Why is this work relevant for Entertainment?

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 connect with consumers in a new way, 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. And in the process we co-created true user generated content that kept the stories alive

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

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. We designed the idea to be inherently appealing, accessible & shareable. It allowed people to not only experience past mooncake memories but also amplify UGC on their social mediums & chat groups

Describe the strategy

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 use a virtual medium to encourage people to create rich UGC & organically share those memories. 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

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 old mooncake family pictures to bring multiple family portraits to life. We designed the idea for co-creation & UGC since people will love to showcase the amazing animated photos to their social circle & loved ones The campaign promoted 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 & share their own mooncake stories with the world

Describe the outcome

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