P&G Xiaonei campaign, dressed as Social Media… smells like a big Ad

With opportunities to win cars, flights, holidays and even cash you have to wonder why anyone would go and support a bar of soap or shampoo product for simply a ‘chance’ to win a 200RMB value prize pack. But once again China’s booming Social Networking sites continue to generate interest for what would seem to be anything but ‘desirable’ products. Take P & G’s latest attempt at building a community around their range of lifestyle products.

At first glance the site generally looks cool. A youth oriented portal which draws elements of a pop culture urban street scene with conventional (needs based) products to get you through the hardships of your ‘freshman;’ year in University. But you have to ask – Is it really the shampoo that gets you through the year? P&G obviously thought so.

Like 90% of existing Social media strategies today the brand is totally endorsed by a singular major SNS site – in this case Xiaonei (BIG!) were the lucky holders of the P&G ‘ReadyU’ community which focused on helping college kids better equip themselves for life after high school. It covered topics such as better health, grooming (do you think they are the only demographic needing this?), love, study support and even career advice.

P&G’s Xiaonei page: http://group.xiaonei.com/GetTribe.do?id=267361785

The only problem was there was almost no interaction. There was no opportunity to chat with others, share advice, upload images, forums, etc. Instead the group page focused on delivering a series of psychological tests centered on campus socialization, sanitary and skin care knowledge. Perhaps they didn’t want to hear what the consumers had to say about the products

Once a test was complete the ‘incredible’ intuitive software would determine the student’s type of personality and behavior – following the result a series of P&G products where then recommended to the student which obviously added value to the concerns surfaced through prior test. Products featured brief information and were just a click away to P&G’s Taobao shop for purchase: http://shop36912235.taobao.com/ .

The tests were divided for boys and girls and broken down to 5 sections:

Beginning of term, sports, interview preparation, love and finally graduation.

I’m not sure how this would fly in the ‘West’ but I can obviously see how this would create value for Chinese students. You do a test, learn you need something, find it and you can buy! Simple. If a student had a desire to learn more about a topic he/she could do so in a featured ‘knowledge class’ which delved into further information about the topic.

See here for example: http://readyu.xiaonei.com/mouth.jsp

So to date it seems pretty basic and P&G were smart by playing into the sense of discovery by using tests – they have worked successfully on many digital campaigns in the past. But I think they underestimated the intelligence of this student group – the site seemed to be simply a ‘door-to-door’ sales person with a super handy trick of a test to sell you a product. No one likes to be sold. I learnt that the hard way!

INCENTIVES

A popular trend in Social media campaigns is to offer prizes (see past cases BMW, Dell which had major prizes) P&G offered Xiaonei participants a chance to win prize pack valued at between 80-200 RMB depending on the quantity of users the student invited to play (smart right).

The prizes were titled a fitting ‘actively prepared participant prize’ mouthful but the translation can do that. The results were counted every Friday and the n reset for the following week.

The campaign essentially was about encouraging students to better prepare themselves for what life can deliver. You never know when you might just need that deodorant – school presentations can be very daunting.

THE RULES

It’s important to note here a trend in the reviews we have been featuring with Zero Degrees. That is this P&G campaign is simply a campaign which unlike a Social Community which is constantly building and evolving this campaign has an end date. The trend is not intentional but simply that it’s difficult to locate a dedicated Social Media community built around content and bought to you buy an established brand. (We intend on changing that)

This campaign started on the 26^th of February 2009 and finished on 26th of April 2009.

The idea is you complete the test or several and accumulate points restricted by each category and day’s usage. You are then awarded more points by inviting friends to also participate. Your total scores will then be counted and entered accordingly.

Product features linking to Taobao purchase site

CONTENT AND DATA

The data is seemed to be very light and lacked substance with reviews, more detailed information and an opportunity to question products which would play to the opportunities Social Media can present.

There were 5 categories with the following entries

Hair care: 17 entries

Face care: 13 entries

Body care: 10 entries

Dental care: 11 entries

Special care: 14 entries

65 articles all together

Not surprisingly the results page featured when a participant concludes a test show one of the 9 featured products in total – with links to P&G Taobao online shop. There were also sub-brands such as: Pantene, Head & Shoulders, Olay (Olay review), Crest, Whisper.

The group had a total of 143,617 members (or participants)

A list of all the winners was featured with pictures form the past 8 weeks. But apart from that there was no access to more data on users, no interaction of any sort.

The homepage stayed fairly static for the duration of the campaign. It had a small section of news with only 4 pieces of content supported throughout the entire campaign.

So I guess it was all about the test.

SUPPORTING ROLES

We did stumble across the founder of the campaign. the original ‘readyU’ site (http://readyu.com/). Make note we had to literally search for it, there was no clear link between it and the Xiaonei sibling.

Its sister site did focus on similar attributes of the young student navigating his way through life.

We did site a quote or two on the site which seemed to wrap it up nicely:

“You know all those basic off-to-take-on-the-world-on-your-own questions you’ve had since starting college, but couldn’t bring yourself to ask? You’ll find those sorts of answers here.”

This site was more corporate driven and drove people to its online shop, opportunity to download coupons and news to the P&G brand site.

http://www.pgeverydaysolutions.com

This page was seemed more international having some integration across popular western SNS sites myspace.com, dig and facebook. A featured blog was www.therealcollegeguide.com .

Another P&G corporate site is:

http://ibeauty.pg.com.cn/ This site host many more functional applications of discussions, revives and more on P&G products. Again no linkage to the Xiaonei campaign.

Apart form the original ‘ReadyU’ site we did not find any relevant promotion of the test, BBS support, independent blogs, or other China SNS sites featuring the test. Which was surprising as it would have required little resources, but like most big brands we see they throw the cash at the big guys and let them do the work.

There a few problems with that theory including (but not limited) the following:

• It’s not the MAIN thing for the SNS – often having 100′s of other advertising commitments resulting in a poorer result
• The campaign is dependent on a 3^rd party being the SNS – look at facebook being shut down and many other local SNS sites too
• Potentially restricted functionality
• High set up cost and on going costs to maintain

FINAL THOUGHTS

OK the first point to really stand out was ‘Why wasn’t the original ‘ReadyU’ site linked or even integrated into the Xiaonei site?’ Given the originally site had a much more in depth content and had already established a small community and investment.

In this case P&G are about providing daily solutions to students in there everyday lives. A plethora of content would seem available to tie and integrate into the products that are simply pushed as a sale.

I believe the tests were a great way to bring them in and engage but following the tests the site and supportive content lacked any real depth and students were then moving on. Would they come back? It seemed as if there was little motive to return.

The example reviewed here would seem nothing more than a ploy to push traffic to a static Taoboa sales site. Given the market opportunity to sell to is…well everyone the statistics reported represent a minor wave on the Xiaonei community.

I think the opportunity P&G has is fantastic, I mean their market is literally anybody. All students share common anxieties, opportunity and perils that associate with starting a fresh life in college. Which extends further beyond that into working lives. Using fresh, relevant content to play on these students’ emotions, having them open up and share their lives, coupled with added incentives with ‘real’ prizes would have a lasting effect and potentially build on a brand that seems distant to connect with.

Imagine the fun students would have submitting short stories about their ‘most embarrassing’ moment in high school or even their ‘first kiss’ – I’m sure tooth paste would have been helpful.

Can you think if your most embarrassing moment in high school? For me it was going to school with my shorts on backwards…

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