CASE STUDY: How Huggies uses social media to engage consumers as a challenger brand in Hong Kong diapers 'battlefield'

Background
Infant diapers is a category where market leadership carries strong implied emotional reassurance, with consumers being primarily nervous first-time parents who put their faith in the biggest brand.

As a challenger brand in the Hong Kong market, Huggies needed to do something truly new in the category to shift the market dynamics and grab consumers — not only parents but their circle of friends and family as their advice often influences brand choice.

Traditional communication channels like TV and print could reach them all but couldn’t create true relationships strong enough to change their current behavior. The Ogilvy & Mather Hong Kong team recognised the need to get involved in social media and chose Facebook as the new battlefield.

Objective
The Huggies brand approached its Facebook campaign in early 2011 with two objectives: to launch its Facebook Page in Hong Kong in a fun, exciting and dynamic way and to increase brand awareness in the market.

Ultimately, the brand wanted to move beyond brand awareness to something deeper. It wanted to find a way for its consumers to connect with Huggies and build a lasting relationship with the brand.

Execution
The Huggies brand is about sharing the joy of parenting. The company recognised that millions of people on Facebook are already doing this by posting photos of their children.

Together with Ogilvy, the Huggies brand created a comprehensive online and offline campaign that invited parents to share photos of their babies on the Huggies HK Facebook Page. As part of the campaign, the 60 most popular baby photos would be wrapped around buses and seen throughout the city.

The key approach to the campaign was to capitalise on the activity already taking place on Facebook. “By encouraging people to upload photos of their babies, we were asking them to engage in a social activity that was already natural to them,” said Thomas Crampton, Asia-Pacific director of Ogilvy’s 360 Digital Influence team.

To enter the competition, people would first have to like the Huggies HK Page. They would then be given the details and invited to join the contest and upload photos. Parents could share the pictures with their friends and family on Facebook and encourage them to vote for their youngsters.

While Facebook served as the hub of the initiative, the Huggies brand promoted it with a cross-media effort including television ads and a series of Facebook Ads.

The brand used text messages and email marketing to raise awareness of the campaign among existing consumers, and ran Facebook Ads to the specific target audiences so as to build the awareness across the Facebook community.

Results
In the space of three weeks, 118,000 people had liked the Huggies HK Facebook Page. “The campaign took off virally,” says Thomas. “We grew into the second largest brand page in Hong Kong in three weeks.” Huggies HK broke the record for the fastest growing Page in Hong Kong.

6,000-plus baby photos were uploaded to the Page during the campaign period, with an average of over 450 submissions per day.

4,000 photos— all of the photos submitted —were posted by the Huggies brand on a 30 feet long billboard in one of the city’s busiest subway stations, Causeway Bay, which generated an excited response both on and off Facebook.

Facebook chose the initiative as a star case study to showcase what brands can do with the platform. Huggies HK has become the very first official video case study from Hong Kong, and only the second from the entire region.

Credits

Campaign name: Huggies Babies On-The-Go
Agency: Ogilvy & Mather Advertising, Hong Kong and 360 Digital Influence, Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide
Account servicing: Fanny Ng, Karen Tong
Creative: Irene Chan 
Digital strategy: Tim Ho, Karen Cheng
Exposure: online, outdoor