Can social media elevate a product from low price to a valued brand?

Pond’s Age Miracle became the leading anti-aging skincare range in multiple markets except China where it continued to be seen as a basic mass brand for young women.  With a facial foam heritage and cheap pricing, this was turning consumers off. PAM needed a new way into the China market, repositioning as a “masstige” brand and a chance to prove the product could perform even better than prestige brand competitors.

Our strategy was to turn to the new breed of social media influencers and have 150 influential bloggers trial a secret mystery cream (PAM) against their current prestige anti-aging cream and blog freely over 7 days until they selected the winner.Bloggers had to be existing prestige face cream users (using a department store brand costing >US$25) to deliver the surprising buzz that PAM could beat such brands.

Our blogger panel received a mystery face cream (unbranded PAM) to use for 7 days plus access to an unbranded campaign microsite to blog or vlog (video blog) their daily comments and give their final verdict after a week - whether they would stick with their current prestige cream or switch to this mystery cream. The brand was revealed after all votes were in.

This campaign was a first in skincare to combine a traditional blind trial with real time social media for totally unbiased consumer judgment. Its originality was recognized with a PR Week Award for Best Use of Digital in November 2009.

In the end, the blind test mechanic gave our opinion leaders and their followers a truly engaging talking point.  We created a truly interactive and unbiased experience, resulting in genuine social media co-creations and buzz. The freedom for bloggers to comment in any way they chose resulted in over 600 overwhelmingly positive posts that included bloggers talking to each other during the trial to guess what the product was (usually other prestige brands like SK-II and Lancome, adding to the impact of our final reveal).

The Results

The result created strong credibility for PAM with 90% of bloggers rating PAM as better than their current prestige brand.

And while category sales grew 13% last year, PAM sales rocketed up by 42% with no activity other than this blogger campaign.