​The Client. P&G
The Category. Fem Care
The Brand. Whisper
The Market. South Korea

The issue.  Competition generating 20x sales from eCommerce Vs Whisper

The Problem. The brand felt irrelevant to the Korean teens. It wasn’t present in the right environments and in the manner that might appeal to the Korean teens

The Solution. The human experience centered work, reimagined & recreated E-commerce Experience to create an online model for growth for Whisper in Korea

Investing Behind Experiences that Mattered 

• Korean teens & young adults are the most ‘stressed’, with the highest suicide rates in the world. This stress was further exacerbated amongst girls, esp. during periods with the pressure to be perfect and not let anything slip. This stress was further compounded because of isolation and lack of companionship they could rely on.  Because while they lived their lives online, the breadth of connections in the online world didn’t quite fill the void of depth of ‘real’ connections. These  ‘Lonely Socials’ craved real connections, conversations and belongingness to a community that could understand them, support them and with whom they could have shared experiences. And these shared experiences connoting ultimate status and comfort for the Korean teens.
• @Commerce : E commerce is a highly curated & customized experience & having to shop for pads in the same space as ‘household cleaning products’ -  as was the prevalent brand experience  - was severely offputting.  While competitors were vying for the audience’s attention with online group events, Whisper was guilty of adopting a traditional, transactional, shopping (‘un’) experience devoid of any fun aka, opportnities for co-creation. And of not fulfilling her Shopper Needs – 'Include Me. Inform Me, Reward Me. Engage Me' .

 
The communications strategy involved shifting spends to digital and creating an entire ecosystem, a 'surround sound' for a new e-commerce experience, with the ‘before’ and after’ ecommerce experience driving active conversion while also creating the type of Connections the Korean Teens were craving for.

The Result? Spanning Paid, Owned, Earned and Shared Media, the Human Centred solutions, fulfilled the craving for Connections + Curated Group Experiences + Currencies,  and engaged the Korean young adults to move to commerce for Whisper. In  collaboration with the Multi functional teams,  the work traversed a variety of ideas from suggesting Comprehensive Association Strategy, Always on Calendar of events, 360 degree Ecommerce Optimization, Driving Recurring Purchases, Leveraging Social Commerce , to owing the cycle not just the period. Brand desirability registered a positive rise for the first time in 3 years and tripled the business from ecommerce within 12 months. The approach was reapplied across all other developing markets, and called out as Best in Class Consumer Experience Design by P&G. Transforming the (un) experience at commerce helped super serve the people that the brand was designed for, and in doing so, helped grow the brand.

 The ​Client. P&G
The Category. Fem Care 
The Brand. Whisper
The Market. Japan

The Issue. ’I know you. That doesn’t necessarily mean that I like to interact/ engage with you’. In other words, a problem of high brand awareness that didn’t translate into brand engagement & transaction, and that resulted the brand sales declining year on year.

The Problem to Solve. The brand was losing ground among the design target, the 18 – 24 year olds. In a category, and with an audience that is uber feminine, with highly exaggerated & detail oriented feminine cues, and a behavior that closely guards privacy, Whisper, behaved in a transactional, purely functional, almost stereotypically masculine manner adopting a problem solution & a very public, tone & manner – thereby, alienating its audiences – and gradually sliding into irrelevance.  

The Solution. The solution for Always (Whisper) Japan, involved creating an equity centered Integrated Experience Model that reimagined the brand behaviour & the shopping experience. This work was developed on the foundations of qualitative and quantitative research that focussed on understanding the desired experiences of the Japanese design target, esp. their emotional expectations around choices they were making. This complete immersion in their lives through video journals, live chats, visual ethnography, & in situ observation, helped us understand the culture, the context, the media choices and how they interacted with the category, thereby inspiring solutions that served their needs versus 'advertise' to them.

