Brief Explanation

Closeup is a brand that believes that life is best lived if it's lived intensely and up-close. This is the core message that the brand wanted to demonstrate in a real way during the one time of the year when it's core youth consumer was most anxious and shy - Valentine's Day. Through the Closeup Cupid Games consumer activation, the brand inspired confidence in 18-24 year old's in India, Philippines, Vietnam and Bangladesh to make a bold move to get closer to their crushes. We inspired them with videos created in partnership with popular YouTube celebrities, and we activated them with an online platform that gave them bold ideas on ways to ask their crushes out. They were then asked to share visual (image or video) proof of them completing the dares, which was uploaded via a simple hashtag across social media. The best, boldest moves were awarded with prizes ranging from Beats by Dre headsets to iPhones.

The Brief

Closeup was losing relevance with its youth audience, who were living in an increasingly fragmented digital world, and even following a new type of celebrity - the YouTube creator. We needed to build brand favourability amongst this audience and reposition ourselves as a lifestyle brand that could earn their attention. We decided to communicate with them at the time of year when we could authentically inspire them the most with our message about confidence and living life intensely - the most nerve wracking time of the year for a youngster - Valentine’s Day. So, we created the Cupid Games

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

With 7.5 million video views, allowing us to achieve a digital SOV of 40% (Source: Unruly Analytics), our campaign successfully brought young people closer physically. We saw a 32% organic view ratio, demonstrating the relevance of our campaign and validating our partnership with YouTube celebrties. 24K social media shares and 14K Twitter mentions helped the campaign gain traction as we successfully began to earn our audience’s attention, and change their behavior on Valentine’s Day. This resulted in 133K spins of the Closeup tube, giving multiple bold move ideas. We saw 2.5k contest submissions – a really strong number given the fact that these youths were being bold in slightly conservative markets. The activity helped strengthen the Closeup brand at a budget much lower than our competition, with a +21% in conviction, +14% in recommendation, +13% growth in “seen as a popular brand, +16% in “gives me confidence” and +15% increase in “helps me get closer” (Source: Millward Brown)

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

The Cupid Games was an online platform designed to inspire confidence in the youth to make a bold move on V-Day. To get them to play our game, and because peer recommendation is powerful to them, we launched the campaign with videos co-created in partnership with influential YouTube creators across markets. These videos demonstrated what ‘bold move’ meant to each YouTube creator, and launched three weeks before Valentine’s Day to get consumers fired up to make bold moves. We then drove consumers to an online site, where they could play a fun online game that recreated the well-known ‘Spin-the-bottle’ game in the digital world, but with a Closeup tube. The game aimed at getting them to take action to get physically close, by providing 15 dares that challenged youth to make bold moves to get closer. The mechanics: spin the tube online, do the bold move, and share your bold move moment via photo / video online.