Insight
When you’re the owner of a major high street beauty brand, but you’re only famous for being soap, how do you change perceptions and fulfill the huge beauty opportunity on your doorstep?
In 2014, this was the dilemma faced by Unilever brand Lux who asked PHD to help launch Lux Soft Touch.
Created with moisturizing ‘SilkEssence’ and French Rose infusion it was a sophisticated addition to the range.
In the Middle East, fragrance is an accessory to every outfit - it is very culturally significant.
There was therefore a natural connection between Lux Soft Touch and Fashion that PHD wanted to exploit.
The agency had just the platform - two years ago, Lux created a platform called ‘House of Lux’ which empowers aspiring fashion designers in the Middle East region.
The platform is used to recruit, mentor and showcase the best up and coming fashion designers from the region, and was used by Lux to establish associations beyond soap and into fashion and beauty.
However, tickets to attend the live final of 'House of Lux' (where a winning designer was selected) were restricted to bloggers, PR and other ‘trade’ professionals.
This was frustrating as PHD knew that Lux consumers desperately wanted to attend.
With nearly 8m + women who matched the target, the House of Lux event was clearly not fulfilling its potential.
PHD's Marketing challenge therefore became:
‘How do we build Lux’s credibility in Beauty, using the House of Lux event to a scalable audience?’
Strategy
For Saudi Women, Fashion knowledge is Social Currency.
When you think of Middle Eastern women you’d be forgiven for picturing black robed ladies wearing the traditional Abaya or Niqab.
However, contrary to preconceptions, Middle Eastern women are some of the most fashion conscious in the world.
Saudi ladies are amongst the top spending consumers in fashion retail globally and have an addiction to Haute Couture to rival Parisians.
Research informed PHD that, in a society where women mixed largely with other women, fashion was unusually competitive.
With plenty of social gatherings it was important to stay ‘on trend.' Women looked for an edge - fashion was social currency.
The agency's approach was to make House of Lux feel like an absolute ‘must see’ experience. PHD would amplify the fear of missing out mentality and make the show an appointment to view experience.
But how?
Up-scaling the event on TV was not possible due to budgets, however they needed a platform that would deliver mass reach.
PHD knew that Saudi Arabia was the world’s largest per capita market for YouTube video consumption. Aditionally, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have the first and third highest global levels of smartphone penetration respectively. Digital and mobile are seeing explosive regional growth.
PHD had to utilize digital.
Execution
Turn digital banner formats into live TVs.
PHD committed themselves to creating as many opportunities to see the live event as possible, turning what was originally an invitation only experience completely upside down.
To do this they would live stream the show across the region across using the web.
Working with Google, PHD undertook a ‘Google Blast’ and turned banners into TV Screens.
In a regional Media First, the agency used the YouTube masthead to broadcast the event live across the entire Middle East.
A ‘Cross Screen Masthead’ made event access simple on all devices.
Google Mastbox formats supported all activity, including broadcasting live using banner sites.
A live Q&A was hosted on Facebook and an event judge answered fans posts in real-time, allowing eager consumers to discuss the on-screen designs with experts.
Behind-the-scenes clips were captured and targeted to those who missed the live stream.
Before the live streaming began, PHD road-blocked the YouTube Masthead slot for a whole day and used it as a countdown to the start of the show.
Results
The impact of the activity was widely felt.
Most impressively the brand saw a 800 bps (Basis points) increase in top of mind awareness during the activity period.
A massive 8% more consumers claimed to use this brand as part of their beauty regime following this campaign.
The average time spent viewing the live stream masthead which had to be clicked to expand was 3 minutes (significantly longer than standard benchmarks) demonstrating the appeal of the content being streamed.
Earned Media worth a huge $1,234,886 was secured and nearly 70 key opinion leaders and media attended the live event in person.This spread Lux’s status as a Beauty brand wide and far.
Their Facebook Organic Page reach grew by 104% and on the day before/day of the event.
Internally, Unilever considered this one of the standout campaigns of the year for performance and strategy.