Lifebuoy is one of the world’s leading anti-bacterial soap brands, but it was a late entrant to China- a market dominated by long-established, brands with big media budgets like Safeguard. In the face of this challenge, we were given zero ATL media budget, forcing us to consider alternative approaches.

Our target audience is Chinese moms with young children. They are concerned with one major thing: keeping their kids healthy, especially during Chinese New Year holiday in which 3.6b people in China travel to see family, making it an especially easy time to catch germs.

Our research found that over $5billion worth of Chinese RMB is exchanged during CNY using Red Packets. And not surprisingly, this cash is covered with over 10m germs! As an opportunity space for designing a new product, this was the medium that deserved our attention.

We also knew that parents are concerned with keeping their kids healthy during CNY. Much like Christmas, CNY is the most stress-filled and travel-packed week.

We then had to find a laboratory that could produce red packets with anti-bacterial soap tough enough to serve as envelopes, and still effectively kill germs when used as soap.

Over the Chinese New Year period (from 17th to 25th Feb), Lifebuoy’s Red Packet campaign reached over 270,000 target households. Brand awareness up by 17%. A total of 830,000 USD in free media impressions. It received 1.77 million views on Weibo with over 2,300 shares and comments, and over 150,000 reads on WeChat. Lifebuoy’s Baidu Search Index increased over 300%. It received mention on over 20 industry websites.