After 20 years in China market, dryers still are considered as unnecessary in Chinese families. In the US, there are 79 dryers per one hundred households, while in China, there are only 0.2.

All the brands in the dryer category were trying to solve the problem of necessity, but they all failed at the battle of their biggest enemy in China – sunshine.

For hundreds of years, Chinese people have hung their clothes under the sunshine for drying, and it turns to a common practice in the cultural norms. Compared to the free sunshine, Chinese consumers spare little attention to dryers.

To change the status-quo of low awareness, the core objective is talkability. We want to initiate the discussion about ways of drying, to break the ice for the whole dryer category and get massive attention to dryers.

Chinese consumers hang out their clothes in the balcony for drying, as it is what the culture has told everyone to do, but they have not realized they are also exposing their privacy at the same time.

We did a live experiment to point out the issue of ‘balcony privacy’ that consumers are yet to notice.

We collaborated with BiDao, the criminology expert in China who has 4.1M followers on social media. We took photos of family's balcony with hanging clothes in advance, and asked BiDao to deduce family circumstances just based on the photos. He accurately pointed out the family member’s occupation, then living habits, and even found out the real profile pictures of them, which surprised every family who took part in the experiment.

We then posted the experiment process online to alert Chinese consumers and sent out the message: don’t hang out your privacy.

The primary focus of the audience is the urban young generation in China. They are in their early thirties, live in tier 1 & tier 2 cities. Being more open-minded, they are less stubborn towards traditional ideas and more willing to embrace new lifestyle. They are most likely to be educated, reflect on their blind faith towards sunshine and try out new choices for drying.

To talk to them, we didn’t choose to communicate product superiority like hygiene or fabric care, we shifted the focus to ‘privacy’ – something that is debated a lot in China nowadays. While older generation might consider privacy as unimportant, the young generation is becoming more aware of privacy issues as they share out massive information online. The clashes between old and young mindset are exactly what we want to initiate for the discussion about dryers.

Stage #1: Point out the balcony privacy issue through the social experiment. We collaborated with BiDao to conduct the social experiment on Bilibili (the most influential platform for Chinese youth). In the experiment, BiDao successfully pointed out the family’s circumstances just based on photos of their balcony with hanging clothes, which indicates the clothes you hang might expose your privacy.

Stage #2: Intensify the discussion within a larger group. The social experiment were soon brought to Weibo (Chinese’s Twitter), where more consumers joined the debate about ways of drying. Consumers realize the hidden risk of balcony privacy, and clash against traditional ways of drying.

Stage #3: Showcase Bosch dryer’s solution and drive people to EC purchase page. We collaborated with more e-commerce KOLs elaborating product features of Bosch dryers, and directed consumers to Bosch dryer’s e-commerce page. With the rising awareness, we turned attention to urgency for purchase.

Awareness:

• The total impression reached 185 million, which is 50% higher than estimation

• BiDao’s Weibo post about this social experiment received 308% more engagement compared to his average post, showing that the content was greatly welcomed by his followers

• The engagement on Bosch Official Weibo Account has increased by 4266% compared to the average post in non-campaign period

• The total engagement reached over 263k, which is 119% higher than estimation

Interest:

• The click-through-rate to Ecommerce page is 197% higher than the estimation

• The search amount in Tmall (Chinese’s Amazon) increased by 204% compared to the previous month

Purchase:

• The monthly sales of Bosch dryers increased by 436% compared to the previous month