Challenge
Indonesia was hosting 26th SEA games (Olympics for South East Asia) in November 2011 after a gap of 14 years. But the game was mired in stories of delays, corruption and there was low awareness among the larger population. The negative publicity was eroding the public’s confidence to win the 2011 SEA games. There were no sponsors ready to be associated with this game until Unilever Indonesia stepped in and decided to sponsor SEA games in September 2011 (less than 13 weeks before the start of the games). The challenge for Mindshare was to ignite winning spirit in the people of Indonesia ahead of the SEA games with limited time.
Insight
Unilever picked three of its male grooming brands to help rebuild confidence in the games. Unilever’s youth-centric brands CLEAR, Rexona and Vaseline personify confidence and optimism. These brands would encourage the public to get involved with the games. The games presented an opportunity to work for larger purpose of mobilizing the nation on the brand’s core promise.
Solution
Mindshare created an anthem for the games: a one minute branded video with two of Indonesia’s biggest pop stars and brand ambassadors, entitled ‘Ayo Indonesia Bisa’ (Come on, Indonesia, we can!). It was a rallying cry with a catchy stadium chant chorus. Mindshare then made a music video featuring local sports icons. The video appeared across media and encouraged everyone to support Indonesian players by putting their own cheering slogans on the official website, Twitter, Facebook and on mobile.
The strategy was to mobilize the Facebook generation to overcome the negative press and cheer the home team on. Similar to Facebook ‘likes’ Mindshare created an ‘I Support Indonesia’ icon on the official website www.ayoindonesiabisa.com. This site linked to Facebook, Twitter and the mobile app mobile so people could participate in the movement.
The tweets sent in support were aired on popular TV channels and newspapers used some of the tweets as headlines leading up to the games. Google ‘road blocked’ on android mobile phones, on iPads and iPhones Yahoo placed the cheering slogans along with the masthead. The first national roadblock of the video ran on Facebook for 12 days. Also, 185 radio stations joined the movement by airing the cheering supports from people.
The 80,000 spectators sang the ‘Ayo Indonesia Bisa’ song during crucial Indonesian matches. People created their own versions of ‘Ayo Indonesia Bisa’ in forms of wall posters, music, video games, and t-shirt merchandise.
Results
Unilever’s new anthem “Ayo Indonesia Bisa” inspired them to believe again. Indonesia’s medal tally was double that of second place country, Thailand, energized by chants of “Ayo Indonesia Bisa”.
15 million people supported the campaign; it received four million cheering tweets in just five weeks and 600,000 Facebook fans.
Brand equity score hikes of 30% were achieved across the board. Earned media was worth 10 times that of paid media.
Average sales of all three brands sales grew by 32%.