The Campaign

In China, people believe that dandruff is related to mental stress, so the brand’s association with content that requires brain power was a natural thematic fit. We partnered with a popular fictional murder mystery game show called “Victory Games: One Of Us” which required mental focus and concentration. As we needed to create social relevancy to the dandruff problem “Victory Games: One Of Us” not only gave us the opportunity to convey this message playfully, but also delivered scale as it was distributed on a popular online platform.

Creative Execution

Kang Wang didn’t simply integrate promotional messages in “Victory Games: One Of Us” – the brand became a smart observer-fan character. The brand’s character participated in online chats, offering tips and information to celebrities to assist them in finding the killer. Kang Wang was smart, funny, and young – all qualities the brand lacked in its previous iteration as a medicinal product. Beyond helping to solve the show’s mysteries, we were also able to drive purchase to Kang Wang’s eCommerce platform with “Watch and Buy” overlays when the product appeared on screen – allowing the audience to click on the link, on their device to ‘buy now’ through the ecommerce platform via their smartphone and desktop.

The campaign outperformed all expectations, smashing sales targets, uplifting the brand equity and outperforming all planned media deliverables. Sales uplift: - Sales on brand’s eCommerce store rose by 20 percent during the airing period - Kang Wang’s overall market share rose by 6 percentage points Impact on brand: - Youku’s Brand Marketing Evaluation study showed 32% of the people who watched the show were willing to recommend Kang Wang to others - Furthermore, 37% will look for Kang Wang information when having dandruff problem. Media delivery: - The show generated 52 Million unique visitors in live streaming, a 50% increase over the original projection. There were 1.6 Million live comments posted over the duration of the 7 episodes - Total viewership delivered over 320 Million views - a 200% increase on the planned figure - Brand presence in the show delivered a phenomenal 2480% ROI vs. planned ROI of 280%

The Kang Wang campaign is an amazing example of a brand provoking the norm in order to find a better way through media. As a true collaboration, we worked with Kang Wang to develop a strategy that allowed them to transform the perception of the brand. A specialist dandruff shampoo, that used to be purchased as a medicinal product (now can be bought OTC) took a chance to innovate within the category, and move away from traditional TVC amplification and we have the results to prove the success of our approach!

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

The goal was to create a distinct social nonacceptance towards dandruff and to provoke a light hearted conversation around the topic. Integrating the brand into the content was one of the ways that we were able to elevate Kang Wang’s brand and unlock a refreshed brand personality without existing TV assets. Content integration allowed us to embed the concept that having visible dandruff is unacceptable today – but of course easily solved. It also allowed us multiple ways of positioning the Kang Wang brand in a new light!