Unbeatable drama

When it comes to dealing with dandruff, Unilever's Clear is reputed to be the best performing anti-dandruff shampoo in the Chinese market, according to usage trials. However, Clear needed to find a way to communicate its effectiveness as a reliable dandruff remedy.

Clear wanted to achieve significant cut-through on a scale that would be relevant across more than 50 cities and build the right brand personality and competitive positioning.

Extensive bespoke research led Clear to five key insights:

• China is a fiercely competitive nation and Clear's target audience were feeling the pressures of competing for status, partners and careers.
  
• Personal image is very important to help win in this competitive environment and dandruff is a serious problem.
  
• Clear's target audience receives the same messages from all brands in the product category: 'this shampoo will give you long, shiny, beautiful hair that will turn heads'.
  
• Almost all the brands in the category sell on beauty credentials which consumers of which consumers had grown cynical.
  
• As competing brands all used similar messaging, consumers were brand messages and product attributes.

As a result, Clear moved away from standard beauty product positioning, and into new territory that would work for the modern Chinese woman. Clear was a product for winners, and this would inform the new communication strategy.

A new TV drama featuring a host of celebrities with the CLEAR brand cast in a key role would create a relationship between the idea of being 'unbeatable' and using Clear.

A Clear winner

The drama serial Unbeatable was set in China in a fashionable white-collar environment, featuring plenty of young successful people, whose lives reflected exactly those to which Clear's target consumers aspired.

Across 36 episodes, Unbeatable follows the activities of a group of young high achievers whose 'unbeatable' spirit helps them overcome career, relationship and life challenges, all set in a sophisticated international public relations agency where the key client happens to be Clear. The storyline was constructed around Clear's four-phase brand communication strategy: Dump old habits, Trust something new will work for you, recognise your success and become an unbeatable winner.

In Chinese, the series name Unbeatable sounds the same as the Clear tagline 'no dandruff', even though the Chinese characters are different, thus establishing a strong cognitive link between the brand, the show and the audience's aspirations.

To make this a major cultural event, Clear secured prime time TV placement with five leading satellite channels and China's top-six online video sites. Four of the five TV stations broadcast the drama concurrently during the 'golden' prime time hours between 7.30pm and 9.30pm.

A fully integrated social media strategy around the series included online character blogs, forums, social communities and microblogs. The activation included the creation of a theme song and music video, a 15s TVC using Unbeatable stars, bonus behind the scenes content, cast interviews and web chat opportunities, thematic in-store promotions and a 48 hour PR blitz at launch.

Results

Clear's market share increased, setting a new record high for the brand, with an increase of 24% compared to the 2009 average.
More than 447 million Chinese watched Unbeatable on TV, equating to more than a third of the total population. Unbeatable rated as the number one branded drama on Chinese TV in 2010 and over 720 million online video views were delivered with more than 48 million search queries.

The Unbeatable micro-blog achieved 13 million followers, and 'unbeatable' became the third most popular tweet term within a day of the TV debut.

90% of viewers correctly associated Clear with the show.

Media ROI for the activity was over 740%, making it Unilever's most successful branded content initiative in China.

Clear is in development of the season two of the Unbeatable entertainment franchise, due out the summer of 2011.

This campaign was shortlisted at the 2011 Festival of Media Awards in the 'Best Use of Content' and 'Best Entertainment/Communications Platform' categories.

WHY IS THIS ON CREAM? As a branded entertainment project, Clear's Unbeatable is one of the most ambitious. Unilever have demonstrated a keen understanding of the principles of using branded content to communicate brand values, and build emotional connections with the consumer.