The Campaign

Young love is like ice cream. You have to act in the moment before it melts away. The goal was for Cornetto to be the innocent icebreaker to help young Chinese express their unexpressed emotions. The core creative idea was ‘Follow your heart, don’t wait’. The Cornetto product itself became the vehicle for emotional expression in the form of love confessions that were created and shared on mobile. To maintain relevance to the product and also generate talkability, the Cornetto love confessions ‘melted away’ if they were not read within 520 seconds (5 2 0 sounds the same as I Love You in mandarin Chinese).

Creative Execution

Cornetto love confessions were designed to be created on mobile from May 20 to August 31. A series of Cornetto templates let people create their love confession in the shape of a customize Cornetto cone. Their love confession could then be sent to the object of their affection. After 520 seconds the love confession started to melt away, just like ice cream. Everything pointed to the love confession mobile experience. Specially designed Cornetto packaging featuring Yixin Zhang and Jiamin Zhao, social posts by the celebrities themselves, mobile media, online TV and the Cornetto vending roadshow all directed young Chinese to mobile to create their own love confessions. All of the love confessions were designed to be shared in social (if you managed to catch them before they melted away).

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

The campaign alone a total of 11.7 million people took action and interacted with the campaign and 1.2 million people retweeted love confessions. In total the campaign delivered 1.9 billion impressions. Most importantly the campaign delivered a 10.6% increase in volume sales year on year for Cornetto in China which was more than double the campaign KPI.

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

Cornetto’s audience is the post ’95 generation in China, who are more conservative than their Western counterparts when it comes to love and dating. They focus on the mobile more than the transitional media.Cornetto love confessions were designed to be created on mobile from May 20 to August 31. A series of Cornetto templates let people create their love confession in the shape of a customize Cornetto cone. Their love confession could then be sent to the object of their affection. After 520 seconds the love confession started to melt away, just like ice cream.

Cornetto’s audience is the post ’95 generation in China, who are more conservative than their Western counterparts when it comes to love and dating. They spend little time with traditional media and are never more than a moment away from their smartphones. Mobile was at the heart of every aspect of the campaign. The core of the campaign was the love confession. Love confessions were made and shared on mobile in order to enhance their social sharability. Two young Chinese celebrities, Yixin Zhang and Jiamin Zhao, were featured on specially designed specially designed ‘kissing Cornetto’ packs. Their social posts supported the mobile love confessions. Offline packaging, vending, online video and mobile media all directed people towards the love confession mobile experience, the results of which were also designed to be shared on mobile.