Ranking only 15th in the country’s skin care category, Garnier China launched Garnier PS cream in 2013 with the ambition to become the preferred brand of the Chinese new generation.

With limited media budget from the client, the communication objective was to emerge the brand from the crowd with strong resonation among the young Chinese generation to create a strong buzz & WOM on EPR and consumer advocacy online.

The target audience are mostly young, dynamic, me-centric and like to photoshop their own pictures with mobile apps before posting on social media.

Our strategy was to adopt an innovative EPR approach by hijacking the trendy topics under the digital concept “PS For Real” in order to create buzz and talkability of Garnier PS Cream on EPR and social media. The EPR campaign was also supported with a digital platform, social media activation and drive to store mechanism.

This digital hijacking EPR strategy allows us to boost strong talkability and enormous media exposure on the product and the brand with limited media budget.

After one simple activation on Nov 12th 2013, consumers actively engaged with the campaign, reaching the talkability of 7,000 reposts and 4,000 comments within 1 hour, 42,000 reposts and 9,000 comments within 3 hours. It amounted to top 5 hottest topic within 4 hours and reached the huge audience coverage of 276 million views in total.

Large research has been done in the beginning of the project in order to get a comprehensive understanding of our target audience’s preference and online behavior. The social team monitors the hot topics with the most user engagement 24-7. We identify those hot topics, both embracing the same TA group, and having a strong association with the products. Through making the connection between the client’s product and the hot topic, the buzz volumes are boosted to maximum within a short period of time

This innovative solution ensures the viralbility of a real-time idea, the solid talkability on the social media.

We have reached a massive awareness and talkability for the brand on the Chinese most popular social media platform Weibo, with very small media budget. We have, through one simple activation on Nov 12th 2013, reached the talkability of 7,000 reposts and 4,000 comments within 1 hour, 42,000 reposts and 9,000 comments within 3 hours. It amounted to top 5 hottest Weibo within 4 hours and reached the huge audience coverage of 276 million views in total. With this one simple activation planned and executed within half day, we have surpassed the KPI of 3 months within 3 hours!