Why is this work relevant for Brand Experience & Activation?

This CSR campaign fully presented brand imagery asset around "curiosity" and "future-provoking" in immersive ways esp. through a full journey offline campaign. The idea and assets are tailor-made for different target audience segments in different stage and touch point, following 3 phases to launch (REDEFINE, REIMAGINE and CULTIVATE) to cut through a big and universal challenge.

Background

In the age of information explosion, esp. during post pandemic coping with change, peoples’ attention is diverted further. Our curiosity to seek answers dwindles with time. Future, a blurred concept that we care, carries higher uncertainty than ever. Culture shapers and content platforms have been devising different ways to inspire people to re-imagine the future in different ways. Surveying people of different ages and studying research papers concluded that: the action of ASKING is critical to facilitate thinking. Yet, adults ask significantly fewer questions as they grew up. Wavemaker, as a leading communication firm shaping the future, planned to launch a CSR campaign. Wavemaker partnered with Zhihu, the largest Q&A platform in China with 40 million questions accumulated in the past decade, collaboratively aimed to spark curiosity with illustrating the future in tangible patterns and inspire precisely with creative audience (future shapers) to facilitate influence.

Describe the creative idea (20% of vote)

Through our qualitative research with adults and children, we found that adults don't just ask less questions. Compared with kids, adults’ imagination about the future is more contradictory, macroscopic, abstract, and rational. The grown-ups tend to “lose” the ability to look at the future in an imaginary, microscopic, concrete, emotional and fun perspective. We were facing a challenge that is so difficult and universal. The question was, how could we find a way to cut through?

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

We launched a Social Innovation project named “Our Questions to the Future” for long-term cooperation. To kick start, we identified target audience with closer attention to the future, willing to co-create, and influential in communities, people with creativity (also frequently labeled with "future shapers". With occupying 15% population in China, they set trend for others to follow. Hence, our strategy was Creating Waves with Wave Makers, i.e., Re-defining & re- imagining the future with future shapers in China.

Describe the execution (30% of vote)

We segmented Future shapers with bespoke tasks set in three stages: RE- DEFINE, RE-IMAGINE, CULTIVATE. Stage 1: RE-DEFINE 10 future life scenarios with Professionals (Jun, 2021). We co-created with 50 professionals across industries in technology, health, CPG, media, social research, etc., to re-define “future” in 10 future life scenarios. Stage 2: RE-IMAGINE with Makers and Children (16th-17th, Oct, 2021) We partnered with Maker Faire, a world-leading event for the maker movement, and did two participatory performance artwork on the Shanghai Bund. It was about questioning and answering with curious adult makers and children. The curiosity was transformed onto the hundred-meter “A Curious Route” in Chinese calligraphy. The answers were woven into live exhibition. Stage 3: CULTIVATE curiosity with Online Thinkers In November, we created an online space on Zhihu with NGOs and gained a 200K view and engagement online. The content turned into a book to be published in 2022.

List the results (30% of vote)

Our result for precision targeting: Media exposure: 248 media channels reported the performance art (A Curious Route) within 5 days with 24M readers and makers reached. Engagement: 10K+ engagement with makers during the 2 days Maker Faire event, 200K online engagement within 30 days in Nov 2021. Knowledge IP created: Our Questions to the Future, as a content program will be a continuously updated in the future and extended to more formats. This is only a beginning. This becomes an ongoing project with engaging like-minded individuals to keep our curiosity alive.

Please tell us how the brand purpose inspired the work

As a new communication agency, Wavemaker believes that the paths to future is never singular. Wavemaker informs to inspire, provoke to progress, and always relate ourselves to the future with both audacity and prudence. While constantly reinventing the industry by challenging conventionality and reimagining creativity, we intend to bring our clients unique perspectives to achieve better tomorrows. Zhihu the largest Q&A platform in China, believes that with each question, there awaits answers. Wellknown for its quality content and original users, Zhihu was officially launched in January 2011 with the brand mission to better knowledge and experience sharing, to help each one find their own answers. We co-launched this social innovation project, to inspire people to imagine, and come to feel the human side of the ongoing technological overhaul of our social fabrics, and eventually, with more questions than answers, curiosities than formulae about what will become of us.