Social Media Campaign Review: Garnier's Interesting #LoveLongHair Campaign Meets with Mild Success

In a clutter of blatant product and social promotions, Garnier Fructis decided to shake things up a bit and bring in some change on how to really involve users with the brand. They sent out the Garnier Fructis Long & Strong Shampoo and Conditioner to women from all walks of life from college students to house wives to bloggers with one catch. The bottles were stripped down of any resemblance from the Garnier Fructis branding, keeping them in the blind.

The women received a bottle of shampoo and a bottle of conditioner, along with this note:

The entire campaign which was partly digital and partly based on on-ground activations was run in the cities of Pune, Patna, Guwahati, Ludhiana, Lucknow, Jaipur, Coimbatore and Vijayawada.

Objective

The objective of the campaign was to engage with real users and create brand experiences for them which would garner stories worth sharing.

Execution

Using Twitter as their weapon of choice to engage with the blind testers and inquisitive others alike, Garnier ensured that the campaign had a huge sense of mystery around these two products.

The Social Networks and Blogosphere erupted with reactions at receiving these mystery packages and looked forward to using them and putting up reviews.

Of course, Garnier didn’t spare a minute to ensure that they captured the virality potential of the campaign and soon contests were all abound.

Enticing other famous users to help spread the word.

With reviews pouring in and user engagement at an all-time high all that Garnier had to do was wait and retweet…

…and keep the buzz alive.

And finally on the 12^th of March, 2014 the big revelation was made…

The response received turned heads and ensured that the relevant audiences took notice..

Tying the whole campaign in a neat little package with this post:

Positives

The campaign reached 50 top bloggers and about 131 other blind testers. During the entire campaign the blogosphere was abuzz with posts about the mystery product, bloggers experience with the product, good and bad hair days. The brand was extremely intelligent in capturing a beauty topic which women are not shy to openly talk about.

This activity gave Garnier an immense opportunity to continue the conversation about Loving Long Hair for a long time to come. The seeds of the activity are reaping fruit even after the activation was over.

Scope For Improvement

However we believe that the campaign was only a mild success. This can be seen from the fact that the twitter handle @LoverofLongHair has only about 100 followers as compared to @FructisIndia’s 6568 followers. We believe that by using only Facebook post the reveal, Garnier missed out on a lot of captive audiences. The campaign could have reached a higher note had it run on Facebook and Instagram as well, encouraging women to post selfies on good hair days, etc.

Closing Thoughts

The campaign which ran in 8 cities gained some momentum however failed to completely capitalize on its potential. However, the experience created for the selected users is one which they will remember for some time to come. In the monotony of social contests and other over-used tactics, this activation comes as a breath of fresh air. It is just the kind of thing people expect from brands, to continuously think out of the box and provide memorable experiences.