my skin is my proof

​​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.