The Campaign

Huawei Honor were releasing their flagship 6 model and they elected not to release any features of the product before the launch. How to launch a product without talking about the product? We approached in two ways: 1) for ‘techies’: ‘leaking’ tiny morsels of information (that may or may not be true) to get them salivating for more information. 2) For the non-technically-minded: we developed the tagline ‘For the Brave, of being myself’ to build a more emotional connection with what the brand is about by a native campaign in portal. Accompanied with impactful teaser ads, live broadcast, and an optimized mix of online and mobile media drove consumers to Huawei’s ecommerce platform after launch event, we successfully made the product hot sale: 150,000 phones were sold in less than 8 minutes. Huawei Honor 6 became the bestselling mobile phone on ecommerce site JD.com less than a month after launch.

Success of the Campaign

1000% + increment of Baidu index, up to 1,000,000 in the product launch day; 10 million online reservations during the week after launch; 150,000 phones were sold in less than 8 minutes; Over 2 million handsets were sold in the first three months of availability; The Huawei Honor 6 became the bestselling mobile phone on e-commerce site JD.com less than a month after launch.

Describe how the campaign/entry was launched and executed across each channel in the order of implementation.

Phase 1: Leverage influential portal sites with native content to generate buzz. ‘Leak’ believable but often inconsistent information about the specs of the phone through IT sites as well as opinion leaders. Meanwhile, created a native campaign with ifeng.com&163.com to start the conversation around bravely being one’s self. Phase 2: Build upon the buzz generated in phase 1 to create anticipation leading up to the launch around portal sites and IT verticals.3 days prior to launch, large, eye catching advertisement were strategically placed around portal and IT sites bearing intriguing message “June 24th, For the brave (of being yourself)”. Phase 3: Live broadcast of the launch. We partnered with IT verticals, video site and news apps to simultaneously broadcast the product launch event, live across multiple platforms. Phase 4: An optimized mix of online and mobile media drove consumers to Huawei’s e-commerce platform to make reservations for the phone.

‘Techies’ are hungry for specs and information about upcoming phone launches. As soon as they are announced they are shared around the web, discussed and compared. For the non-technically-minded, we would need to connect on a more visceral level. Through conversations with the consumer, we knew that this group of people had many dreams, hope and ambitions that they were afraid to realize. We need to engage them into conversation to deliver the brand spirit.