Baby Qulin

In the most competitive luxury market that is China, there is only a small place for the original, modern but unknown high-end jewelry brand Qeelin. We noticed that the name Qeelin was inspired from the qilin, a chinese mythological animal made of lion, ox and dragon. For years, the qilin has been represented as sculptures in front of temples or pictures in traditional paintings. Nobody has ever seen a living qilin.
To generate awareness and to create the buzz around Qeelin brand, we decided to hijack the myth into reality and make chinese people believe the qilin really did exist.
To propagate such a news in a country as big as China, we first contacted a small circle of influencers from Weibo and Wechat, the two most powerful social networks of China. We gave these influencers a selection of Chinese ancient photos in which we had integrated a muppet baby qilin. Each photos was carefully chosen to be illustrative of past China golden age: qin dynasty, qipao-dressed ladies, and particularly the legendary actress Ruan Ling Yu, the Chinese Marylin. We also shared a mysterious vintage video in which the baby qilin slightly appears. To make sure people didn’t miss any content, we created a special hashtag #babyqilin# that linked all posts.
#Babyqilin# immediately became a hot topic: new powerful influencers joined the trend by themselves and relayed the story of the baby qilin. Groups of ardent conversations were spontaneously created between those who believed and those who had doubts of qilin existence. Some people even researched the original pictures to find out the truth, turning the debate into the belief there was a scientific conspiracy behind which the existence of the qilin had actually been hidden for years by erasing it from old pictures!
#Babyqilin# was a trending topic for two days, supported by more than 30,000 reposts and 15,000 comments on Weibo. After 4 days, after announcing the identity of the brand behind the campaign, 2.1 million people attended the post reveal on weibo.And most importantly, the story of the campaign generated more than 35 million views, in just 5 days.