Songkran Stranger

Background

Songkran is on April 13th every year. It marks the beginning of the new year in the Buddhist calendar. The exuberant celebrations include splashing friends and family with water. However, because of the pandemic, Songkran was cancelled for the second year in a row. TikTok wanted to raise spirits at this much loved time of year.

Idea

‘Songkran Stranger’, was an interactive film featuring superstar actor Mario Maurer and top model ‘Linn’ Mashannoad Suvalmas. The story followed Linn, a woman who gets dumped every Songkran, because she turns into a different person every time she gets splashed with water.

That is until she meets the bartender, Mario, who is the only man willing to date her despite her strange condition.

The film utilised TikTok’s ‘duet’ and ‘stitch’ features, allowing millions of users nationwide to virtually insert themselves into scenes of getting splashed, patting powder, exchanging dialogue, or interacting however they liked with the stars.

Results

The viewership of over 94 million people exceeded the population of Thailand.

92,000 co-starred in the film, that being the number of people who generated their own content within the film.

The film collected 78 million media impressions, worth around $5 million in earned media. TikTok was the #1 App during Songkran.

Our Thoughts

The story is pretty silly but the fun is in being able to weave yourself into it alongside the attractive and likeable stars using TikTok’s amazing interactive features.

The press release for this campaign says it was intended to “uplift Thai people’s spirits from missing out on their favourite festivities.” As well as altruism, TikTok would have had other objectives as well, I imagine.

Firstly, to attract more users but, secondly, to alert marketers to the fact that TikTok commands huge audiences of the sort they really want to reach. 94 million views in six days. YouTube will be feeling the heat.