CASE STUDY: Taking steps towards a (virtually) greener Hong Kong

Background: Hong Kong residents are increasingly concerned with living a better-quality life in a greener and more environmentally friendly way. Watsons Water, a local mineral water brand, embraced this concern, which was in line with its own ethos of pursuing a high-quality, healthy lifestyle.

To help people act on their desires, the brand launched a community campaign to “plant flower seedlings”. Everyone who bought a bottle of Watsons Water received a free pack of six flower seedlings to help them embark on a greener way of living.

Aim: Watsons Water wanted to encourage people of all ages to play a part in creating a greener environment in Hong Kong by planting the flower seedlings. To assist in this aim, Watsons Water also developed an online version of the ‘Plant flower seedlings’ programme to give people a virtual experience of green living, and show them how to plant the flower seedlings in real life.

Execution: Watsons Water required an integrated campaign to generate awareness of the initiative across on- and offline touchpoints.
To demonstrate how easy it was to plant the flower seedlings and start creating a greener life, the communications cast children as the principal characters.

A 10-second TV commercial was developed featuring a series of seven core visuals showing children planting the flower seedlings. The same scenes were also featured in out-of-home media channels including MTR stations and outdoor billboards in high traffic areas such as Causeway Bay.

In addition, an interactive online game using augmented reality (AR) technology was developed to help make the entire process more accessible and fun.

A designated website, www.watsonswatergreen.com/flower, allowed visitors to water a virtual plant by aiming their web-camera at a ‘floral mark’ printed on the Watsons Water bottle label. The seedlings subsequently took root and developed into plants on-screen. Virtual gardeners were also able to share images of the growing plant with friends.

To reach further into consumers’ daily lives, on-street kiosks were set up in the shopping districts of Causeway Bay and Mongkok, to allow passers-by to experience planting the virtual seedlings in just thirty seconds.

Results: Over 1,000 flower snapshots have appeared so far on the “plant flower seedlings” online programme; discussions of the programme have appeared on key online forum/sharing sites such as discuss.com.hk, failforum.net, uwants.com and Yahoo Knowledge; spoof videos have been developed and posted on video sharing platforms such as YouTube; over the past four weeks, the ‘plant flower seedlings’ online programme has generated approximately 9,000 page views, with over 5,000 visitors to the site.

Client: Watsons Water
Agency: Grey Hong Kong
Project: ‘Plant Flower Seedlings’ campaign
People: At Grey Hong Kong: Desmond Chan, general manager; Keith Ho, executive creative director; Erica Ho, group account director; Ray Lam, group creative director; Keith Lo, creative director
Duration: 24 July – 13 September 2009