Why is this work relevant for Creative Strategy?

Our creative strategy is to deliver the Häagen-Dazs brand “Don’t hold back” message breaking thru regulations and social norms by encouraging consumers to express their true feeling with family, friends and partners freely. Playing on the idea of the “chocolate kiss” that signifies intimacy, we showed our hero leaving chocolate ice-cream kisses on the surprised faces of friends and family members. To further drive this idea, we launched an online debate discussing whether grown-up children and their parents should kiss.

Background

•Situation: Winter Festive is the second-biggest season for Häagen-Dazs in Asia and the second wave of communication for the new Don’t Hold Back concept, As a foundation for this initiative is the launch of several new chocolate flavors, providing us with a stronger offering within an important category. •Brief: To build more associations around Häagen-Dazs and connect the brand to more ownable moments in the winter festive season. •Objectives: Make Häagen-Dazs and our chocolate range the natural choice during the festive season.

The Interpretation of the Challenge (30% of vote)

•Business challenge: Chocolate is the most popular ice cream flavor in the world, but Häagen-Dazs has the lowest share among the major brands. •Client needs and brand values: We have two needs: first, to give consumers a reason to love Häagen-Dazs chocolate ice cream. This winter. Now. Second, we want to rebrand our client as bold, young, and free-spirited. Many consumers in Asia perceive Häagen-Dazs as an elegant and romantic brand, a bit old-fashioned. •Target market include Mainland China, Korea, Taiwan, Hongkong. •The desired outcome: Encourage consumers to buy Häagen-Dazs chocolate flavour this winter and to rebrand the ice cream as young, expressive and daring. Also to create a long-term connection to Häagen-Dazs chocolate ice cream by encouraging consumers to unlock their real feelings with their loved ones.

The Insight / Breakthrough Thinking (30% of vote)

•Christmas and Chinese New Year were approaching. They bring family, friends, loved ones together to share emotions and life’s little luxuries. When Häagen-Dazs launched its global “Don’t hold back” rebranding campaign in 2020, it challenged viewers to break barriers and experience real joy. •Digging online and into our daily lives, we see mothers kissing their babies’ feet instead of giving body hugs. Emotional restraint creates distance not only among couples but between generations too. •But in Asia, where societies are governed by stricter moral codes, we needed to champion this idea of emotional freedom without alienating consumers or breaking the law. In Mainland China, authorities prohibit the kiss scene in advertising. In Japan and South Korea, research tells us kissing is banned on prime-time TV. •We unlocked emotions among parents and children by creating a visual ad campaign and online debate centred around inter-generational kiss.

The Creative Idea (20% of vote)

•Idea Focused on a series of visuals and films encouraging individuals to be free and kiss loved ones. As “lip marks” signify intimacy, we showed characters leaving chocolate kisses on surprised faces of friends and family. We encouraged young people to show parents their real feelings, and urged parents to express how much they care. •Creative strategy To challenge legal and cultural restrictions, we had to be bold and street-smart. We created a powerful visual - the 'chocolate kiss’. Bold because never before has an ad campaign showed kissing on air. Street-smart because we inspired broad discussions about cultural norms and encouraged Asian consumers to set free real feelings. We launched online debate discussing whether adults and their parents should kiss and created an episode with “奇葩说”, a favourite streaming platform exploring social issues. Our debate, with wit and insightful views of the celebrity debaters, launched online platforms simultaneously 1/19/2021.

The Outcome / Results (20% of vote)

• Soon after launching our KV and video commercials, chocolate became our top-selling product across all flavours and formats in the Asia market. •Within 24 hours of launching, our debate video on Chinese social media reached two million viewers. We monitor a surge of consumers discussing the ideas of “kiss” and “expressing emotion” across the cybersphere. •By customising a debate show, we spent just 0.5% of what buying commercial time would have cost, cooped with two popular debators, and a media KOL. And we challenged the culture norms in a smart way, and inspired more people to understand Don’t hold back spirit of Häagen-Dazs. •We launched the first commercial in Asia that shows kissing in commercial advertising. By asking viewers to express their true emotions, we created a provocative campaign that challenged cultural norms and invited them to not hold back.

Please tell us about the challenger brand and how your campaign challenged / was different from your competitors

While other ice cream brands promote their tastes and pleasure to consumers, we are already thinking about how we can contribute to the development of society and culture as a whole. Restricted by Asia’s cultural conservativeness and laws prohibiting kissing in advertising, we took on this challenge and encouraged people to express themselves to their parents and children through kissing. Häagen-Dazs went from broadcasting a campaign slogan to creating a social debate challenging it’s biggest markets’ cultural norms. We asked our consumers to be free. We did not hold back.