Lohas Social Networking

China’s largest food and beverage company COFCO wanted to launch a fruit juice product called Lohas (lifestyles of health and sustainability) in Beijing, despite the fact that it was twice as expensive as rival brands. It was also entering a cluttered market with competitors that spend more than 10 times as much on marketing activities. A further challenge was the fact that Lohas’s key differentiating messages (organic, specially-selected origins and zero additives) lacked relevance for Beijing consumers. COFCO needed to make health-conscious 28-40 year olds familiar with the Lohas concept.

White-collar workers in China generally lead a very busy work life. They sit at their office all day (remember: the world's 10 most polluted cities are in China), and many well into the night. They spend 50% more time online than Americans.
Most of them are aware of the dangers of over-burdened lifestyles, but hardly take any action to change. Lohas decided to tap into their acute longing for an easy way to get involved with nature and share feelings with friends.

Lohas negotiated a deal with Kaixin, the biggest social networking site targeting white-collar workers in China to introduce a planting competition on one of its hottest plug-ins called Garden, designing rewards to incentivise participants to share the results with their friends. Users were encouraged to buy Lohas seeds to plant in their own virtual gardens. When the fruits became ripe, they could use them to make their freshly squeezed juices, which could be redeemed for virtual money or given away as gifts to their friends. Those who earned the most virtual money would receive prizes. Their plants would grow quicker if they downloaded Lohas themes for their virtual garden. Each theme depicted the origins of the Lohas drinks such as Sao Paolo or Wusu in the northwest of China.

Participants could win also the chance to get real Lohas delivered to their friends in the real world.

As a result of the campaign, sales rose by 30%. Some 9.7m people downloaded the Lohas themes and 186m bottles of virtual Lohas Juice were created.