IN SUMMARY:
The secret love code
The secret love code
The ‘Our Secret Love Code’ campaign, positioned as a chance for Starbucks consumers to express their love to a best friend, lover, or crush on Valentine’s Day. Flower and chocolates are predictable - so what would be a special and unique way to express our love? To answer that question, we created a sense of mystery and fun by employing a secret message only lovers can share.
As 520 (May 20th, one of many China's Valentine's Day) approaches, I am reminded of a piece of work I did when I was in the Starbucks Digital Venture group.
The word “innovation” gets thrown around so much that it starts to lose its meaning. Though in my last few years, I have come to believe that as the world digitizes, and technologies come and go, the human element is still the strongest innovation in the digital age we've still yet to fully potentialize. We are still in transition and there will be pros and cons that come out of this digital transformation, but while I was working on Starbucks 520 campaign, I witnessed just how great the opportunity was.
As the team wanted to engage with other social platforms as part of our marketing push, we worked with 微视 WeVideo, Tencent's own short-form video platform. As we drove the strategy and idea forward, we managed a group of highly self-motivated video artists creating content that was both exciting and effective. While I am very happy to be delivering a great online to offline campaign for Starbucks, I was inspired by how the content was so naturally engaging. With a bit of trust and management from both sides, the brand and it’s sales benefited in a meaningful way.
While we generated great sales for the campaign, I believe the true value we generated, were in the way we engaged Starbucks' community and with the community of KOLs on 微视 WeVideo to generate their video content to promote the Brand. In 2 weeks, we gained over 300,000 likes on 350 online user-generated videos with over millions of views content. The success of this campaign was not the fact we partnered with a short-form video platform, nor was it the user-generated content. I believe the success came from the fact that Starbucks, just like Ubisoft, respected its fans and the technology that connects them. It's the culture of these brands that birthed great campaigns that over time, builds a community of fans/consumers. These are examples of innovations that a digitized world can create. One that contributes to the community, which can generate a purchase in a meaningful way.
MARKET IMPACT:
The team explored partnering up with a community of KOLs to generate their own video content to promote the campaign. In 2 weeks we doubled our sales, gained over 300,000 likes on 350 online user-generated videos with over millions of views content.
