2018 Bronze Best use of search

Agency: WM Select, Wavemaker

Client: Huawei

Campaign name: Huawei P20 Pro: how we used Search to take a bite out of Apple

Campaign overview

Challenging convention to breathe life into mobile

The brief

The campaign had to launch the Huawei P20 Pro handset and grow market share – by overcoming some significant barriers

Strategy

Huawei faced four challenges.

They have smaller budgets than Samsung or Apple; a low brand awareness score; are 100% reliant on retailers; and the mobile handset market was stagnant.

So the campaign immediately challenged convention by launching early, driving more awareness and building a list of engaged users to re-target post launch.

To make the limited budget work even harder, the work used YouTube retargeting, created look-a-like audiences and set up in-market audiences.

To ensure collaborative working with mobile phone resellers (e.g. Carphone Warehouse), Huawei implemented the new Affiliate Location Extensions on Mobile.

This meant users were able to get directions to their nearest retailers to buy the P20 Pro – people would go past a Huawei billboard and be enticed into their nearest retailer via a search ad on their mobile.

Creativity

Creative execution was split across four phases.

Firstly, audiences with brand awareness were primed and readied with messaging ahead of the launch.

Secondly, dynamic sequential countdown messaging set out to excite and hype people a week out from launch.

Thirdly, using different messages pre, during and post keynote drove users to watch the presentation and understand the key handset features.

And fourthly, creative drove users to buy using pre-order, prompted by ‘buy’ ads.

Results

Audiences primed before launch engaged with the ads post launch with an 88% higher CTR and 22% lower CPC compared to non-audience based users.

Audience depth went from 3% to 53% with the audience-first approach, and a 70% higher CTR among qualified audiences that engaged with the ads compared to non-audience users.

Meanwhile, Huawei’s share of search increased by 166%, and affiliate location extensions drove 38% more traffic from mobile, and were the best extension of all those in the account with 53% higher CTR.

Finally, TV drove a 20% increase in search demand on brand.

The script that automatically synced TV and PPC drove a 35% increase in impression share.

Team

WM Select, Wavemaker - Davide Sirtori, Digital Director - Diane Alagar, Digital Partner - Francesca Bartoli, PPC Manager - Stuart Whitehead, Client Director - Paola Quaglietti, Account Director

Huawei UK - Justin Costello, Head of Marketing UK & Ireland - Jonathan Bunkall, European Head of Media UK & Western Europe - James Pearce, Digital Marketing Manager UK - Katharine Murray, Marketing Manager UK