At Chinese New Year (CNY) the whole of China stops and celebrates family, togetherness, prosperity and wellbeing. It is also the most cluttered time of the year for advertisers; with brands fighting for attention.

How do we leverage this perfect opportunity to create a distinctive own-able hand washing ritual/occasion for Lifebuoy?

We harnessed an existing ritual/tradition practiced by thousands of generations in China.

The gift of money (wisdom) from mothers to their children (elders to younger generations) in the format of red packets (HongBao) has transcended thousands of years of Chinese history. It symbolizes the elder’s wishes to pass on prosperity and well-being.

With this insight, we created a “Red Packet” that was activated with water so that the recipient could actively use and engage with the Lifebuoy product. People could literally wash away the germs and avoid being sick over the festive period by using the Lifebuoy HongBao.

We used WeChat in-feed ads two weeks before CNY to spread the message for people, especially mums, to take extra pre-cautions and wash their hands regularly during this sensitive period. The HTML 5 execution also linked people directly to an ecommerce site to allow them to purchase an inexpensive sample of Lifebuoy, with a free incentive of five HongBaos were packaged as a gift-with-purchase cheap test.

The Hongbaos were delivered via mail before CNY so that mums could give not only wisdom but also good health to their children during CNY. This also offered further branding real estate as the delivery pack.

Within in 48 hours of the campaign we generated 48,100,000 impressions and added 2,984 fans to the Lifebuoy WeChat account. Not only that, we also delivered all 500,000 washable HongBao we also sold 100,000 samples of Lifebuoy to those who might have never heard of Lifebuoy prior to this promotion, thereby making the entire promotion cost-efficient and future revenue generating.