#AsiaeCommerceAwards 2021 highlight: How Love, Bonito's tie-up with Barbie became a hit

Love Bonito’s “Dream it, do it!” campaign was launched to support an ongoing Love, Bonito initiative titled LBCreate, a social-impact programme that aims to formalise the brand’s support for the female community by providing educational resources and necessary tools to carve a future they aspire to be in. This year, Love, Bonito partnered with Mattel to create the “Dream it, do it” Barbie collection to focus on the growth and development of girls and women who face many ongoing internal and external challenges.

The campaign successfully deepened the brand’s connection with young women across Asia and encouraged them to have the confidence to follow their dreams, rightfully winning the gold award for Best eCommerce Campaign – Cross-border / Multi-market at MARKETING-INTERACTIVE’s Asia eCommerce Awards 2021.

Challenge

Apart from the fact that the campaign needed to be launched across four countries - Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Indonesia, Love, Bonito faced the challenge of developing appropriate content and strategy to ensure that women across Asia would be aware of both the eCommerce platform and the wider LBCreate initiative. 

Solution

With the partnership with Mattel, the “Dream it, do it!” barbie collection consisted of four Barbie dolls, curated to represent a variety of body types - curvy, small bust, original and petite-wearing Love, Bonito’s “The Staples’ Collection”. The dolls were available to Love, Bonito customers upon a SG$150 minimum spend on the brand’s eCommerce platform which must include an adult-sized “Girls can” T-shirt to mark the collaboration. 

The team’s strategy included creating a dedicated LBCreate microsite to clearly articulate the aim of the collaboration with Mattel, as well as the wider aims of LBCreate. From the page, customers could navigate to the online platform for the purchase of the Barbie collection and T-shirts. The team hoped to create a seamless journey for customers as they could read about the campaign and its cause and take immediate and direct action. To reach its cross-border audiences, the team aimed to carry out an integrated, multi-channel campaign with a strong element of content storytelling across owned, earned and paid channels while leveraging on key influencers and earned media PR push to spread the word. 

Love, Bonito also used impact.com’s partnership management platform to engage with potential publishers in order to manage the campaign at scale. This included managing all aspects of part engagement throughout the campaign such as contracting, management, optimisation and reporting, thus freeing up the team to focus on higher value creative tasks. 

Execution

Multiple platforms were used from earned media, through a range of extensive partnerships, retail, social media influencer engagement and digital media. 

First up, Love, Bonito carried out a mass seeding of KOLs and a PR campaign devised to showcase the Love, Bonito x Barbie “Girls Can” T-shirt and dolls to an audience across Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Indonesia. Love, Bonito leveraged on impact.com’s partnership management technology to recruit and engage potential publishers and partners to help spread awareness of the campaign. 

Next, the team pushed out a range of interactive experiences to engage with the Love, Bonito community, including a four-way Instagram livestream with Rachel Lim, co-founder of Love, Bonito (SG). Chriselle Lim, Lifestyle influencer and founder of The Chriselle Factor (US); Grace Chan, actress and host (Hong Kong); and Marion Caunter, former TV personality and lifestyle influencer (Malaysia). These KOLs were chosen as their personal journeys had evolved over the years and all had taken different career paths to succeed in their chosen fields. 

The Instagram livestream was very personal and the participants shared about how education helped them achieved their dreams and why they were inspired to support the “Dream it, do it” campaign and help girls in less fortunate circumstances. Each influencer then wrote a pledge on a board to share their take on female empowerment and their support for the campaign. Viewers were then encouraged to share their commitment by making their own pledges via the microsite. 

Strong imagery of Barbie herself was used to drive the earned PR campaign, including showcasing the four different and diverse body types. This diversity was also reflected in the T-shirts created for sale, which carried sizes from XS to XL. 

Results

The campaign which ran from April to July 2021 was outstanding in both performance and brand equity.  Over 1,500 of the “Girls Can” T-shirts were sold and 844 dolls were redeemed. The overall cumulative reach for the campaign, inclusive of all paid and organic efforts totalled an incredible 8.92 million. This included 200.4k Facebook, 1.32 million Instagram and 7.4 million projected reach across earned media outlets. Overall reach via Instagram Stories during the live session was approximately 164k with a completion rate of 87% which demonstrated high engagement. 

The initiative also captured the attention of international media as well in the four markets where the dolls were available, generating a reach of 54.8k. More importantly, the campaign achieved its core purpose, which was to highlight Love, Bonito’s social impact programme and cement the company as a purpose-driven brand.