CASE STUDY: How Goodyear China embraced a lifetime commitment to safety

Background

Consumers should be able to trust that the products they buy and use are safe. However, in China, with tainted milk, lead-painted toys, and severe road accidents all making headline news in recent months, consumer confidence in safety has faded. With the public exposure of Kumho Tire company’s product quality problems in March 2011, tire safety has also become an issue of prime concern for Chinese drivers.

In a time of turmoil over safety, Goodyear embraced the opportunity to ignite a discussion on safety while other companies were avoiding it. Rather than lecture on the technical aspects of safety, Goodyear took an emotional approach, celebrating the passion of the unsung heroes in society who have dedicated their lives to safety. It introduced seven ‘spirit of safety’ one-minute documentary films to tell the stories of ordinary people who have devoted their lives to keeping millions of people safe.

Objectives

The focus of this campaign was to raise Goodyear brand awareness among a wide audience of Chinese drivers, and increase the association between safety and the Goodyear brand among Chinese consumers

Execution

Celebrating unsung heroes, in partnership with the Shanghai Documentary TV Channel, Goodyear created a series of one-minute films that told the stories of ordinary people who had dedicated their lives' work to keeping others safe. The subjects included:

- A man who spent 200 days a year alone on an island for 32 years, monitoring the ocean to provide early warnings of typhoons; and

- A senior airline pilot with a safe flight record of over 20,000 hours, who paces the aisle of his aircraft before every flight to remind himself of the passengers whose safety is in his hands.

Launching campaign with film premiere

The first four films were launched at a media event in Shanghai, with over 80 nationwide media outlets attending onsite, and over 30 reporters joining via a live online broadcast.

Celebrity author and popular social opinion leader Li Chengpeng interviewed the characters from two of the films, and the event was broadcast live on Sina Weibo and Tudou.com.

Leveraging digital communications
Goodyear partnered with tudou.com for video sharing and Sina Weibo for content sharing and topic generation. It also co-operated with XCar and PC Auto (two leading auto websites) to promote the videos to a wider audience of drivers.

Broadcasting films
The films were shown on the Shanghai Documentary Channel and other TV channels in nince cities and provinces in China. Interviews were also turned into 30-second radio ads for nationwide transmission and broadcast on four radio stations over a period of one month, up to 60 times per station.

Results

Goodyear China and Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide Shanghai took home the Issue Management Award for this campaign at the first global SABRE Awardsr on 29 September.

As the only winner from China, Goodyear's “A Lifetime Commitment to Safety" brand campaign further ignited a national discussion to inspire a return of the "spirit of safety".

From May 26 to June 26, over 22 million Netizens interacted with the campaign. It recorded:

• Over 19 million video views on Tudou.com (for a total of seven short films)
• 13,063 new followers added to the  Goodyear official Sina Weibo microblog:

• 58,251 reposts from official posts;
- 18 blogger articles generated 197,065 clicks;
- BBS: 785 posts generated 2,516,509 clicks;
- SNS: 56 posts generated 565,921 clicks;
- Video sharing: 793,557 clicks on Youku and 270,579 on 56.com
• Live broadcast of the May 26 launch event attracted:
- Viewership of over 146,000
- More than 5,732 posts related to the launch event
- More than 1,220 posts generated by our log-in media Weibo accounts
- More than 15,000 new posts @ the Goodyear official Weibo account
• 198 netizens posted their own Unsung Hero videos on Tudou.com and these videos generated over 110,000,000 views
• Traditional media: 133 clippings, including 14 TV clips