KitKat in Thailand is celebrating Valentine’s Day with a special packaging where consumers can match the words to express their love.
In China, marketing using word matching on packaging has reached a point where it has delivered unintended results.
At the end of 2016, Wei Quan (味全), a Taiwanese food and drinks company, launched a word matching packaging in China for its Everyday C (每日C) range of 100% juice. There were a total of 38 different Chinese characters on the bottles.
The brand intended to deliver positive statement like “Protect your health well to prevent it from catching a cold” as shown in the picture above.
However, the 38 characters have opened up many ways for consumers to ingeniously change it to sentences that are funny. The following example shows how the words changed into something witty like “It is good for the health to have a cold everyday.”
Some consumers even re-arranged the bottles on the shelf to form words like “I am horny” (我好色） or “Good day to my new stepmom” （新小妈好）.
The move has unleashed the creatively in young consumers who took the chance to express their thoughts by forming new words with the bottles on the shelf. Such marketing turned viral and improved brand awareness and also sales.
Each year, when the weather turns cold, sales of chilled juice will fall to its lowest level particularly in December. However, the latest marketing has reversed this trend with sales in December 2016 reversing to a positive 7% month-on-month growth compared with November 2016.
In a sense, the marketing by Weiquan has worked even though it exposes the brand to a degree of embarrassment. At the end of the day, the word matching marketing has given young consumers a platform to engage with the brand and turned in viral.
