Insight
Vaseline suffered from its disjointed brand imagery. It needed to rebrand into a single identity. To do this, Vaseline had to return to its roots in skin care, which all began with a single product – Vaseline Petroleum Jelly. The brand had to relaunch Petroleum Jelly in the Philippines.
As part of the starting point of its relaunch, Vaseline had to cut across the clutter and get people to acknowledge the strengths of Petroleum Jelly – the most powerful moisturiser in the world. Despite its superiority and efficacy in maintaining good skin health, it is a product, which does not usually excite consumers. No one talks about it anywhere—not offline or online.
In addition, simple indoor product demos would no longer work. Consumers are used to seeing tons and tons of product demos already. They needed to see something out of the ordinary and almost controversial enough to get them talking. Ultimately, they need to be convinced of the product’s benefits and strengths. All of these must be done despite a limited media spend.
Strategy
The brand needed to get conversations and massive awareness on Vaseline Jelly without the use of TV due to limitations on spends. A traditional billboard on one of the Philippines’ busiest main highways could help. Traffic build up every day allows for as much as 500,000 views of a billboard in a single day. However, to get its message across, Vaseline’s billboard needed to stand out from so many other billboards around the area. It needed to use the billboard in an unconventional way.
It also had to maximise the use of the traditional media placement. The billboard had to work hand in hand with digital to further expand the brand's reach. Together, an unconventional traditional placement with a digital presence made for an even wider reach.
Execution
To achieve this, Vaseline created its first ever Live Demo Billboard. On the 70-feet tall billboard, Vaseline demonstrated the healing power of its Petroleum Jelly. The product was put to the ultimate test when it was applied on real leaves spread on one side of the billboard. The leaves on the other side of the board were left alone.
After three days, the difference was visible. The part without Petroleum Jelly wilted and turned black. The part with the jelly though was preserved and remained vibrant.
The stunt was also recorded via video timelapse. It was released online and generated massive amounts of conversations. With the help of bloggers and online influencers, the noise around Vaseline just got bigger. These influencers also followed suit and did their own little leaf experiments through Vaseline’s mini leaf experiment seeding kits, convincing even more viewers.
Results
Vaseline Jelly was able to transform a single billboard into a massive online digital stunt. This resulted in 911% return on investment in terms of media mileage. The campaign performance exceeded the KPIs set 3x.
37% increase in branded conversation compared to the quarter before. Spot.ph – the country’s top urban lifestyle guide to the best of Manila got over 90,000 reads in just a month.
Six million reached online – approximately seven out of 10 Filipinos saw the video reel across screens. At the end of the campaign, the video had been played more than four million times, and reached over 5.8 million women on both Facebook and YouTube.
Over a million commuters reached. From out-of-home to digital media, Vaseline Jelly solidified its credibility pertaining to healing dry skin.
Upon the launch of its campaign, Vaseline saw an increase in both awareness and relevance, as evidenced by the 108% achievement of the full year Vaseline Jelly sales forecast in just four months – making it the most successful Vaseline Jelly launch in region in 2016. Now this campaign has been taken by Taiwan, Hong Kong and Thailand.