Connections that Matter 

• From a Category Perspective, for the Japanese women, with all the preparation & the planning involved, periods was never a 3 day affair. It was an almost 2 week affair with varied lifestyle rituals and routines leading up to it AND during it. It was not just a physical issue to be managed, but a matter of holistic wellness with diet, exercises, lifestyle choices inextricably interwoven into it. And they consumed communication and engaged in experiences that helped them with this ‘prep’
• They craved conversations and shared experiences but in discreet, personalized, enviroments, aka Digital. And once experienced Digitally, they sought to extend that interaction in offline spaces. To them, it was all about the FrMOT . Friends are the ultimate moment of truth.
• Experiences with shopping the category (Fem Care) existed in a continuum ranging from neutrality at best to negativity, irritation & embarrassment at the worst. In contrast to this were experiences with shopping outside the category that seemed to be associated with entertainment, enjoyment, gratification, pleasure for the senses, expression of what one values. It was as though the experience of shopping for Fem Care was divorced from the any positive expectations.
• And most important of all, these women were Expressively Feminine. While they acknowledged the added challenges and stresses that girls face, they loved being a woman and sought to enjoy their femininity via small everyday details– for example, having ‘kawai’or cute boxes to store all their femcare needs for the Wakuwaku (excited) feeling. Feeling ‘unfeminine’ was a source of deep dissonance & disengagement. 

All of this understanding was inextricably interwoven in new media and content choices with the intention to  increase the engagement with the brand.

The Result? Covering Paid, Owned, Earned Media, the human experience solutions influenced the creation of a mobile forward & shopper encounters that were expressively feminine, discreet and ‘Between Us Girls’. The content solutions fuelled conversations & experiences that they naturally wanted & a value exchange that was utalitarian and that acknowledged their wellness beyond the 3 days of periods. By owning not just the periods – but the cycle – and doing so in contexts that communicated discreetness and femininity to the Japanese women, the work, doubled e-commerce growth within a year & saw an exponential increase in off-line sales to exceed the sales goals. Brand desirability and affinity registered a positive rise for the first time in 5 years of declining brand performance, proving once again that to create a positive dent in culture, one first needs to understand the culture.

The Client. P&G
The Category. Baby Care
The Brand. Pampers
The Market. APAC . Design Market. India 

The Issue. Despite more than three times the media spends of its main competitor, Pampers registered slower growth than all of them. It was the market leader, for sure, but its growth was slowing year on year.
 
The Problem to Solve: From the new mom’s perspective, when it came to Pampers, the issue was lack of relevance despite high awareness. High awareness achieved at the start of the path to purchase dropped at the consideration & engagement phase & didn’t lead to conversion at the POS. 
 
The Solution. A digital and mobile forward communications plan was developed on the foundations of being of real utility to moms. Receptivity work with New Moms examined every connection of consequence - from extended family, to play schools, to other moms, online research and connections, in store influences - and all media touch points, to understand her behavior and what it takes to change behavior and get them to choose Pampers.
 
Connections that Matter 

• Mobile is the Modern Day Pacifier. Despite the fact that mums and dads were mobile both in their media choice and behavior, the brand until now had not prioritized designing for a mobile environment. The content was largely push messaging with promotions, discounts, in complete contrast to the way these new parents used the mobile device – as a modern day pacifier – to educate, entertain and occupy the child. The recommendation included shifting spends to mobile and towards pull based  content solutions that enriched parent child interaction.
• Moms trust their Momtourage – the other moms who are in the trenches with her. This insight informed and influenced social strategy of connecting moms to the opinions of other moms like her, to KOLs and to parenting experts they could associate with.
• When it came to TV, the medium with the highest investments, it was interesting to observe that new moms ‘caught’ it versus ‘watched it’. TV worked more as a radio than a visual medium, highlighting the importance of audio versus the predominantly visual cues to drive brand affinity and relevance. Recommendation included shifting spends from only driving reach to building relevance. TV was still used to drive broad reach but with stronger audio cues and link to digital experiences that educated, entertained and engaged the new moms. 

 
The Result? Pampers doubled their mobile investment in India & fast tracked designing all work for a digital and mobile enabled ecosystem – ultimately resulting in accelerated growth with differently optimized spends. Straddling Paid, Owned, Earned Media, the integrated experience solution, changed the way content was designed from being mobile optimized to being mobile centric, influenced creative development, and drove focus to socializing stories of ‘real moms’ and their experiences to drive relevance, and giving Pampers more bang for every buck spent.

​​The Client. P&G
The Category. Prestige Beauty 
The Brand.. SKII
The  Campaign. My Skin is My Proof 
The Market. China

The Issue. In a market as fiercely competitive as China, SK-II, P&G’s prestige beauty brand faced an issue of relevance. It was critical for SK-II to drive superiority in a way that could attract new users as well as retain and grow existing users. 

