City Branding: Chengdu’s can-do attitude

Joe Zhou, the vice president of public affairs at Ogilvy, Beijing, elaborates on a mission to rebrand the earthquake-ravaged city of Chengdu, a campaign that involved the arduous task of hugging baby pandas

Ogilvy Beijing invited the world to compete to become ‘Pambassadors’ in Chengdu, China’s panda capital. When you were first approached for this project, what were your initial thoughts about it?

As you know, Ogilvy has a strong practice and history in the area of ‘state branding’, and so we were excited about the opportunity to work together with one of China’s fastest growing and most dynamic cities to develop their brand and communicate it to the world. The most exciting part of working with Chengdu is that it has very little name recognition and brand awareness overseas, so we were really starting from square one, rather than repairing or refreshing an older or more established brand.

The magnitude-8.0 earthquake in 2008 [which killed about 68,000 people] damaged Chengdu’s image and severely hit its tourism industry. The Chengdu government approached Ogilvy PR to design a PR campaign to raise its brand awareness overseas and restore any negative images caused by the earthquake, so as to attract overseas tourists and foreign investment to the region.

While developing the creative and strategy, what sort of research did you do?

Our client, the Chengdu Municipal Press Office, were outstanding in their commitment to giving us access and insight into all areas of the city and municipal life. In addition to the Apex Ogilvy team on the ground in Chengdu, our Beijing team regularly visited to learn more about the city and coordinate our efforts. Also, representatives from more than ten of our global markets spent time with the press office team exploring the city, its people, and stories from all different angles.
This included not only trips to explore the Tianfu Software Park and other investment-friendly areas, but also hugging the baby pandas at the Chengdu Panda Base!

Many people associate the panda with China generally. How did you reinforce the idea of the panda being specifically relevant to Chengdu?

Internationally, people do associate the panda with China. Shifting that awareness to Chengdu involved a combination of strategies, at the core of which is exploiting and leveraging Chengdu as the natural habitat and centre of scientific research on pandas. Increasingly, through education and the media, the world is coming to realise the great diversity of people, culture, and geography within China. We hope that through our panda-associated campaign, Chengdu can shine through and introduce more people to China’s diversity.

The Pambassadors competition, in which people applied to work at the panda breeding centre, lent the campaign momentum. What were the other strategic aspects of the campaign and how did all of the elements hang together?

The team developed a series of strategies to position this competition as a serious global initiative, so as to attract a wide range of participation and influence. In order to achieve this, the team sought partnership with the World Wildlife Fund [WWF], who served as the technical support for the campaign and helped avoid negative response from other wildlife protection organisations. The team also engaged Jane Goodall, animal welfare and conservation expert, and John Banovich, renowned wildlife artist, as judges for the competition.

After the competition, an official letter drafted by Dr Zhang Zhihe, director of the Chengdu Panda Base was sent to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. He responded and praised Chengdu for its contribution to bio-diversity. This again raised the profile of the competition and Chengdu as a leading city in China for conservation efforts.