The Campaign

The campaign core target audience is high school students, 14-17 years old, Vietnamese nationwide but key cities focused. Almost all of them have their own secret interests, which they think too weird and nerdy to share with their friends as afraid of being looked down on while being cool & appreciated by their peers is their pressure at these ages. For that reason, they hesitate to share their so-called nerdy interests with friends. But the more they suppress and hide, the more they yearn for it to be shared & enjoyed together with their friends. “Being nerdy is being cool” campaign was born to encourage Vietnamese teens to share their so-called nerdy interests, then recognize & celebrate with friends in a very fun & exciting way, thanks to Mirinda Sarsi.

Creative Execution

Firstly, Mirinda Sarsi launched a viral clip featuring the social experiment at a high school, where the brand booth was set up encouraging teens to come in confessing their interests they had been hiding from friends. These interests were then sketched into cool drawings & exhibited anonymously for all students to see & vote for their favorite ones. All the interests excitingly received with fun, and "Acting as Superheroes" - the most voted nerdy interest was turned into a very cool and bold fun party of the interest owner & their friends. This viral clip was then spread by Youtube Masthead & social influencers. The Nerdy Interest Hub micro-site was then launched to enable teens to express their interests in cool visualized sketches as in viral clip, and share with their friends. Finally the most voted interests were celebrated in a big party held by Mirinda for 2,000 teens.

The viral clip achieved more than 2,500,000 views (35% earned) with more than half a million interactions on Facebook, including 126,000 unique clip shares. The earned media covers over 80% of total media coverage. Amazingly, more than 276,000 Vietnamese teens have shared their nerdy interests on the campaign microsite, 76,000 of those coming from Zalo. This is the highest submission rate of a digital campaign across channels in the market so far, 11 times higher than local market norm (11% vs. 1%). Most importantly, Sarsi volume sales has grown by 22.4%; volume share increases 1.4% among CSD category during December 2015 & January 2016. Regarding the brand health check, the fun attribute pluses 3 points while brand love pluses 1 point after the campaign.

"Being nerdy is being cool" was digitally launched with the multi-platforms of Vietnamese teens' key touch-points: facebook, youtube, Zalo (the no.1 chat app for Vietnamese teens), the brand micro-site, beside a big on-ground activation. The campaign started with a viral clip launched on youtube, revealing the insights that teens have their own secret interests, which they are afraid of being looked down on or perceived weird if sharing to their friends but via a social experiment, these interests were actually received with excitement & lots of fun. Then a micro-site was launched to enable teens to express such interests and share with their friends; and the most exciting interests by votes were brought into life to have fun & celebrate in a thousand-teen big party at a cool teens' place.