Understanding people’s needs & creatively discovering the best solutions to meet those needs was the route in. The cornerstone of the campaign was - China’s Digital VIPS  - a study set out to understand China’s affluent women, to uncover her motivations and desires as it relates Beauty, and to understand how these manifests themselves in digital. Through qualitative research leveraging a panel of women, ethnographic work and attitudinal activities, including co-authored conversations and digital immersions, a clearer picture of the Digital VIPS emerged. 

• She lives in a Status-Sphere & uses digital to firmly establish her rise in this status-sphere by broadcasting her beauty and beauty choices. Everything she buys and every decision she makes aids in the projection of her status. And in this game of signalling status, her Beauty – and her skin, is seen as the ultimate and undeniable proof of advancement.
  
•  In this status-sphere, her inner circle is a part of her identity and it is important for her to constantly strengthen the collective status of the group, while elevating her status amongst her peers by being the ‘giver’ in her group. This is her ‘Guanxi’, and she needs to give back to it as much as she gains from it.
  
• Because China is a collection of cultures within one massive country, the definition of beauty is not necessarily universal. Regional differences influence what is beautiful, resulting in playful competitiveness between cities and regions, each claiming to have the most beautiful women in China.   

This deep consumer and cultural understanding led to the design of SK-II’s My Skin Is My Proof. My Skin Is My Proof enabled women across China to assess their skin, get a skin score and  leverage their beauty scores publically to move their city ahead in an inter-city skin score challenge and thereby, reward her “Guanxi’ (community). The platform soon became a hotbed of conversations around a topic women held so close to their heart & increased brand preference and participation in the digital lives of the affluent and influential in China.With personal skin scores , as the cornerstone of the idea, the campaign was literally delivered to the individual. The platform itself was designed for mobility as the hub lived in an app on China’s top social site, Weibo. Although the actual skin score tests existed at-counter, by building participation elements in the app via voting & commenting, people didn’t have to be instore to join in. The place to discover and engage with the campaign and the brand could be online and offline. Finally, by optimizing  search to include campaign-related terms and being agile in adjusting  keyword lists weekly, as new phrases popped up, we  further strengthened the program’s discoverability real time.

My Skin is My Proof helped resurrect SKII in its biggest market – China -  with Human Experience and Behaviour Change .

Result. My Skin Is My Proof, delivered unprecedented results for SK-II across Paid, Owned and Earned Media. Using SK-II’s most successful previous campaign as benchmark, My Skin Is My Proof saw 8X increase in conversations ; Increase in KPI "this brand is relevant to me" = 117 IYA ; Increase in New users = 118 IYA ; Increase in Total # of shoppers = 185 IYA, Sales increase = 161 IYA. It also won the “One Award”  for ‘Best in Human Understanding Driving Business’ and set the brand on an accelerated trajectory of growth.

The Client. J&J
The Category. Beauty & Body Care
The Brand. Aveeno Body
The Market. North Asia 
 
When J&J launched Aveeno Body with Therapeutic credentails in North Asia with minimal budgets, it was a micro moments planning approach that helped unlock the growth potential and saw the brand achieve the sales target & equity measures  set. 
 
Leveraging Seasonality to Heighten Relevance. The strategy that centered on encouraging women to experience & socialize the Joys of Winter, unhindered, was based on the insight that eczema related skin problems intensify during winter, and thereby, prevent people from experiencing the simple joys of winter – watching movies indoors, exercising, enjoying ‘heaty’ foods, engaging in winter sports, enjoying winter fashion. 
 
The  communications ecosystem was thus built around the pillars of :
One, associating & partnering with all the Joys of Winter to drive relevance.
Two. socialising the Joys of Winter to drive advocacy. Leveraging partners, KOL’s and social to build experiential “Joys of Winter” pop up experiences. – an opportunity for sampling, product demos, content capture and live broadcast.
Three, triggering the switch. Building out custom target segments, designed specifically for switching consumers from competitors. Using weather as a key moment to activate 'Joys of Winter' with special offers and discounts referencing the day’s temperature to draw consumers to product benefit in their daily lives while ensuring alignment with E-commerce partners. 
 
