Background

The skincare market has communication platforms built around their product claims. Their ever-growing of “if you care, then, here something you should know of, for adding towards your skin care routine” has continued to work but also rounded itself in a loop to dig up more news from the product itself. With commercial objectives as both growing current portfolio (grow 108%) and venture into new oily/acne territory with no new product claims (contribute to 27% of total new sale), the new campaign of Kiehl’s (August 20th till October 31st, 2020) laid out communication tasks as riding on global sensation of “Kiehl’s loves” in order to build up brand relevance with local resonance in order to diversify the talk about their top products as well as maximizing the sale on new channels (social and e-commerce) & recruit new customer.

Describe the strategy

In order to address the communication tasks, the built-up strategy was to Drive Brand Relevance with Diversified Social Touchpoints & Cultural Resonance. From the data point of Global Web Index Q2 2020, with a target audience ranging from 25-35, Income level AA+, 5 key cities of Vietnam, Facebook and its ecosystem were well-matched to build up the new social architecture. Facebook acts as the main hub for traffic, interaction and engagement in order to drive social commerce; Instagram acts as a resonated platform ad organic traffic; Community Management leverages on built-in “Kiehl’s loves Vietnam” emojis to showcase a consistency in mood & tone; Social Outreach resonates on related communities/ fan pages/ influencers.

Describe the execution

The chosen culture piece for adapting the global “Kiehl’s loves” campaign was “Kieu’s tale” - the standardized literature which has been praised as the exemplary for all other literature to come afterwards. Listed activities as follow: 1, Launched the hero video to announce the global sensation has come to Vietnam (with Signature Jingle that mixes between genres of Rock & Traditional instrument of VN …) 2, Community Management with “Kiehl’s loves” Emojies in places 3, SoCom & E-Com posts with CTAs to drive Conversational Commerce & start building Facebook as the main hub for SoCom, Interaction, Engagement and Information 4, Instagram to follow with sharing key posts from Facebook 5, Launched Kiehl’s tale 6, Launched Kiehl’s dictionary 7, Social outreach to amplify campaign message on communities/ fanpage/ influencers 8, Engaging activities to drive Online to Offline: using FB AR technology allowed users to pronounce brand name correctly.

List the results

+, 2nd Place in Skincare Buzz of September, 2020 +, +58% growth in new sale +, 121% GMV target +, 1st Place in Health & Beauty category on Lazada +, WOB 60% with Kiehl's loves SKUs +, Achieved pre-order target after only 3 days

Please tell us about the cultural insight that inspired the work

“Kieu’s tale is the exemplary for all literature that comes after to follow” - Pham Quynh - famous Vietnamese culture scholar stated. The main character of “Kieu’s tale”, Kieu is famous for her beauty and, specifically, her fair skin which made even flowers & nature alike grow jealous. The work played with the famous name, mixed with brand name to deliver the same intonation “Kiehl’s tale” (from Kieu’s tale), in order to build up the modern version of “Kieu/ Kiehl’s", subtly implied Kiehl’s skin is the new standard for perfect skin. This cultural insight solved both the issue of brand name mispronunciation, built authentic brand love from leveraging up the showcase of Vietnamese culture understanding (love from heart & the mind with depth knowledge of literature and standardized beauty) as well as delivering the new talk from the old bottle outside of the product claims realm.