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Shanghai’s F5 creates bizarre lock ad for millennials who appreciate ‘craziness’


Among the more interesting ads released around the Single’s Day Sale on November 11 in China was a film for Kaadas locks created by F5, a Shanghai-based independent creative agency.

In the film, a bomb squad technician gets blown up multiple times while trying to diffuse various explosives. However, he is recognised and welcomed by his parents, irrespective of the shape or form he is in. And he shows up in a bizarre array of shapes and forms: a man and sheep hybrid and a human tyre, for instance.

Speaking to Mumbrella about the conception of the campaign, F5’s Adams Fan said: “The objective of this commercial was to create buzz for Kaadas on Alibaba-owned Tmall’s Double Eleven Day on November 11, which is the equivalent of Black Friday, in the west.

“During this period, the media space is filled with all sorts of adverts. All the brands were shouting the same thing to consumers. To make a breakthrough, we decided on an unusual script, to be the loudest voice in this shouting competition.

“Furthermore, Kaadas as an intelligent lock brand, is targeting millennials who appreciate a bit of craziness.”

The script wasn’t a hard one to sell since client and agency agreed they needed to create something different. Fan added: “Most important, the client’s decision maker is a smart, young person — 26 years old. She knows what millennials crave, and believes that only the bravest ideas can attract attention.

“Meeting such clients is a first for me. They are braver than us. Even now, they believe the script could have been more entertaining. The limit of creativity is not the agency’s imagination, but the clients’ bravado.”

Fan: The limit of creativity is not the agency’s imagination, but the clients’ bravado

The campaign is the first for Kaadas from F5. Speaking about the ads reception in China, Fan said: “It created an explosion in the Chinese media scene — no pun intended. For Double Eleven, Kaadas’ sales hit RMB537 million or $77 million, a record for the brand.”

The marketing manager at Kaadas, Joey Li added: “The intelligent lock is a low-degree of concern category.

“To excite our millennial target audience, conservative and generic ideas are not effective. And so we decided to use an unforgettable story to make them talk about this rarely mentioned category. The results prove it worked.”

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