MARKETING PLANNING AND BUYING

Head and Shoulders, a shampoo brand, worked with ride-hailing app Grab to confront dandruff deniers in Vietnam.

Head & Shoulders needed to drive home its strong anti-dandruff credentials and get consumers to try out the brand, but it had strong competition from Clear, which dominated TV. Vietnam is a land of motorcycles and subsequently helmets, but they often create dandruff so Head & Shoulders used helmets to show the dandruff deniers their dandruff problems. The campaign was executed in partnership with Grab where, within the helmet, there was a branded filter that would do a dandruff test and the rider would be prompted to purchase shampoo. There was an impressive conversion rate of 25% driving more than 20,000 trials.

Campaign details

Brand: Head and Shoulders Lead Agency: MediaCom Region: Vietnam

Strategy

Objective

In Vietnam, when heat & humidity reaches its highest levels during summer, dandruff becomes ubiquitous. It is the key period when Head & Shoulders needed to drive home its strong anti-dandruff credentials and get consumers to try out the brand. However, with Clear (Unilever) dominating television, we needed an alternative disruptive platform to connect with consumers. We needed to bring a behavioral change among dandruff deniers by making them face the reality that they have dandruff and then push trial for H&S as its effective solution. Target Audience

Our target audience were young adults from 18-35 years old. A large majority of our consumers are dandruff deniers. 50% have dandruff but only 28% of them use an anti-dandruff shampoo. This group is a low hanging fruit because we believed that once they are faced with reality that they have dandruff they will look for solutions. This is the perfect window to push Head & Shoulders as the best anti dandruff shampoo.

Creative Strategy

Vietnam is a land of motorcycles there are 45 million motorcycles in the country! The entire country rides on motorbike for transportation, for selling food, for an afternoon nap or as a dating venue. If there are bikes, then there are helmets. And helmets with hot and humid climate means dandruff as proven by the increase in sales of AD shampoo in summer by 105 index. Hence, the idea was to hijack motorbike helmets in a mass scale, show the dandruff deniers their dandruff problems and drive H&S trial through them - all in one consumer journey.

Context

We tried out a true innovation - the first time in Vietnam, to achieve our objectives. The dandruff deniers are mostly young adults who are studying in university or first jobbers. Since, buying a bike is expensive for them, for travel they mostly depend on the biggest ride hailing service in Vietnam called Grab, with the product GrabBike specially focused on bikes for rent. 1 million Vietnamese commute with GrabBike daily. Grabs reach in South East Asia can be estimated with their recent acquisition of Ubers entire South East Asia operation. GrabBike provided us with an already available platform with huge reach to hijack their bikes and helmets to show the consumers problem they have with dandruff. Also, by using their details available with GrabBike we could target them with huge promotional offers on H&S for trial purpose.

Execution

Overall Campaign Execution

The campaign was executed with the consumers calling for a GrabBike ride through the Grab app. When the biker arrived, he provided the rider with the usual Grab helmet but with a twist. Inside the helmet we put a black H&S branded filter that would provide the users with a test to check their dandruff. After the ride, the users could see that they do have dandruff by checking the helmet filter thus showing the dandruff deniers that they need anti-dandruff solution. And to get them try out H&S immediately, the users got a message from Grab sending them a promo code which they could redeem in Lazada the biggest e-commerce site in Vietnam and get great discounts on the product. The bikes also had a LED display on the back of them that drove awareness for H&S in massive scale.

Mobile Execution

The campaign pivot was the Grab App that is used by the young audiences as the preferred ride-hailing service in Vietnam. The use of Grab helped us to complete an end-to-end targeting of the consumer. From opening them up to dandruff concerns, educating them on anti-dandruff benefits and then making them try it through mobile targeting. This would not have been possible without the use of Grab app.

Business Impact (Results)

Context

The H&S Helmet Hijack campaign successfully delivered on the objective of driving a behavioral shift in the Vietnamese consumers and then push H&S as the most effective anti-dandruff solution and also drove trials.

Evaluation

The LED display on the bikes travelled for 450,000 Km in 3 months time driving awareness and reach among 3,000,000 people. There were 90,000 riders who tried out the H&S filter and got the promo code from Grab. We saw an impressive conversion rate of 25% - driving more than 20,000 trials in Lazada an index of 140 versus previous period of same duration.

Market Impact

This campaign completely changed the way that advertisers see how Grab can be used. It goes beyond awareness and by using their targeting and data capabilities it becomes a great platform to drive trials and leads. This was truly an innovation that opened up new possibilities of using ride hailing apps in Vietnam.

Creativity

Summarize the case study & describe what were the success factors in this campaign?

Also select a local Pakistani brand & suggest how this activity can be conducted in Pakistan with a brand, other than H&S. How can you further amplify it using the mediums available?