In May Ray-Ban joined forces with one of the largest and most fashionable rock events in China, the Strawberry Music Festival 2011, to promote its edgy, independent and authentic image in the Chinese market. The holistic campaign, which was conceived, developed and managed by Ketchum Beijing, lasted three weeks and employed multiple consumer touch points, including ground events, activities on one of China’s leading SNS platforms Douban.com, campaign promotion through micro blogs and other leading SNS and retail level activations. The campaign also engaged a wide variety of stakeholders, including business partners, media, brand enthusiasts, popular rock bands and loyal customers.

“Ray-Ban X Strawberry 2011” was inspired by the global spring and summer Never Hide campaign launched in March 2011. The Strawberry Music Festival provided a perfect platform for localizing this global initiative as its primary audience epitomizes Ray-Ban’s key target consumer: individualistic, passionate, creative, ambitious and socially expressive young people.

Prior to the festival, Ray-Ban’s Douban mini-site hosted online ticket giveaways to lucky users who participated in a Never Hide poster design competition. During the three-day music festival, Ray-Ban decked out a party bus as its main attraction and hosted media interviews with five popular rock bands on-board. Passers-by also could come into the bus to browse through online and offline displays of Ray-Ban glasses.

A giant Never Hide photo frame was installed in front of the Ray- Ban party bus for visitors to have their photos taken inside and three photographers roamed around the festival with a portable frame snapping pictures of more party-goers. The photos were tweeted live to Ray-Band’s Sina microblog, where people could vote for their favorite image.

After the festival, Ketchum edited the band interviews into small video clips for viral release on leading video-sharing sites, SNS and microblogs. Special event galleries were also created on Douban.com as well as Kaxin001.com.

Ever since Ray-Ban was founded in 1937, the brand’s core values have always been about freedom, originality and authenticity. “Ray-Ban X Strawberry 2011” promoted these values to the brand’s core target consumers, increased their participation, and ultimately helped strengthen their emotional bonding with the brand. Over 200,000 people visited the party bus at the festival site and over 1,700 photos were registered. The competition on Douban generated over 450 submissions and drew over 600,000 PVs.