By enabling the discovery of the brand during times that mattered the most and through education that helped them overcome their skin issues, the work helped quickly convert the awareness into consideration and met the sales. target set. A win made even sweeter as it was achieved on wafter thin budgets. A Joy of Winter, indeed .
 
 

The Client. J&J
The Category. Baby Care
The ​Brand. Johnson's Baby
The Region. SE Asia 
 
The Issue. Johnson’s Baby – the 640 MM dollar brand in APAC – the iconic baby brand that built the category – was facing an issue with retaining its customers. As babies grow, the parents grow out of the baby brand - much faster than the brand would like them to, and way faster than what might be right for the baby.
 
The Problem. In the eyes of the parents, the relevance of specialized baby product dropped significantly as soon as the baby transitioned from being an infant to a toddler with parents shifting them to adult generic family brands.
 
The Solution? Understanding people’s needs & creatively discovering the best solutions to meet those needs. Behavioural Data, Search and Social insights, Understanding of Media Habits, formed cornerstone of consumer journey and experience plan that moved the audience along the path to purchase to drive brand relevance & conversion.
 
The Category Perspective.
Until now, the brand was talking only to moms, making parenting all about mothers and excluding dad’s from the picture when it came to any communication and experiences from the brand. The recommendation included having a stronger role for dads in all communication with the intention to drive greater relevance through associating with the rough(er) play that dads did with the kids, thus necessitating the need for greater protection for baby’s still developing skin.
 
The Brand Perspective.
The brand’s purpose – enjoying the crazy, bumpy joyride of childhood- offered up a great opportunity to talk active play, with play not just being one of the biggest indicator of baby development, but also exposing the child to physical skin stress and  thereby necessitating the need for special care that the brand could provide. Johnson Baby Milk, with its moisturizing and skin care solution was intended to be the offering for the toddlers that helped retain parents and keep them within the J&J brand. 
 
The Consumer Perspective.
Play is a time of discoveries and learning for both – child & parents, And with every stumble & tumble, they are always testing their physical limits - thus offering a role for the brand to play with superior skin protection for a child’s still fragile and developing skin 
 
The Connections that Mattered, and that were thus, recommended.
Parents resonated with ideas that were

• Conversational (Social, KOL’s, Conversations within the Parent Community) 
• Rooted in the everyday (physical activities and events) 
• Involved mom AND dads (to participate and co create as a family) 
• Utilitarian & Mobile 
• In spaces that Dads visited (offline and online) 

 
The Result? Championing the importance of playtime & embedding the product’s role in moments of exploration esp. those with Dad by inviting Dad’s into the picture, reaching out to the Moms And Dad Community, helped set the right context for the brand – and drove the total source of growth of MILK to Johnson’s baby portfolio by +10%. It helped express the brand purpose while creating the right dent in culture by making parenting about Moms AND Dads.

The global pitch, with a 25 M USD win across Asia accelerated Coach’s movement in its journey of reinvention by bringing the world of Luxury and Play together in an effort to increase relevance for the brand in the mass luxury market.

A combination of Behavioral, Location, Search, Consumption, CRM & Attitudinal  data, helped identify the source of business – the HVA – High Value Audience - the Trending Fashionistas. Analytics placed their value as 2.5 times more valuable than the safely stylish segment, esp. on account of the influence they drive. 
These  Trending Fashionistas were deeply interested in both Luxury & Fun BUT didn’t see the two worlds meeting. For them, unfortunately and frustatingly, Luxury & Fun were divorced from each other, 

The problem was solved through a  Communications Strategy that was all about bringing Play to Classic Luxury Moments & Bringing Luxury to Cool Play Movements, The work fulfilled the unmet needs of our HVA’s while playing to Coach’s inherent strengths.

The executions were geared towards,

• Search. Growing and capturing intent with content, organic and paid. Analytics had helped us understand that search was the most highly positively correlated to store traffic. The media mix was thus, shifted to more digital to drive search & store traffic.
• Social. Broadcasting brand and product experiences; using locally relevant KOLs to drive the right conversations and currency in bringing Luxury to Fun Moments & Bringing Play to Classic Luxury moments across each individual market.
• Programmatic. Engaging our target at the right time, but more importantly the right moment with the right content
• Tech & innovation. Used in a manner which is natural to our audience mobile behaviour

The media reinvention not just mirrored but accelerated the brand reinvention by bringing the world of Luxury and Play together in ways that were locally relevant across each of the diverse APAC markets, making Coach a formidable player in the mass market and helping it shed its image of the 'bag I buy when I can't afford any better'.

​Human Experience oriented Design thinking helped P&G leverage e-commerce opportunity in a highly competitive and cluttered market - China, to serve two of its biggest beauty brands, Olay and SK II.

For Olay & SKII, both mega brands that play in the anti-ageing category, the issue being faced was one of reduced relevance. The behavior change focused thinking created recommendations, that resulted in an increase in e-commerce off takes, a significant increase in conversion rate, as well as in average order value, an increase in relevance and consideration scores for both Olay & SKII amongst new mothers. 

For women in China, Beauty is seen as the ultimate status. Their beauty confidence is at an extreme low immediately post-giving birth as they feel physically unfit and not at their best. All Chinese women, upon giving birth face a 40-day confinement period where they cannot leave the house – and where digital is the primary window to the world, and e-commerce the only avenue to shop. And during this 40 day confinement period, contrary to popular perception that the women are only searching & buying baby products,  women were actively searching for remedies for “ tired looking skin”, “tired eyes”, “skin that has not slept well in days”; “ under eye darkness”  
These insights formed the foundation of the e-commerce strategy that focused on the 40-day confinement period as a POME to reach and recruit women. Other executional strategies included placing the anti-ageing products adjacent to the baby products, and their descriptors reflecting the same phrases as shown in their long tailed search, thus driving immediate relevance. 

​Media thrives in culture. And no understanding of media innovation is possible without an understanding of the culture in which it operates. Leveraging the 40 day confinement period to unlock e-commerce innovation & business growth for Olay and SKII, was a testament to just that. 

Chinese New Year (CNY). It doesn't get bigger than that in China. It is a key purchase period for everyone, including Coca Cola, for who almost a third of the yearly sales had to be achieved during this CNY period in order to start the year with strong momentum. This is an occasion that impacted all segments of the population and the only time in the year where Coca Cola had to appeal to a much broader target audience then its usual yearlong target of Youth. And they had to do all of it, while standing out in a battle which is usually about who shouts the loudest . Phew!
The only way we could have met these goals was by understanding people’s needs, the culture in which these needs are expressed & creatively discovering the best solutions to meet those needs. And that's exactly what we set out to do, starting the journey of discovery by understanding what CNY meant to different sets of people in China.
For the teens, CNY was all about Obligations AND Preparation  
For the Young adults, seemed to be all about  Responsibility AND Preparation  
For the Parents, it was more about  Pressure AND Preparation  
For everybody, the commonality was the ‘Preparation’ leading up to the Celebration. 
And for all of them,  ‘the preparation’ was a lonely experience,  and lasted longer than the ephermeral CNY reunion dinner itself.  ‘Preparation’ was the phase that people spoke of with the most emotionally charged language. And that’s the phase they wished they could share with someone to anticipate the thrill of the upcoming celebration.
This led to the Connections Strategy -  Transforming the Often Lonely Job of Preparation (in the Journey towards and during CNY) into a shared Joy of Connection. 

The strategy helped define the role of Coke to be one of converting the seemingly mundane  preparation moments to the memorable by sharing & celebrating the preparation as a milestone in building genuine connection. Sharing the joy in the preparation, meant a digital heavy strategy and a phasing strategy that did not relegate the brand’s role to just the celebration, thus giving it a more differentiated and emotionally potent canvass to play in.
The focus of media efforts thus, shifted to the ‘preparation’ phase – seeding the association of Coke with Happiness outside the noise of the celebration – sharing their preparation journeys – be it travel, shopping, preparing the home , making reservations, with their family and friends – building connections and extending the joy of the celebration.
Shifts of budgets to Digital, meant the creation of a stronger & more relevant e-commerce experience, leveraging A Fu & A Jiao  (traditional CNY mascots) to share the genuine connection in the preparation as part of  an integrated experieces executed in collaboration with a mutlifunctional team.

This work for Coca Cola, for their biggest annual tent pole event, and in their biggest and most competitive market, met the lofty goals it set out to achieve and exceeded the sales target more than expectations. It was a happy and prosperous Chinese New Year, indeed !