CASE STUDY: How Piaggio cultivated image of 'originality' among Vietnamese youth

Background

Piaggio introduced the Liberty Italia special edition motorbike, but faced fierce competition in the Vietnamese market, with many lower-priced scooters on offer.

Aim

Piaggio wanted to reinforce the Liberty's position as the original Italian scooter.

Execution

Piaggio targeted young, trendy and bold individuals, who were active online and the most likely to understand and embrace the value of originality.

The campaign, developed by digital agency Sofresh, was built around keyword ‘originality’, featuring people, events and items with a strong sense of originality and encouraging audiences to stay true to their inner self.

The agency created a web series of four videos featuring the scooter and a famous Vietnamese rapper, Rapsoul, who acted as an "original detector"—hunting down cool and prominent people in Vietnam and talking about originality with them.

Employing 3D sound technology and a first-person camera angle, the videos create a feeling of involvement for viewers as they take a ride around the city.

Apart from the videos, the branded homepage offered links to original stories about people and events from Vietnam and around the world. The brand also invited users to submit photos that reflected their originality.

Vietnam’s top vlogger, JVevermind, released a vlog discussing originality and linked it to Piaggio’s website.

The campaign, supported by POSM, launched on 20 August and will run until the end of November.

Results

Sales of the Liberty Italia achieved an increase of 58 per cent within one month after the campaign started.

Piaggio achieved 84,000 visits to its website within the first two weeks and close to 200,000 views of the videos within 10 days. It has received more than 1,000 photo submissions so far.

The brand has added 5,500 new fans to the Piaggio fan page within two weeks.

The vlogger JVevermind’s vlog reached more than 200,000 views.