Mystery Egg
Issue 14 | March 2010
Agency
OgilvyOne, Beijing
Creative Team
Executive Creative Director: Doug Schiff, Creative Director: Yanyan Yang, Copywriters: Wenjun Li, Oliver Tang, Art Director: Jimmy Wang
Production Team
Production Managers: Hai Tao, Ryan Liu, Augmented Reality Production: AXIS, 3-D Production: Rui Dong Shi Dar
Other Credits
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Date
November 2009
Background
Leonovo’s ThinkPad is a well-known brand in China but it is black and serious and is an established icon of the business executive. As such, then, it did not mean much to the increasingly important target group of university students.
The challenge was to get the ThinkPad to connect with this younger group and help them get to know what the ThinkPad could offer them.
Idea
Young people in China have a special affection for plastic capsule vending machines as they’re fun and what lies within the capsules is often a surprise. This insight led to the idea of the Mystery Egg. Students were introduced to the ThinkPad Egg character through campus events, BBS, and renren.com—China’s most popular social networking site. All these touch-points directed viewers on to the 3D coin-operated machines on the ThinkPad site, where the capsules and Eggs were released.
Students fed a coin into the machine. Now Augmented Reality, from their mobile devices connected to the website, allowed the Mystery Egg character to demonstrate ThinkPad benefits in a way students thought was cool and entertaining.
Collecting all six Eggs released a code, giving players a chance to win a trip to Japan. To receive more chances, students could just send a Mystery Egg invitation to a friend.
Results
Within one month of the website launch it received nearly 2.5 million page views. Unique viewers totaled over 462,000 and the campaign resulted in the best sales numbers by far Lenovo had ever enjoyed with the university market.
Our Thoughts
It’s a little frustrating not to know what the sales hike was in terms of both numbers of volume and market share. But the stats are still overwhelming and, of course, that tells us something about both the size of the market in China and the opportunities for those who engage with their target audiences. What I like about the use of augmented reality here is it’s not a case of ‘whooo, look at the new technology’ but simply another stage in an experience in which a good old-fashioned product demo is made con temporary and cool.