Advertiser: GODIVA
Agency: SAATCHI & SAATCHI FALLON TOKYO
Category: Viral Film
Advertising campaign: GODIVA LOVE&HUG PROJECT
Account Executive: Saori Imai (Saatchi & Saatchi Fallon Tokyo)
Strategic Planner: Tamayo Otomune (Saatchi & Saatchi Fallon Tokyo)
Creative Director: Yoshihige Takei (Saatchi & Saatchi Fallon Tokyo)
Art Director: Akane Yamamoto (Saatchi & Saatchi Fallon Tokyo)
Interactive Planner: Kazumi Ueda (Saatchi & Saatchi Fallon Tokyo)
Group Account Director: Maiko Itami (Saatchi & Saatchi Fallon Tokyo)
Chief Executive Officer: Phillip Rubel (Saatchi & Saatchi Fallon Tokyo)
Assistant Creative Director: Takahisa Hashimoto (Saatchi & Saatchi Fallon Tokyo)
Implementation
To break through the indifference and formality, we devised a way to get women to hug. We got them to hug a specially developed mannequin that measured their hug quality! A custom-designed hugging booth appeared in various locations leading up to Valentine’s Day. We hoped to get 600 female participants. Each hug was photographed, rated and each hugger received a performance-rating certificate. This was all uploaded onto their personal timeline, the campaign Facebook page and microsite for all to see. Sites contained daily content updates and activities to stimulate participation, including an app allowing people to send virtual hugs.
Relevancy
The thinking behind the campaign is simple: make the participation component irresistible. It breaks through the cultural status quo of Valentine gift giving in Japan in a playful way and encourages people to actively participate in the real world and online. There was an opportunity to inject some unexpected emotional value into Valentine’s Day by asking women to express their feelings in a physical way, by hugging the mannequin in public and sharing their experience via social media. This campaign reflected the emotional brand values Godiva wanted to achieve and impacting popular culture in a fun and unusual way.
Outcome
6,300+ women hugged the mannequin, with 37% sharing their experience via Facebook, another 31% using mobile to share via Twitter, Pinterest, blogs, etc. Facebook page awareness was an astounding 130% engagement rate, 6x the amount of other Food & Beverage pages. 34,000 users created stories for sharing, resulting in 3.5m unique Facebook users seeing the content. Despite being only a 3 week campaign, it earned over 7,000 Facebook Likes, and over 5,000 Google search results. High rating TV shows, web news and blogs picked up the story, earning $1.5m in unpaid media. Sales increased by 8.5% despite a stagnant market.
Client Brief Or Objective
In Japan, only women give gifts to men on Valentine’s Day. Giving Godiva is considered premium and polite. But this also posed a problem as Valentine’s Day had become ritualised and rather formal, lacking emotion and romance. While Godiva is well known and respected, consumers had lost the meaning of the love and emotion the brand was meant to represent. Our challenge: inject emotion into the brand and passion into the act of giving in order to increase awareness & sales despite a flat market, engaging not just Godiva’s core target, but potential consumers as well.