Creative Execution

We targeted youths on the largest China mobile social platform – WeChat, with a powerful call to action newsfeed ad message: “Don’t give a damn. Stand up for what you believe in!” After clicking on the ad, they experienced a series of interactive HTML5 pages with different “Don’t Give a Damn” statements capturing the attitude of Chinese youths, like “A ShiLiPai is confident enough not to be restrained”. They were then invited to create their own “Bu Xie” statements with our templates and share it with friends in WeChat to create more branded UGC for Head & Shoulders.

In just one day, we earned 290 million impressions, 30 million clicks, 510,000 likes and 4 million comments, a record for a WeChat campaign. An impressive achievement for the first FMCG brand selected to run WeChat ads. In 6 hours, Head & Shoulders doubled its WeChat followers to 460,000. The campaign resulted in an increase in top of mind awareness and relevancy among youths and became a top 3 hot topic on Weibo (another top China social platform).

Chinese youths live in a fiercely competitive environment, which fuels their desire to create their own path and make their mark. However, they also face immense pressure to conform to society’s expectations. As a result, they don’t feel confident enough to go against the flow, by fear of being judged and criticized for it. As a brand that aims to bring out the “ShiLiPai” (someone with “ShiLi”, or strength and capability) in everyone, this was a perfect opportunity to start a relevant conversation with youths and change their perception of Head & Shoulders as their “parents’ brand”. With the objective of increasing relevance and engagement with youths, we created a simple phrase encouraging them to stand up for what they believe in, while reminding them what our product does: “Bu Xie”. In Mandarin, it means “No Flakes” and is also a word play that means “Don’t Give a Damn”.