To help celebrate Vietnam's Trung Thu festival during the pandemic, Kinh Do used AI technology that enabled people to animate their family photos on social media.
Objective:
Kinh Do created the packaged mooncake segment in 1998 and holds the No. 1 position with 65 percent market share. But in 2021, the COVID pandemic sent the entire country into the strictest military enforced lockdown Vietnam had ever experienced. As the biggest player in the category, 75 percent of Kinh Do's 12,000 seasonal outlets for the brand were closed. Thus, chances of people experiencing a festive atmosphere from these outlets, celebrating the Trung Thu festival and purchasing mooncakes, looked slim.
The cancellation of this year's Trung Thu festivities threatened the brand's major consumption occasion, and it needed a clever solution to get people engaged and consuming its products in the absence of the usual mooncake street stalls.
The strategic communication challenge was for Kinh Do to continue to be engaged with consumers to keep the Trung Thu traditions alive, given Vietnam's strictest military enforced lockdown, while having a positive impact on e-commerce.
Brand objectives were:
Target Audience:
The goal was to engage young millennial parents (ages 25-34) to keep festive traditions alive using social media.
The Trung Thu festival needed reviving, especially amidst the lockdown where the festive spirits and the ability to celebrate the festival were low. Kinh Do chose to focus on young millennial parents ages 25-34 who had grown up celebrating the festival. But in the shift from an agrarian to a manufacturing economy, the relevance of the festival was slowly being lost on them. They want to embrace all that the modern world and the west has to offer while staying true to their Vietnamese identity and their culture.
Creative Strategy:
Consumer research gave the brand an interesting insight: While the Vietnamese have evolved in life with time, they don't want to lose their cherished Vietnamese identity.
The strategy to keep young millennial parents engaged with the festival was by triggering nostalgia of past festive memories. Nostalgia is a powerful reminder to make people realize what they are missing now during festivals and thus keep festive traditions alive.
Hence the idea was to use nostalgia to bring old festive family photos to life under the platform of 'Keep the Stories Alive' on social media. It embodied the spirit of the cultural tradition of Trung Thu where families and friends got together to celebrate the festival. During family-oriented holidays and traditions it's easy to get sentimental. Kinh Do used 'deepfake' technology to re-animate old festive family photos to create experiential user-generated-content, encouraging the sharing of those memories on social media where the target audience of millennials ages 25-34 was highly engaged. Social media was the top media channel to be in touch with friends and family, especially in a lockdown.
Context:
While this is the second year of the'Keep the Stories Alive campaign, it was the first time the brand was using this new technology to connect with audiences. An earlier campaign only used a TV commercial, providing no direct way to measure digital activity.
Overall Campaign Execution:
Triggering nostalgia was the reason to use the pioneering AI tool Deep Nostalgia, which the brand knew would be a hit on social media, given its experiential nature.
For the first time ever, the brand developed customized deep learning AI technology to create an advanced version of the app that lets people animate their old mooncake family pictures to bring multiple family portraits to life.
The brand designed the idea as mobile and social media first for co-creation and user-generated content, theorizing that people would love to showcase the animated photos to their social circle and loved ones. The campaign promoted the brand's web-app at TETTRUNGTU.VN using social media, which allowed people to enter email, phone, and social information to experience animated past photos of their loved ones. The nature of the idea was designed to be mobile-first, allowing the user to upload photos from their mobile photo gallery, although if needed, people could also use computers. This would help in the collection of rich first-party data and directing users towards e-commerce.
The campaign ran on social media and digital mediums, with Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) and public relations (PR) in the two months leading to the Trung Thu festival on September 21st. PR and KOLs helped showcase how the brand's app helped people experience and share their own mooncake stories with the world.
Kinh Do's Keep Stories Alive platform gave people a compelling reason via social media to experience the brand. The idea was designed to be social media first and inherently appealing, accessible, and shareable. People could easily try the technology out on their old family photos and share the memories with their family and friends on social platforms despite being in lockdown. Though it's a novelty, the Keep Stories Alive platform is not tech for tech's sake — it offered value exchange to the brand's customers and had an inbuilt social media virality that put the brand top of mind at a key consumption occasion.
The main reasons for pivoting to use social media over regular channels like TV commercials were for the consumers. Social media on mobile was the best way for the user to be in touch with friends and family, and hence the perfect platform for the brand to keep the festive stories alive during the pandemic.
The nature of the idea was designed to be mobile-first, allowing the user to upload photos from their mobile photo gallery, although if needed, people could also use computers.
Use the experiential power of social media to engage and keep festive stories alive
Target: Reach and engage with 17 million people.
Achieved: The brand reached 47 million users, created 420 million impressions, and had 14 million engagements while animating more than 186,000 faces. For a country of 97 million, the campaign was a remarkable success.
Harnessing social media for rich consumer data
Target: Obtain 25,000 unique consumer data.
Achieved: Kinh Do obtained rich first-party data on 70,000 individual users, allowing for the creation of more insightful and tailored campaigns in the future.
E-commerce push aided by social media visibility
Target: Achieve 4 percent growth.
Achieved: Kinh Do exceeded the target with 8 percent growth in e-commerce sales compared to last year by harnessing the power of social media.
The brand's power score significantly improved from 8.2 to 9.9, claiming the number one position in the category according to Kantar.
Additionally, the brand received thousands of quotes from consumers on how their festive memories stayed alive.
