Intro
Whenever we think about a new offline advertising campaign, we go through the following questions:
How can we make it fit the context?
How can we make it surprising?
How can we make it personal?
Starting a few days before the Chinese New Year, we launched a Door-to-door campaign for Shan’shi, which has a large selection of cooking ingredients and Asian products.
If you wondered what Shan’shi stands for (I did), I’m here to solve the mystery: it can be translated as “meal” in Chinese.
🐉 The process
How can we make it fit the context?
We started with the client’s idea to celebrate the Chinese New Year with their audience by giving the necessary ingredients for a Chinese dish: noodles, wok sauce, and a recipe book – a practical way to ensure our target knows how to prep the goodies received.
We figured the best way to sample the Shan’shi products would be to organise the campaign in a setting that allows the consumer to cook them, reducing the time between the moment they receive it and the potential trial.
Naturally, the best way to do this was by going inside residential buildings and sampling the products door-to-door.
That’s one way of giving context and reducing friction around the campaigns’ goals: trial and awareness.
How can we make it surprising?
No one expects to receive a gift bag with free goodies at their door during what seemed to be a regular evening.
With the help of our promoters, we surprised the residents with gifts, smiles and the unusual invitation to celebrate a day we don’t usually celebrate in our culture. The campaign also had an informative touch, relating the products to their Asian origin and expanding on a Chinese tradition.
How can we make it personal?
After two years of pandemic restrictions, many advertisers have switched to more sterile environments, both literally and figuratively. We are tempted to believe it’s better to capture the customer’s attention through digital campaigns or offline sampling with no human contact. “Better safe than sorry”, we say to ourselves.
However, advertising is about orchestrating an experience and invoking certain feelings. Few brands replicate these aspects in digital environments or through offline sampling machines. Human interaction is still one of the best ways to capture someone’s attention and invite them to participate in the brand’s story.
💭 Final thoughts
Activations in residential buildings efficiently reach the audience and quickly generate top of mind awareness for the brand involved. Another way we varied the mechanics was by using door hangers with cute messages and glueing the samples to them.
We usually use this approach when celebrating Saint Nicholas, only that instead of leaving presents in people’s boots, we attach them to their doorknobs. This alternative can be used when the brand policy forbids promoter activations during the pandemic or when a client wants to reduce the implementation time and associated fees by skipping the in-between moments of knocking on the door and delivering the speech.
👩🎨 Inspiration
You can see photos of our previous residential buildings campaigns here.