Comfort taps into 'selfie' photo trend to sell fabric softener in China

Comfort’s spokesperson said this is a new trial for the brand's marketing efforts, after it found that the 'selfie' trend has spread from the face to the body in China.

As a fabric conditioner brand, Comfort has its own viewpoints on how to care for clothing and is aiming at communicating them along with an underlying brand message of 'more than just pretty faces, but also pretty clothes'.

The game evaluates how pretty a person's outfit is with a 'freshness index', based on the degree of brightness and colour contrast of the clothes worn.

Comfort specially invited Zhang Jingjing, an emerging Chinese designer of haute couture fashion, to custom-make garments for five lucky participants as their reward for playing the game and then sharing their photos on Sina Weibo.

As Comfort is supposed to make clothes look good and smell fresh, and a designer's job is to create fashionable clothing, Unilever thought the shared goal of helping people dress more beautifully would play out well in this campaign.

The two-month campaign, which started in September, has attracted 540,000 participants. One of the campaign winners, Miss Zhu from Shanghai, said she would make Comfort the fabric care agent of her choice.