How We Taught Russians How to Play a Korean Pepero Game
Teach Russian consumers the Korean Pepero game and grow awareness of the Lotte Pepero brand.
Background
Pepero — sticks dipped in chocolate — is a trademark of Lotte Confectionery in South Korea. The company produces and sells a wide range of confectionery: gums, chocolates, biscuits, ice cream, pies, snacks, candies, and bread. Lotte Confectionery is headquartered in Seoul, South Korea.
Goal
Increase brand awareness, draw the audience’s attention to the product, and teach Russian consumers how to play Pepero Game, a popular Korean game.
Solution
Usually, an objective to attract an audience means maximising reach — telling as many people as possible about the product. Lotte, however, wanted something different: to improve understanding of Korean culture among Russian consumers and represent the brand in the right light so the audience could enjoy the Pepero experience.
To implement the project, we decided to involve Russian celebrities and bloggers, run smart marketing in popular social media, and hold a Pepero-game contest.
The Pepero game is played by two people: one holds a Pepero stick in their mouth while the other bites the opposite end, making the stick shorter. The goal is to reduce the stick as much as possible without the lips touching. Pairs then compare their sticks, and the pair with the shorter stick wins. In the contest, the top prize was an iPhone 6s, plus ten ‘silver’ prizes of a full box of Pepero sticks (40 packs per winner).
We created dedicated Instagram and VK accounts for the contest and built a content plan covering several themes: the contest itself, its rules and a call to participate, information about the product, content from contestants and celebrities, and other engaging material.
To support the contest, we involved four bloggers and one actress, who produced videos of themselves playing the Pepero game.
In addition to posts and activities on social media, we placed ads in popular communities to attract a wider audience and grow Lotte’s subscriber base on VK and Instagram.
Results
The contest drew the attention of a young, active audience to the Pepero brand, delivering strong reach and engagement: 30 million people learned about the Pepero game and watched contestants’ videos, 248 people entered the contest, Lotte gained 5,500 additional subscribers, and social-media users liked the content more than 5 million times.
