Minute Maid was turning 20 years old in China. As an established brand Minute Maid wanted to use this occasion to build engagement with consumers across China.

But in a market where a new beverage is launched almost every week, being a 20-year-old brand was more a baggage than a blessing.

Our objective was to grow brand and business on Minute Maid’s 20th Anniversary in a manner that would make Minute Maid appear iconic instead of, well, just plain old.

Our inspiration came to us from the place where people saw a Minute Maid for the very first time- the humble Neighbourhood Grocery Store.

To celebrate our 20th Anniversary, Minute Maid created - The Wonderful Grocery Store – a mobile experience, brought to life using XiaoDu AI, launched via an e-commerce live stream.

The Wonderful Grocery Store or ‘Mei Hao Xiao Mai Bu’ is a pun on Minute Maid’s name ‘Mei Zhi Yuan’ in China, sharing the same first character.

Using social listening and XiaoDu AI, developed by Baidu, a tech giant with one of China’s largest licensed image datasets, we re-created a neighbourhood grocery store online where consumers could relive a moment of their childhood.

Every detail of the store from its look and feel, to games such as hopscotch, ring-around-the-bottle, and lucky-draw, which consumers could play while exploring the store was carefully crafted to evoke childhood memories.

People who had first encountered Minute Maid in Grocery Stores were in many cases now parents themselves. The internet was filled with stories of them reminiscing about simpler happier times, which included more than a passing mention of a Grocery Store and the carefree hours spent there. To increase engagement with this audience we had two phases of data gathering.

1. BUILD – We used social listening and XiaoDu AI, trained on a China-specific image database to build ‘The Wonderful Grocery Store’ – right from the activities in the store to the look and feel of every single element within it.

2. ENGAGE – We used look-alike modelling across digital platforms to increase engagement with our livestream launch of ‘The Wonderful Grocery Store’ and thereby drive greater engagement with our store.

Our teaser was a Livestream on Weibo (Twitter for China), where consumers inaugurated the store by purchasing a Minute Maid via a JD.com (E-com Giant) embedded link.

During the Livestream consumers could vote on the décor of the store to make it resemble the one they remembered. Films that re-created familiar childhood scenarios at grocery stores added to the excitement.

On Minute-Maid’s 20th Anniversary, ‘The Wonderful Grocery Store’ was launched.

To ensure authenticity, we used XiaoDu AI, developed by Baidu, a tech giant with one of China’s largest licensed image datasets. We layered this dataset with Minute Maid’s brand identity and contextual cues for the era we were recreating.

People could explore the store, share their favourite sections, play childhood games, and even take photos in the store.

As a result, ‘The Wonderful Grocery Store’ felt like a fascinating reimagining of something deeply familiar.

With ‘The Wonderful Grocery Store’ Minute Maid reminded people across China of the good times they had shared over the past 20 years.

By building novelty around nostalgia we grew brand and business. We benchmarked parameters against Minute Maid’s biggest campaign in 2023 in terms of media investment.

• Participation was 2.6X higher than benchmark.

• Our Livestream garnered 13.1 MM views on Weibo (Twitter for China), 6X more than the standard engagement for brand Livestreams on the platform

• Grew key parameters

•‘Makes me feel good’ +12%

•‘Brings us together’ +23%

•‘Brand relevant to me’ +12%

•‘Is a meaningful brand’ +13%

• Became the #2 trending topic on Weibo (Twitter in China)

•‘Brand I will purchase in the future’ grew 2X vs benchmark

• 119% increase in sales in the first week on JD.com(E-com Giant), 2X greater than peak season sales for Minute Maid during the Chinese New Year.