Why is this work relevant for Brand Experience & Activation?

Trung Thu or Mooncake festival is one of the biggest festivals in Vietnam celebrating the summer harvest. However the festival has been slowly losing relevance in vietnams shift from an agrarian to a manufacturing economy. As a market leader, we wanted to ensure the true experience of the festival continued every year, especially in a pandemic induced lockdown. We developed pioneering AI Technology to bring alive old festive photos, stories & memories so people can experience the festival even when they couldn't meet their loved ones. We did this in the important awareness & engagement phase of the consumer journey

Background

Trung Thu is one of Vietnam's biggest & oldest festivals & Kinh Do Mooncakes is the market leader for the past 29 years. For our core audience of young millennials with busy city lives, the festival was becoming a mere obligation to gift mooncakes and lose out on the richer cultural aspects of the festival like worshipping the moon, family bonding around dinner, lighting paper lanterns, and eating mooncakes. In 2021 we faced a bigger challenge. Covid sent the entire country into the strictest military lockdown. 12,000 seasonal outlets which created engagement were closed, chances of people celebrating the festival much less purchasing mooncakes looked slim. In such a scenario, our objective was how do we continue to be engaged with consumers to keep the festive traditions alive. And have a positive impact on e-commerce as a result of our initiatives

Describe the creative idea (20% of vote)

We knew the biggest emotion of a festival is bonding with families & friends and the spirit & feel of the festival centred around lanterns, mooncakes & celebrations In order to get millennial parents to feel the spirit of the festival, we used nostalgia to remind them of what they felt in their childhood during the Mooncake festival. Even during a lockdown We tied-up with D-ID to create a unique platform with deep learning AI technology, where people could upload their old mooncake photographs to get moving pictures of that moment in their childhood. Our creative idea was hence "Keeping the stories alive' which focused on triggering nostalgia to get people to experience the festival virtually. It gave people a compelling reason to engage with the brand. The idea is inherently appealing, accessible and shareable, as people can easily try the app & share their stories with their loved ones

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

We were talking to the young millennial parents, 25 – 34 y.o who are a generation that wants to embrace all that the modern world and the west has to offer while staying true to their identity and their culture. Consumer chats gave us an interesting tension. ‘While the Vietnamese have evolved in life with time, they don’t want to lose their cherished Vietnamese identity.’ Thus our strategy to keep young millennials engaged with the festival, especially in a lockdown was by triggering nostalgia of past festive memories. It’s a powerful reminder to make people realise what they are missing now during festivals and thus keep traditions alive. Hence our approach was to help keep traditions alive in a lockdown with a virtual medium to engage people. During family-oriented holidays & traditions it’s easy to get sentimental, and Kinh Do’s deepfake technology rekindles past stories using nostalgia

Describe the execution (30% of vote)

Triggering nostalgia was our reason to tie up with D-ID & their pioneering AI Tool ‘Deep Nostalgia’. We developed customised deep learning AI technology to create an advanced version that let people animate their family pictures to bring multiple family portraits to life. People could upload their old mooncake photographs to get moving pictures of moments & stories from past festivals. We ran a campaign promoting our web-app on TETTRUNGTU.VN, which allowed people to enter email / phone / social information, to animate past photos of their loved ones. Collecting rich first-party data and directing them towards e-commerce. The campaign ran on social media & digital mediums, with KOLs & PR in the 2 months leading to Trung Thu festival on Sept 21st. PR & KOLs helped showcase how our app helped people experience the festival virtually. The first 6 weeks focused on awareness & engagement followed by e-com push

List the results (30% of vote)

Brand Metrics: We animated more than 186 thousand faces and in the process reached 47 million users, created 420 million impressions & 14 million engagements! For a country of 97 million, the campaign was a massive resounding success! Consumer Data Metrics: Most importantly, we got rich first-party data on an astounding 70K individual users! Allowing us to craft more insightful & well tailored campaigns for the future Sales Metrics: And the final icing on the cake was a 8% growth in E-Commerce sales versus last year courtesy the campaign