The Campaign

What do we do? A.S. Watson Group, as an international retailer based in HK for 175 years, we feel obliged to do something for our home city. As we launched “Project LOL”, a philanthropy programme aimed to bring people “Lots of Love, Lots of Laughs”, we wanted to also bring Hongkongers ONE MORE REASON TO SMILE People love selfie. We turned selfie into a hook to remind people about the happy side of life; and smile starts from our volunteers. Volunteering spreads our love. Happy faces are seen from the philanthropy/ volunteer activities when we serve the community. Ice-cream makes you happy. What's better than an ice-cream treat in the summer? We wrapped the classic softee van which associates with happy memories going around the city to give free ice-cream. Smile is contagious. With the smiles we generated, we inject the much-needed positive energy to the community in HK.

Execution

“We Smile” web app was launched since April 2016, we encouraged Hongkongers to take cheerful selfies and upload to “We Smile”. Utilising face recognition technology and biometrics analysis, “We Smile” rates every smiling face in the selfies uploaded, with a maximum score of 100. We partnered with YWCA HK in April to organise a highlight volunteering activity to serve 1,750 singleton elderly with 1,300 volunteers, participants includes colleagues and business partners and government departments, to create public awareness about how companies can join hand to serve the underprivileged. A video with famous YouTuber KOL was made as volunteer briefing before service, making the service experience cheerful. We have also recognised over 940 students this May under Hong Kong Student Sports Awards scheme, nurturing local sports talents for the 11th year. This year, Sonia Lo, one of our 9,200 past awardees, is going to pursue her dream in the Rio Olympics.

Many Hongkongers took on the “challenge” to achieve that perfect, 100-point-smile. Driving the “Accumulated Smile Index” to exceed 1 MILLION in just three months. That’s ONE “Smile Point” for every seven Hongkongers. The web app and related campaigns had attracted coverage from renowned media including Campaign Asia, Marketing-interactive, BW Confidential, Inside Retail, Cosmetic Business, and many other local publications. We directly touched over 500,000 people in 3 months, passing on the positive energy to the wider community. The YouTube volunteer briefing video went viral with 170,000 views on the first week of launch, as the Top Trending YouTube video in HK; audience appreciated the video as an engaging educational material. To date, over HK$7 million was donated from ASW to support charitable causes to HK under the name of Project LOL. With the efforts from other markets, the donation is HK$82 million worldwide in 2016 alone.

The Situation

LAUGHTERS ARE MISSING IN OUR HOME LET’S MAKE HONG KONG HAPPY AGAIN, ONE SMILE AT A TIME A.S. Watson is celebrating its 175th anniversary by making HK people smile again. As the region's largest international Health and Beauty retailer, and operating the No. 1 pharmacy / drugstore brand in Asia, we want to celebrate our anniversary with a cause - to make our fellow citizen happy again.

The Strategy

Audience: General HK public Key Beneficiary : Elderlies from YWCA, Students from all schools in HK To make it more relevant to Hongkongers, we need to talk to them in a local way. The tone and manner is very conversational in Cantonese to encourage them in submitting their smiles. On media, we deployed one of the most favourite advertising channel which accompanied most of HK people's childhood - Softee van. The signature jingle and Project LOL messages on the classic van made the impression even more relevant & engaging to Hongkongers. On social media, we invited popular KOL to film a video as tips and pre-event brief to volunteers, which became viral - top trending video on YouTube in the first week of launch, it's also widely reported in marketing & traditional print media. Following its success, other Asia and Europe operations are also extending the reach of Project LOL.