The Campaign

Our idea was, simply, "Dream Again" - inspiring and spark a little seed of courage for women to start dreaming again. Understanding the sensitivity and the importance of cultural nuance, "Kids Counselor" - a rather unconventional social experiment conducted in three countries (Japan, Korea, China), where 16 women in each country are invited to a research interview to talk about their dreams. Set in a studio, each woman was initially led to believe that she was being interviewed by a female counselor sitting across from her. What they didn't know, was it was children ("kid counselors") behind the scenes who had been asking all the questions through the counselor, and giving them words of encouragement to dream all along.

Creative Execution

Other than a simple questionnaire each respondent filled out about herself, there was no script, no set discussion guide, no "takes." Four cameras filmed 120 hours of raw footage which was reduced down to 4 minutes of culturally relevant content per country. The films launched on June 21 globally - taking over social feeds, with focus on relevant video platforms such as YouTube and youku (China).

The “Dream Again” campaign has officially become a global digital phenomenon with 5.2Bn (and counting) digital impressions. Video view reached 34 million (20 million in the first eight days). In China, #dreamagain became a top social trending topic in Weibo. In Japan, SK-II achieved record social reach and engagement (70x vs our average in the past on Twitter). In Korea, we also achieved record social reach and engagement (4.6x vs our average across social platforms aggregated). Also for the 1st time in China (even after the Marriage Market Takeover), SK-II reached #4 Search Rank amongst key competitive set, overtaking key competitor.

In order to understand our women, Young Executives, further, the Global Dreams Index Survey was conducted among 5,484 women, age 18+ in 14 countries. Not only did we find that half of the women have given up on their dreams, but it also revealed that such phenomenon was especially strong in Asia - two two countries being Japan (81%) and South Korea (67%). Previous search back exercise had also demonstrated, that it wouldn't be so straightforward for these women to change their behavior. In Japan, for instance, women are told to stop dreaming from young age, and dreaming is synonymous to childish and being irresponsible. We needed to find an unexpected and most effective conduit for these women to start dreaming again. Taking into consideration our women's preference to be anonymous when discussing such deep and sensitive topic, targeted video platforms were chosen as the main form of communication.