The Campaign

To ensure the objective of modernizing brand image is achieved and our creative being watched and appreciated, The Agency came up with an ambitious plan of “total media domination.” This means we want to ensure regardless of where consumers are, the Hennessy brand will always have its opportunity to communicate with them and our branding video gets the guaranteed viewing among our key target audience. So, our idea was “Golden Timing”- capitalizing on the Presidential Election in Taiwan on the 16th of January, a big day for Taiwan, but also a big day for Hennessy X.O as we proposed to have the Global Premiere of the Odyssey campaign in Taiwan.

Creative Execution

We started with digital across major news sites from the morning, as we know the people would be checking the updates throughout the day at home or on mobile, this is also served as a head-up for what’s to come later. We also reviewed the ballot opening process of past elections and predicted that the result would be announced at around 8pm and the press conference likely to be held just after 9pm, so a roadblock was negotiated with channels as well as full screen exposure for the premiere of the Odyssey. This guaranteed the viewing among our TAs as they will be keeping an eye on the TV at this moment. Print ads followed immediately for weeks after across key titles for those interested in post-election analysis, and the campaign continues until February, so the Hennessy is fresh in mind as the Chinese New Year approach, the key gifting season.

80%+ overall campaign reach TV rating points on key news channels 3 times higher than daily average, indicated premiere of Odyssey is watched by millions. Search volume increased by 31% during campaign period, all the way to CNY. Research results also indicated that brand preference score improved by 33% among Whiskey drinkers (our key convert target) after seeing the ad and key brand imageries such as “trendy” “young” & “different” up by 20% among those who seeing the ad. The last but not the least, the sales went up almost 20% during the Chinese New Year versus a year ago.

Hennessy XO Odyssey campaign used multiple medias seamlessly to deliver a truly integrated campaign that helped Hennessy to communicate its new branding concept. The campaign consists of innovative use of the creative materials coupled with carefully planned timing strategy to capitalize on the cross-screen behavior of the consumers and the online to offline opportunity to ensure the brand gets not only maximum exposure, but also impactful exposure. This campaign won the recognition from Hennessy both at global and regional level.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

In order to get the best out of this “golden timing” opportunity, we segmented our TAs and identified the right medium to communicate with them, utilizing both online and offline media for seamless communication. For example, during the previous 2 elections (4yrs ago and 8yrs ago), TV played a significant role and probably was still the main “go to” media for all the election updates, but this has now changed, especially this election is dubbed as the election for the “first time” voters (18-22y.o), so digital presence and more importantly, the mobile presence would play an important part in this campaign.