China’s coastal cities account for a disproportionate percentage of the country’s foreign visitors. Low awareness of Chengdu overseas significantly limits opportunities to attract tourism. Chengdu’s 1.2m annual visitors in 2011 represented less than 1% of China’s 135m total. Hungry for tourism revenue and international development, Chengdu wants to raise awareness.

Chengdu is an appealing destination for international tourists to experience traditional Chinese culture, taste savoury Sichuanese cuisine, and visit the endangered giant pandas. Although relatively well-known in China, Chengdu’s brand lacks strong recognition globally. This campaign was developed to change that reality.

We reassessed 2010’s successful 'Search for Pambassador' model that first connected Chengdu with the little-known fact that it's the hometown of giant pandas. This very strong campaign idea needed a fresh execution approach to reflect cultural shifts and achieve global impact.

Our 2012 execution plan dramatically increased the use of interactive on-the-ground events to promote the campaign and create content for a social media buzz. Local activation activities and competitions in regional markets created local relevance and drove the traditional PR strategy. Facebook was the central digital campaign portal, allowing the campaign to interact with a very wide audience.

• International visitors to Chengdu in 2012 increased to over 1.5m , an annual growth of 30.3% (compared to China’s national increase of 1.2%).

• We achieved 2,852 international media reports across 30 countries in 13 languages.

• Our 410,000 Facebook fans, attracted in just 5 months, were actively engaged through online voting for Pambassador finalists, video and image updates from the participants, experiential events in ten cities globally, and a continuous updating of adorable panda content.

• Content featuring pandas and campaign events reaped 128m YouTube views.

• We achieved 1.6 billion impressions in social and traditional media.

Have you heard of Chengdu? Do you know where it is?

When we asked potential tourists in target markets these questions, the results were overwhelmingly negative. In order to reach people on a personal level with content they cared about we employed the fun and lovable giant pandas, native to the mountains surrounding Chengdu.

We directly introduced Chengdu to people in 10 global cities with experiential events. Costumed pandas gave out ‘bear hugs’ and promoted the importance of endangered animal conservation through consumer engagement. The content from local events was promoted through social and traditional media.