The Campaign

When we researched our audience’s media behavior we uncovered a very powerful insight: In the age of big data the element of surprise is lost. In search, newsfeeds, videos and even online advertising you see what you always see because the algorithm that delivers your content is based on your past behavior. Even your social feed is filtered based on what the algorithm thinks you might want to see. You are friends with hundreds of people but you really interact with only a handful. Even though there is an infinite amount of information out there we are more limited than ever in what we actually get to see. No more surprises. Yet we all know that really great things come about by chance; serendipity is the basis of creativity; and NOT following the advice on TripAdvisor lets you discover the great stuff. Friends are just strangers you haven't yet met.

Creative Execution

The initial ad our audience received was a sponsored post in their WeChat feed. It was an intriguing call to action. But the real surprise came about when they clicked on this ad: on a specially designed HTML5 page: we suggested several funny conversation starters (based on an analysis of their topics of interest). They could pick out any of these “random starters” or create their own witty remark to start a “random conversation”. They could then share this in their own Moments feed to see who of their friends would randomly reply. When a friend clicked on the first half of the conversation we would suggested another random set of witty replies and the real conversation would begin. To boost the relevance of our idea we enlisted a few hot celebrities to share their “random conversations”. Not surprisingly, our idea quickly went viral.

Honestly, the results surprised even us. In only one day, we sparked over 610k conversations on WeChat; we generated 109 million impressions; and 34% of them were earned. And in only two days, our WeChat fan base grew by 16%. The CTR of the initial Moments ad was 2% and thus in line with standard ads on WeChat. However, the participation rate of the HTML5 execution was a staggering 188% for the conversation starter and 213% for the reply – once the audience understood the mechanism they simply loved the idea. According to Tencent (WeChat parent company) this was the most impactful stunt in WeChat history. And even sales were phenomenal: our idea generated best sales result in over 2 years and the off-take over-delivered by 8% vs. its objectives. In short, the results were iconic – truly befitting the “Icon of Connections”.

Social platforms typically are used to spread messages virally or to reach lots of people with paid for promoted posts. But social platforms suffer from a certain level of predictability: you see what you always see and connect with the people you always do. Thus, branded messages do not have the same impact as they used to. For Doublemint we did something different: for the first time we used Social to establish “random connections” – we surprised people into conversations they probably wouldn’t have had. And thus we gave new relevance to the brand as the ‘Icon of Connections’.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

So we asked ourselves: can we spark new connections by re-introducing the element of surprise? Can we bring the brand’s promise to life in a way that didn’t feel like an ad? Of course, Social was the place to make this happen: our audience, young adults from 16 to 35, are always on and always social. And WeChat is place where they hang out. WeChat is by far China’s biggest social platform and more than 75% of our audience are on it. Our strategy was to use the WeChat Moments feed to send our audience an ad that sported the brand’s new look – after all this was still part of the launch campaign. But more importantly, the ad was an invitation to have a conversation. A surprising call to action from a brand. Or should we say a “call to connection”.