Summary

The Creative idea: SK-II has supported women in taking a stand against marriage pressure since 2015 through its platform #ChangeDestiny. The challenge in 2019 was to maintain relevancy and interest three years in. The pressure to marry culminates during Chinese New Year when the family gathers. It’s so strong that 8 out of 10 single women hesitate to travel home. A major issue is the lack of communication between the generations, making it difficult to reach common ground. To inspire open conversations between daughters and parents, SK-II documented real-life stories of three brave single Chinese women on their daunting first steps of reaching out to their parents after years of marriage pressure. The women wanted to reach a mutual understanding, by asking their parents to ‘Meet Me Halfway’, figuratively and literally. The mini-documentary was launched on Chinese social media platforms Weibo and WeChat. We later amplified their stories via multiple outlets and voices, creating a diverse set of conversational verticals so that women would relate and be inspired to share their own stories. Our holistic media approach aimed to open up the subject of marriage pressure and mobilizing women’s voices across China and later on around the globe by creating a sense of unity and collective experience while instilling hope and courage. Overall objective: Be on par with the Marriage Market Takeover campaign (2016) that had earned over 1 billion impressions globally. Commercial objectives: Distinct uplift in sales in China in direct relation to the campaign period Distinct uplift in new users in China direct relation to the campaign period (Engagement objectives) Ensure maximum engagement on Weibo and WeChat with consumers within 7 days of launch (optimal window for engagement based on previous campaigns). High numbers of organic engagement to prove that the content genuinely resonates with our target audience. A high number of views of the film and a high number of social engagements. Impact and effectiveness: Meet Me Halfway quickly picked up momentum throughout China and it garnered over 18 million views within the first 24 hours, becoming one of the Top 5 trending stories on Weibo, China’s second-largest social network. The film has over 75 million views, 2.5 million social engagements across China (which is 60% more compared to the top five Super Bowl ads of 2019), and an organic global reach of over 1.18 billion, making it the highest volume of earned posts for any SK-II-brand initiative. The audience was compelled to engage and within 5 days of the launch over 54,497 consumers took to social media to organically post the film and discuss the campaign. We also recorded less than 0.5% negative sentiment, because it was the women driving the story and the conversations organically. These women were taking their first steps to address the pressure they face in their own lives while finding support in other women's stories as well. (Further results under confidential section).

Please tell us about the cultural insight that inspired the work

From our interviews, during our immersions in China we knew that at Chinese New Year the pressure reached its peak. When family and relatives gather, the nagging about finding a husband and starting a family culminates, and for many, becomes unbearable. The pressure is so strong that 8 out of 10 single women hesitate to travel home for Chinese New Year. And many of those that go home witness that they’re there physically, but not mentally. We realised that generational differences cause parents to express their love and wish for their daughters to live joyful lives in a way that by their daughters, unfortunately, is experienced as a pressure to get married. Therefore we set out to inspire women to ask their parents to 'Meet them halfway".