In an effort to earn more business with value shoppers, detergent brand Surf created a hub on Zalo — a popular social media and messaging app in Vietnam — which was leveraged to share key content and drive affinity among the target audience.
Objective
COVID-19 and the resulting economic downturn have had a significant impact on consumer incomes, causing them to drastically alter their spending habits and living standards. Consumers are looking for ways to save by doing things like reducing their basket value at the grocery store and switching to economy brands.
In fact, in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam, economy shopping now makes up more than 40 percent of total consumer activity. This has created fierce competition within the economy tier, and brands like LixCo, Net, and Thai Brands have aggressively altered their strategies to capture these customers' dollars.
For detergent brand Surf, this economic environment has created a new challenge: The brand wanted to maintain its leadership position and widen its share gap among other brands entering the economy shopping space.
Context
Due to economic difficulties created by the pandemic, rural consumers were settling for lower living standards. A lack of viable entertainment options was creating boredom, making the task of household chores that much more difficult. These individuals also faced concerns about being left out of the loop on the latest news and trends, as many of their relatives were living in other parts of the country.
Target Audience
The target audience for this campaign was women ages 25 to 45 who were residing in rural or suburban areas of Vietnam. They are family-oriented, optimistic, and have a simple mindset. They view household chores as acts of service for their families.
Secondarily, they allocate approximately 65 minutes per day for online communication, as staying connected with their loved ones is crucial. Around 28 percent of their online time is dedicated to updating the latest news.
Creative and Media Strategy
The resulting campaign was dubbed "Surf Sister." The effort would primarily live on Zalo, a messaging platform to cater to rural women in the Mekong Delta who wanted to be connected with loved ones and like-minded people. The brand would also leverage display banners and its long-time relationship with the Vinh Long channel TV show, "My Wife Is Number 1" to fully cover its target audiences' media presence and passion points.
The Surf Sister hub on Zalo was designed to provide helpful and entertaining content tailored to rural women. This initiative aimed to enhance their lives and bridge any information gaps they might have had through these daily updates, which included things like helpful tips to care for their families or connect with other women in the community.
Taking advantage of the brand's long-term partnership with the popular TV show, "My Wife Is Number 1" on the Vinh Long channel, Surf embedded QR codes into the show, directing viewers to the hub on Zalo. This integration strategy helped connect a wider audience to the content and build awareness of the community.
Additionally, Surf utilized a multi-channel approach to effectively recruit new members to the Surf Sister community. The brand successfully delivered functional benefits to rural consumers by using weather targeting and relevant content to highlight its superiority over the competition.
Through these efforts, Surf managed to form strong bonds with customers in the Mekong Delta, leaving a lasting impact and contributing to the brand's success.
The campaign reached two million Mekong Delta women monthly. Within the first two months of launch, 14,000 women followed Surf content within the Surf Sister hub, with 1,000 of them taking part in the hub's game.
The content view rate on the hub was 20 percent higher than the benchmark, and the total number of visits eclipsed the benchmark by 293 percent.
Overall, more than 450 points in gained market share are attributed to the campaign. Importantly, the hub has delivered key value insights, which have been utilized for other Surf brand activities.
