In a time of turmoil over safety in China, Goodyear embraced the opportunity to ignite a discussion on safety while other companies were avoiding it.Rather than lecture on the technical aspects of safety, Goodyear took an emotional approach, celebrating the passion of unsung heroes in society who have dedicated their lives to safety.

Introducing a spirit of safety, seven 1-minute documentary films tell the stories of these ordinary people, including a man who spent 200 days a year alone on an island for 32 years to provide early warnings of typhoons, and a retired public-bus driver who drove 600,000km without a single accident.The creative idea was amplified by inviting the public to identify heroes among their communities and submit personal short films of these citizens’ contribution to safety.We leveraged digital communications in partnership with Tudou and SinaWeibo Microblog, and the films were broadcast offline in partnership with the Shanghai Documentary Channel. Netizens were further engaged with an online campaign, driving audiences to the campaign minisite for voting, sharing and discussion.The campaign achieved 28m online interactions. An estimated 1 in 4 car-owners in China were reached with messages of Goodyear’s safety commitment, and the consumer opinion that Goodyear tyres are the safest to use increased 7%.

This was an opportunity for Goodyear to own the 'safety' conversation. Through this campaign, our goals were to: - Increase top of mind awareness and brand preference of Goodyear among our target audience, and establish the association between the Goodyear brand and safety; - Convey Goodyear’s long-standing commitment to safety.

Partnering with Shanghai Documentary TV, we created seven 1-minute films telling the stories of unsung heroes - ordinary people dedicating their life’s work to keeping others safe. An event launched the campaign to over 110 media attending onsite or via an online broadcast.Sharing these films online, we launched the ‘Find the Safety Guardians Around You’ campaign, encouraging people to search for more heroes and film their stories.

A social ecosystem was built online to promote the campaign:- Campaign mini-site, created on tudou.com (Chinas most popular video site) to recruit user-generated videos;- Leveraged Goodyear's official Sina Weibo (China’s most popular microblog site) for content-sharing and topic-generation;- Co-operated with China’s best auto-sites to promote videos to a wider audience of drivers;- Invited KOLs to seed discussion-topics and create buzz on BBS; - Drove audience to the campaign mini-site for voting and sharing via digital promotion.

-Number of people who believe Goodyear tyres are the safest to use increased 7%;-Top of mind awareness of Goodyear brand increased 3%;-Brand preference increased 5%;-Highest ever level of Goodyear consumer coverage - over 25 million interactions: • Over 20 million video views on Tudou.com; • 324 netizens posted videos, generating 210 million+ views; • Goodyear SinaWeibo microblog: 13,531 new followers; 65,341 reposts; • Other social media channels: - Bloggers: 20 articles generated 221,917 viewership (222% of KPI) - BBS: over 1,000 posts generated 3.4m views (424% of KPI) - SNS: 80 posts generated 900,000 views (452% of KPI) - Video sharing: 823,962 viewership on Youku (412% of KPI) 469,871 on 56.com (117% of KPI).

- Launch broadcast attracted: - Viewership of 146,000 (2900% of KPI); - 5,732 related posts; - 1,220 posts generated by log-in media Weibo microblog; - 15,000 posts at the Goodyear official Weibo microblog.

Our insight was that this diminished feeling of safety among Chinese people could fuel strong interest and participation in conversation on the spirit of safety.

Our strategy was designed to:- Engage our audience on an emotional level, through touching real-life stories of people who ensure our safety every day, to inspire a return of the ‘spirit of safety’;- Reach our audience through their favorite online spots and social platforms to extend the message as far as possible and make this a two-way conversation.

The theme for the brand campaign, ‘A Lifetime Commitment to Safety’, was inspired by Goodyear’s own long-standing dedication to safety.

The power of influencers was also a key aspect of our strategy throughout. We collaborated with key-influencers for the campaign, including a joint-partnership with Shanghai Documentary TV and Celebrity author and popular social opinion leader Li Chengpeng.

In China, with tainted milk, lead-painted toys and toxic-battery factories seizing headline news, consumer confidence in product-safety is at an all time low. In March 2011, Korea’s Kumho Tyre was found to excessively use recycled rubber in its China plant, which could lead to tyre blowouts and accidents - a warning of safety to Chinese drivers who were careless about their car tyres before.

Goodyear took this opportunity to own the 'safety' conversation. Given that Chinese consumers paid zero attention to a tyre's technical aspects, we needed to find a unique way to engage consumers, while building brand-awareness.