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I was doing some researching on social media case studies in China and though doing this, found a great case study done by Michael Darragh who is Digital Strategic Planner at Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide / Shanghai. Michael wrote of a three phase campaign that was used to promote Chilean Wine. I have put a copy of his post on this community for convenience and to give you a good insight to how Ogilvy PR addressed the business problem of promoting wine in China.
Wine is one of the fastest growing alcoholic drinks in China among a defined target audience of young (25-35 years old) urban professionals. However, after conducting research, young urban professions were often embarrassed to order or purchase wine because of a lack of understanding about the product. At the same time this group of people fell in the demographic of heavy Internet users. They were the foundation of China’s flourishing social media scene. These consumers were found to often look to bloggers for advice and viewed the Internet as an instrument for self study and a place to share knowledge and recommendations.
Hence, it was obvious that online education and social media engagement should serve as the cornerstone of a campaign to build awareness, trial and preference for Chilean wine.
Strategy
Seeking to empower consumers with knowledge and confidence, the campaigned focused on arming netizens with the tools to buy or order wine. To create a bigger brand presence, images were used and information disseminated about Chile as a constant backdrop to everything undertaken.
A three-phase campaign roll-out was launched:
Phase 1: “I love wine.” During this phase every Netizen was invited to learn about wine appreciation, appealing to all current and would be wine drinkers.
Phase 2: “I love Chilean wine.” Focusing on the specific advantages of wine from Chile, the second-phase of the campaign encouraged people to convert to Chilean wine. Here, the campaign highlighted the affordability, taste quality and sustainability practices that set Chilean wine apart from the wines of other countries. In the process, we introduced netizens to the different regions of Chile, furthering education.
Phase 3: “I love Chile.” With a solid understanding of Chile, through Chilean wine, the door was open to introduce Chinese consumers to other products produced by Chile – fruit, salmon, urban transportation and tourism.
The main channel to begin discussion of Chilean wine was to leverage the blogosphere and make this viral. To begin with, the campaign involved collaboration with four influential bloggers asking them to stage a competition. Each week over four weeks the bloggers were sent a bottle of Chilean wine, together with information and facts about Chile.
The thrust of the blogger involvement centered on getting them interested in writing about the wine in their blogs in their own personal style. The blogger’s posts were aggregated at a site developed for the campaign, zhiliwine.com. This allowed us to create a lasting and permanent record of the event. Throughout the campaign over 70,000 netizens voted for their favorite articles, with many bottles of Chilean wine offered as give-aways for the competition. Blog posts were featured on the front pages of some of the biggest portals.
A broad social media footprint is important for every brand, and marketers need to take their message to the places where netizens are already investing their time and trust online. To extend the campaign message, popular social media was leveraged with content continually added to encourage debate and to help establish a community where netizens were able to discuss wine.
Specifically:
• Kaixin – Chinese social network site where wine fans could come together and share wine drinking tips.
• Youku – Chinese video sharing site (like Youtube) where content was produced specifically about Chilean wine and this was uploaded for all to view.
• Flickr - Furnished numerous photos of Chilean wine, landscapes and other activities by ProChile in China.
• BBS forums – Seeded information in more than 50 relevant BBS forums to encourage interest.
The campaign empowered Chinese consumers to drink wine with ease, and impress their friends and business associates with “Webisodes” (short videos), created specifically for online video sharing networks as a tool for self-study. Through the webisodes the campaign delivered simple tips such as how to open a wine bottle, how to taste wine with confidence, and how to pair wine with Chinese food.
In addition to the online outreach, a comprehensive Interactive e-book in cooperation with Chilean wine companies in China was created, and the Chilean wine companies provided content and incorporated the e-book into their own marketing strategies.
Beyond social media, the campaign involved working with editors and producers of major portals to promote the campaign vehicles: the e-book, the videos and the blogger competition. It was important to reach out to editors of the more traditional online media so that the campaign reached people who do not use social media heavily, but who regularly read major Chinese websites such as Sina and Sohu.
After only three months, the greatest achievement was seeing Chilean wine climb from the fifth to the fourth largest exporter of wine to China, according to the Commissioner General of ProChile in China.
I would like to thank Michael for sharing this case study on the Ogilvy PR blog and hope you also learned from his experiences.
