Etam, a French fashion apparel brand, has suffered from a brand misperception by its Chinese audience. The challenge was to recall brand’s awareness of Etam and to reaffirm its French heritage.

To achieve this, we created a new trend on social media #FAKATION, faking your vacation abroad, without even leaving your home.

A Chinese girl revealed how she went on #FAKATION in Paris. She visited a FAKE Eiffel tower, posed in front of a FAKE Louvre pyramid, and even had a FAKE French breakfast. Her exploits immediately became a hot topic on social media and TV.

When you are Etam, a real French apparel brand base in China, a market saturated by fake goods, the timing was right to jump and proclaim: #NOMOREFAKATION. So we sent this very same girl on a real vacation to Paris, where she visited the real Eiffel tower, the real Louvre pyramid, had a real french breakfast, and wore real french fashion apparel.

This new topic became even more popular than the #FAKATION, with a total of 400 million views. It is good to see that people are more interested in authenticity than fake goods.

And by the way, that #FAKATION in Paris, we created it.

We asked a girl to use her own social media account and post a series of pictures of herself visiting a fake Eiffel Tower, posing in front of a fake Louvre pyramid, and fake French architectures.

Then, she revealed the trip was in fact, faked. In her #FAKATION post, she explained where to find fake French looking places in China and how to make pictures look like shot in Paris.

Solely promoted through influential bloggers and earned media, the #FAKATION post created a massive discussion and hit top trending topics on social media. Her story was then featured on Vogue, other fashion magazines and even national television without any cost.

As soon as ' fakation ' became viral, we announced a new topic to the public, #NOMOREFAKATION. Etam invited the girl on an all-expense-paid authentic vacation to Paris, and live broadcasted her authentic Paris experience and her authentic French fashion outfit.

Followers on SINA Weibo has increased 19,000

There have been over 45,000 reposts and 18,000 comments on SINA Weibo

Total views of #Fakation campaign content has reached 400 million on SINA Weibo

More than 17,000 likes of #Fakation campaign content on SINA Weibo