Following May’s Strawberry Music Festival cooperation which kicked off Ray-Ban’s national consumer campaign for 2011, in July Ray-Ban hosted two sustaining local rock concerts in leading live venues in Shanghai and Beijing. The NEVER HIDE live consumer campaign integrated multiple channels including the Ray-Ban China website, Ray-Ban’s own SNS presence, the brand’s e-commerce store on Taobao, as well as on the ground consumer events. Ketchum Beijing worked closely with Luxottica China in the initiation, development, and management of the campaign.

As a warm-up to the live rock concerts, Ray-Ban’s Douban mini-site initiated two event listings, incentivized with a lucky draw to win tickets. The event listing attracted more than 1,500 Douban users, the SNS site for socially expressive youth in China. The Shanghai event listing was promoted to the front page of that week’s hottest events. At the same time, Ray-Ban’s China website launched the “NEVER HIDE live” mini-site where consumers were encouraged to register to get the latest event details and also win sales codes for product purchases at Ray-Ban’s Taobao store.

For the ground events, Ketchum screened and selected four bands for each leg, which consisted of three upcoming bands, and one well-established band. The band list included Brain Failure, one of the most recognized punk bands in China, and The Mushrooms, the most celebrated rock band in Shanghai. Both of the concerts had a full house, with an audience totaling over 1,000. Photos and videos from the events were shared through Ray-Ban’s websites.

Staging rock concerts in both Beijing and Shanghai for the first time, Ray-Ban marked another milestone through this campaign for its consumer activation in China and one aligned with the global brand strategy. It reinforced Ray-Ban’s brand DNA of rock music, and activated local key opinion leaders and consumers.