Why is this work relevant for Brand Experience & Activation?

Our approach never lies on any single deliveries, instead, we go into the consumers from each local market, understand their emotional needs, then come up with this concept from the whole brand experience perspective, connecting the dots from all media touch points.

Background

In the short three years since its inception, realme has become the fastest growing smartphone company in the world. Its success has historically been built on its products’ superior functionality and value, attracting a loyal base of tech geeks. However, as realme ramps up its rapid growth, it needed to assert its brand values in a way that would resonate with the hearts and minds of a new generation of users across the globe. Every year, youth-centric technology brand Realme launches its Fan Festival to spike up user engagement and sales. This year, the Fan Festival was to celebrate and announce the fact that the company had reached 100 million sales, its biggest milestone to date. The brand needed a campaign that could deliver this extremely business-centric key message in a way that its young audiences around the world would actually care about.

Describe the creative idea (20% of vote)

We knew that wasn’t about celebrating 100 million phones sold. It was about celebrating the spirit of the 100 million fans who got us there. We wanted to create a campaign that brings to life that fearless authenticity that unites realme and its diverse fans around the world. With its “How Dare You” campaign, realme takes these words that are so often used for criticism and judgment, and turns them into an anthem of empowerment and affirmation for this generation of darers who are unapologetic about living and expressing their own truths.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

We had a great starting point in realme’s existing brand platform, “Dare to Leap” but we wanted to contextualize what that really means to youth today. Since the campaign would live in 5 markets across Asia and Europe, we needed to tap into a powerful insight that can transcend cultures to unite and rally our diverse fanbase. We found that Gen Z in the key markets are especially fearless, being 50% more willing to take risks compared to older generations. Moreover, this risk-taking isn’t just for adrenaline or cheap thrills. Today’s youth are driven to take risks in pursuit of authenticity, within themselves and their communities. However, the pursuit of authenticity isn’t always easy in these markets where conservative traditions and social norms often dominate culture. As a result, young audiences can often be surrounded by criticism and judgement from those around them.

Describe the execution (30% of vote)

We took the universal words of criticism “How Dare You” and turned them into words of celebration. Inspired by real people and situations, our anthem film featured stories in which youth boldly disrupt conventions—from gender norms to beauty standards, societal expectations, definitions of success and beyond. ​​ These stories were then unpacked individually through supporting expressions, both through short film and images in social content, designed to celebrate the millions of realme fans. In addition to the anthem film, we amplified the voices of real darers by featuring local influencers who were challenging conventions in their own communities, heroing their stories on impactful social media, print and OOH.

List the results (30% of vote)

Within 72 hours of the campaign launch: - Interactions with the #HowDareYou campaign topic on social surpassed 2020 by 863%, reaching more than 1.5 billion - Fan engagement reached over 1 million interactions, surpassing 2020 by a whopping 863% - Over 43K new fans joined the realme community, a 17% growth - The brand film performance surpassed 2020 by over 300% with 150M views - Sales during the campaign period surpassed last year’s record by 138%, reaching a record-breaking 2.13B RMB

Please tell us about the cultural insight that inspired the work

After the research with the client’s local market, despite the general scenarios like human, gender equality, and self acceptance, there are some unique points per market, so we hope to use the fact to further develop our script. Some interesting stories like, Youth lives in India hold big dreams to be a ballet dancer; Russian cares more on body positivity, Indonesian cares more on esports success, stand up comedy, youth in China now quite bold to wear ancient Chinese outfit, etc. After considering all the insights, we selected some key stories and made the film for China and global separately.