched for keyword on YouTube in the past 2 years. We partnered with Pops Worldwide, the largest YouTube local network in Vietnam, to create and deliver the first comedy series on YouTube, featuring the ultimate witty housewife, Ms. Joy, to tell our audience her smart shopping tips by upsizing in the most engaging way.