Why is this work relevant for Creative Strategy?

In recent years, the influence of E-sports in Gen-Z group is amazing and continues to grow. Harbin Beer quickly responses to put creative strategy in presenting an emotional flash-back campaign for graduates/gamers. This is a breakthrough of beer category in the field of E-sports. Harbin Beer played as a pioneer to connect with the field of E-sports for the first time.

Background

In Chinese dormitory, four dormmates live and play games together for 4 years. They grow into brothers. E-Gaming is the most trending passion point for Gen-Z. Also, Harbin Beer is not only the most loved beer brand for Gen-Z, but also the only selected brand to sponsor LOL Professional League. Thus, Harbin Beer presented an emotional flash-back campaign for graduates/gamers using their favorite E-games and languages.

The Interpretation of the Challenge (30% of vote)

During the most important dinking occasion, the graduation, how to catch attention of Gen-Z consumers and win their love to the brand is the key challenge that Harbin Beer faced. The target audience for Harbin Beer are Gen-Z consumers, gamers, graduates. By launching Summoner’s Rift Never Say Good-bye campaign, Harbin Beer wish to fully engaged with Gen-Z consumers and win their love and attention by using their languages.

The Insight / Breakthrough Thinking (30% of vote)

After searching data and report from Internet, investigating Gen-Z preferences, We found 2 insights from our target audience: 1)Some words and expressions Gen-Z gamers use have double meaning, when used in gaming or graduation context. 2) Dormitory is the venue with most of the memories of college life. However, during the most important dinking occasion, the graduation, how to catch attention of Gen-Z consumers and win their love to the brand is our challenge. The biggest breakthrough for Harbin Beer was to find the connection between E-Games and Graduation seasons, by using double-meaning expressions to deeply communicate with Gen-Z.

The Creative Idea (20% of vote)

Leveraging these frequently used double-meaning expressions as key creative platform, and the dorm as the key creative device, we presented a flash-back campaign to arouse the graduates’ emotion.

The Outcome / Results (20% of vote)

-Social impression: 197 million -NO.1 buzzable beer brand during 2020 graduation season. -Sales of The Summoner’s Rift dorm can (limited edition): 102k cans in ONE day -GMV during period: 4.56m RMB, + 60% vs. same period last year. -Harbin Beer won the one of most loved beer brand in Gen-Z consumers.

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

Our competitors still focus on areas with high maturity such as street culture, but we not only pay attention to street culture, but also extend our antennas to the preferences of Gen-Z groups, so as to keep Harbin Beer brand communicate with our consumers in all different ways, continuing delivering brand value.