A gesture needs no translation

Using the ‘H’ in Haier, a simple hand gesture became the unifying visual that anchored the whole campaign across all 16 markets, from TV commercials to ad creatives to filters and branded stickers.

Building an engagement model that spoke to platform and user behaviour

A major component of the campaign was a TikTok gesture challenge, which was purpose-built to suit the platform’s content mechanics and user behaviour. By creating a reason to participate, engagement spiked and the challenge went viral.

Global could not mean uniform

Using TikTok’s trend reports, we built in market-specific mechanics that reflect the cultural behaviours of each market. For example, the campaign in India used a celebrity-led gesture-dance challenge to tap into the market’s passion for song and dance, while in Germany, we leaned on the hype of blind boxes to create an interactive game for users to participate in the challenge.

Organic and paid reach as reinforcing, not competing

Content output was tightly coordinated across the various stages of the campaign, with a launch rhythm that ensured that paid and organic reach were reinforcing the brand’s in-market momentum.