Shampoo brand Clear Men sought to increase brand preference with young Vietnamese men.
Objective:
Shampoo brand Clear Men was struggling to connect with young Vietnamese men, an audience to whom any shampoo is sufficient. However, the brand was failing to be relevant. As such, the brand had to operate in a way that garnered passionate, resonance, and attention from the younger generation to resonate with them.
Target Audience:
The new generation of Vietnamese men are not only fans of field games, but they are passionate about eSports as well. Like the rest of the world, eSports has been growing at a phenomenal pace in Vietnam and the rest of Southeast Asia. According to Appota eSports, there are 26 million eSports players in Vietnam, of which 90 percent are men. Arena of Valor alone has six million daily active players, and 12 million monthly gamers in Vietnam.
To connect with the younger Vietnamese generations, Clear Men leaned into the emergence of eSports. While in previous instances, an exclusive partnership helped the brand to get into the mind space of its target audience, the growing popularity of eSports witnessed a plethora of brands jumping on the bandwagon. Driving differentiation while partnering with eSports was key for Clear Men to succeed in an increasingly cluttered marketplace.
Creative Strategy:
The strategy included creating awareness among the eSports enthusiasts through differentiated brand exposure, engaging with the gamer community, and enticing the community for product trial by making the brand exposure shoppable.
Apart from playing, watching the game and taking part in discussions during a livestream is immensely popular among eSports enthusiasts. Real-time performance data is vital for the audience to truly understand the current situation apart from being crucial for gamers to analyze their performance against their competitors. Prediction also plays an important role in choosing a strategy or adjusting a squad.
Context:
To drive deeper level engagement with its audience and to drive top of mind recall, Clear Men had to connect with the eSports enthusiasts at a moment when their attention level is very high, such as during a live game in real-time.
Overall Campaign Execution:
In eSports, it is difficult for live prediction with many variables playing a role. For humans, the process is time-consuming with a high chance of missing variables leading to inaccurate results and wrong predictions.
To find a solution to this problem, Clear Men created AI31, an AI algorithm for predicting the probability of match outcome between two teams. The algorithm was created based on all historical and real-time data for each team and could give real-time predictions on who would win a match based on game stats.
However, predicting who would win the game could serve only those gamers who were watching the live game, not those who weren't. To create something new for fans, Clear Men had to understand how they enjoyed the game. As with other live sports, there are climactic key moments that gamers experience throughout the game.
Data analysis showed the highest engagement of the audience occurs during 48 key moments. This was where Clear Men saw the opportunity to transform the viewing experience from a passive experience to a lean-in moment, primed for something crucial to happen.
Clear Men provided predictions, not only for gamers watching the live game, but also to trigger people who were not watching the livestream to come to the game for those 48 moments. Further leveraging its first-party data, the brand could also predict the crucial moments for an audience segment, based on their past game-watching behavior.
Mobile Execution:
The AI31 created an algorithm based on historical data of each team, using factors such as win percentage, number of heroes killed, and the duration of the battle, as well as real-time data such as heroes used, gold collection, or the number of dragons killed. This algorithm allowed AI31 to give out percentage predictions on who would win the match.
Clear Men AI31's predictions were featured on the actual game screen. A humanoid avatar of AI31 appeared at the beginning of each game and during the battle which updated real-time data of the game to give predictions.
Moreover, AI31 watched every single historical game in addition to analyzing real-time data for each team to make predictions about what's going to happen in the game. Dynamic display creatives featuring these real-time predictions appeared across other content genres which could be a subject of interest to the audience to entice them to watch the live game.
Critical moments of the game were also tapped like "first blood," "first team to kill a dragonand Caesar,"which hero achieved a certain status, which team got defeated first, or who would be the MVP of the game. Clear Men then served tailor-made content with predictions to the target audience, whom it would identify as gaming lovers.
The campaign delivered a 511 percent ROI on media value alone in addition to contributing to business performance, which included: