A look at Honor India's social media play to popularize HONOR9X

Brand Introduction

Honor is a global brand known for its trendy smartphones for young people. It’s a brand for people who are connected, innovative and open-minded.

Problem Statement/Objective

To create disruption in the smartphone category and engage with the millennials in their lingo. The task was to take on the challenger approach and convey to the consumers the ordinariness of other smartphones.

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Brief

To
create awareness and buzz for the new advanced features of Honor 9X.

Challenges

HONOR9X
was a digital-only launch. Hence the core of the idea had to have the factor of
virality amongst young digital consumers.

Execution

The brand introduced the ‘Rap Style’ videos for the first time in the mobile category. Rap as a medium brings forth the voice of the youth, questioning the established order at the same time. These videos were able to dial up the ‘Xtraordinariness’ and the unique features, aiming to make other phones look very ordinary.

In a digital-only approach, all social platforms - Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube were employed to reach out to the youth. Honor India took this a step further by leveraging the trending platform, TikTok calling upon the users to perform to the beats of the HONOR rap.

Honor India also held a contest across these social platforms where the users had to review the Honor 9X smartphone in their own Rap style. Users posted their entries online, tagging HONOR India social media handles along with official hashtags – #HONOR9X, #RapBattle, and #UpForXtra, to win the latest #HONOR9X.

Results

The videos went live on the brand’s social media –

• Twitter with 65k+ impressions,
• YouTube with 1Mn+ views and 
• Facebook with 7.6Mn reach

This led to a large scale buzz with more than 3.3 million views across all the platforms. The contest became a hit as the #RapBattle trended No. 6 on Twitter with Honor India receiving more than 400 entries.