Insight
To change parents’ perception OMD needed more than just data and scientific proof – they needed to move away from brand-speak. It was critical to convince the skeptics with genuine consumer experience and turn them into the agency's advocates.
Strategy
OMD knows how rumours spread. It starts with a storyteller who tells a version of his/her story to another. Another then relays the story to others, adding his own interpretation and understanding upon the original expression. Distortion typically accumulates in the retellings, so the message received by the receiver could differ significantly from the one told by the first.
So how could OMD bust the myth? They needed stories that were bold and provocative.
Creating “Busting the Chinese Whisper”, OMD stirred up the hype by spreading the myth even further, fuelling conversation through social media and invited criticism. They added talk value to the campaign and incited reaction by expanding the discussion into different forms across multi-media platforms, even creating a viral video to heat things up.
The idea was controversial enough to provoke real Wyeth users to speak for them. Using their Facebook Advocate Map, OMD created an army of their own, leveraging the users' social power to convince more HK parents, completely changing the context of discussions from rumors to advocacy.
Execution
The agency sparked the fire by asking HK mums about the possible causes of infant constipation via celebrity interviews and online polling. As the discussion began, OMD started to see negative comments posted on social media, suggesting Wyeth Gold as one of the possible causes. But this was not enough – they needed something even more controversial and outrageous. So they created a viral video featuring comedian Sandra Ng, who challenged HK Mums' knowledge in a provocative yet humorous manner.
As the debate became more intense, they saw more and more fingers pointed at Wyeth without any proof, enraging real Wyeth Users who stood up and defended them. So they gathered them on their Facebook Advocate map where they could endorse Wyeth with their own experiences, creating a parenting community of original storytellers. With their customized search strategy, OMD were able to reach infant-constipation baffled mums, inviting them to visualize their whole parenting community and testify the rumour by joining their trial program.
Once the momentum hit a climax, OMD saw that the conversation had spread from social media to news headlines, and had even become the most searched content on Yahoo! Hong Kong.
The results
At the end of the day, OMD managed to change the conversation completely, from Constipation, Rumors and Myth to Experience, Advocacy And Sharing. As their debate heated up, the campaign featured on Yahoo! HotBuzz for 30 days, equivalent to 22M free branded impressions. Additionally, with over 300K views on relevant content created by their media partners, the campaign has gained over HKD 1.6M Free PR.
On the advocate map, OMD gathered over 2,600 Wyeth endorsers who helped to engage over 4,000 new mums, creating a parenting community of over 6,500 parents. Leveraging on their social power, OMD immediately improved the imagery as post campaign research showed that Wyeth’s attribute score on “Not Causing infant Constipation” improved by 12%. It also enhanced the brand’s likability as the Facebook likes boosted 21 times from 1K to over 21K.
Most importantly, the campaign addressed their business challenge by inducing over 4,000 trials, 780% of their monthly average with a new user growth of 12%.
Not every brand trapped in rumours has a good ending… fortunately, Wyeth did.