Why brands have to woo the same consumers they once bought: Energize

Weima launched a book about social brand communication and activation in Shanghai earlier this week.

"Like the philosophy of Buddha, give before you receive," he told Campaign Asia-Pacific. That applies to all things in life, as with consumers' attention. Brands addicted to bought or paid media will lose the battle of attention, he stated, explaining that paid media is just an accelerator of earned media.

"We are talking to people, not 'sheeple'," he said. "They don't want a bike, shoe, or dishwasher to talk to them, but say, the designers behind Nike."

In his book, the key to earning attention from consumers is to personify your brand. To illustrate this, Weima cited the three-year case study of Dutch brand Miffy (see video above), which illustrates that the laws of earned attention work even in a country with as much censorship as China.

Building a brand in China is difficult. "Very difficult," Weima emphasised, especially for a minimalist rabbit cartoon character with its origins in the Netherlands. In the book, Tom Doctoroff, Asia-Pacific CEO of JWT, agrees that large multinationals and local brands are all fighting for attention. In the West, it is customary to invest 6 per cent of your revenue in media costs. In China, rates of 12 to 14 per cent are normal, Doctoroff is quoted as saying.

Miffy has been active in Japan since the 1960s, so much so that many people in China believe that Miffy is a Japanese brand. Mercis BV, which owns the copyrights to Miffy, was ready to increase brand awareness in 2009.

Setting up a large-scale ATL campaign, however, was not an option for Mercis, since China is 232 times bigger than the Netherlands and mass-media costs are immense.

Energize conducted interviews that gave it an important insight: Miffy's fans were not just mothers or grandmothers, or small children from zero to five years of age. The real fans were teenagers and young women aged around 22.

"Young adults remain children longer in China," Marja Kerkhof, Mercis' managing director, said in the book. "The enormous pressure that parents and society impose on them to perform well causes them to want to stay yound, childlike, happy and surprised." 

Because this target group is active on social networks, Energize employed a social-media representative, Aimee. Her job was simple: to blog, post, and chat as Miffy's persona on QQ and maintain the relationship with fans, which was rare behaviour from brands back in 2009. One Chinese Miffy fan responded: "Miffy is much nicer. Chuck [from Chupa Chups] never replies".

The social activation campaign for Miffy was taken further. Fans were invited to send Miffy a digital postcard giving reasons why she should visit their cities. The participants with the most votes for their postcards were rewarded with actual visits from a two-metre tall Miffy costumed staff member to Guangzhou, Chengdu and Dalian.

Live reports of Miffy's visits were blogged, resulting in a lot of earned attention during the two and a half years of similar promotions in Greater China, including partnerships with Hong Kong's Ocean Park and Taiwanese pop star Kimmi.

The social-activation campaign went on an international scale in 2012, executed in a similar manner by flying Miffy on KLM Airlines to Amsterdam, Paris, Barcelona, Rome, London and Rio de Janeiro. Brand awareness increased from 0.9 to 2.6 per cent in post-campaign tracking data (see results below).

This illustrates how social influence, which is earned with relationship-building, beats the absolute reach that is bought with media dollars. "Advertising kicks, but earned attention sticks," Weima said.