Talking to Chinese women, we discovered that they felt their partners/ boyfriends/husbands loved their mobile phones more than they loved them. The media had even shared stories of women who had broken up with their boyfriends just because of their mobile phone addictions!

Couples had fallen into the habit of using their phones rather than meeting or having a face-to-face conversation. And even when they were together, they were still distracted.

Mobiles had become a barrier for lovers. They had become an addiction.

Rejoice would encourage couples to put down their phones and interact face-to-face with their partners.

Our idea was to incentivise face-to-face behaviour and show couples how much more intimate life could be.

We re-branded phone down-time as “Love Mode”.

We developed a Rejoice mobile app that detected when couples were together, and they weren’t using their phones.

“Love Mode” allowed couples to track the time they spent OFF their phones, while they were physically together, enabled by location and Bluetooth connectivity after they had both downloaded the app.

The app tracked the amount of time the phone was not in use, and the longer the time spent in Love Mode, the more chances they had of winning prizes to help them spend more time with their partners.

Prizes included a trip to Singapore, coupons on Dianping (China’s version of Yelp), movie vouchers, Haagen Dazs coupons and – of course – money off Rejoice products.

We created awareness for our app by launching a viral video, showing a couple being together and contrasting digital terms like “FaceTime” and “Like” with their real, intimate definitions which were far more precious.

Love really does conquer all! We reversed a two-year sales decline, increased our market share, and Rejoice has seen dramatic growth in both awareness and consideration.

More than 750,000 people have participated in the Love Mode campaign, either by downloading the app or via our mobile site.

In total, China spent 100 million minutes in Love Mode – real intimate time spent by couples together, not playing with their mobile phones.

This quality time has helped Rejoice boost top of mind awareness by 0.5 points among China 1+ consumers, its first improvement in the past quarter.

Consideration among China1+ consumers is also up 2.5 points period on period and up to its highest level in the past 12 months.