Unilevers’ new Age Miracle face cream by Pond’s hasn’t exactly been leaping off the shelves in the Chinese market over the past year. So, they have decided to turn on the charm with a digital campaign that hopes to generate buzz, establish the product’s credibility and encourage Chinese women to give it a try.

The anti-aging cream is up against a long list of strong competition from brands such as Clinique, L’Oreal, Lancome and Olay which have made their mark as trusted favourites to a loyal consumer demographic.

Unilever and Ogilvy PR Worldwide asked volunteer bloggers to participate in a blind trial program and quickly signed up 150 official testers. The Chinese blogging community is large and influential with more than 100 million claiming to communicate via forums and discussion boards and 41 million heavy social media contributors, according to Netpop Research. (more…)

Peperami, the snack meat brand owned by Unilever is taking a step away from the traditional form of advertising and harnessing the creativity of user-generated content (UGC) to find its next big idea.

Lowe Worldwide, an international creative advertising agency headquartered in London has handled Peperami’s account for the past 15 years and created the brands iconic Peperami Animal character in 1993.

Instead the brand will now be using a site called Ideabounty.com, an online creative community to post a creative brief describing what type of advertisement they are hoping for and anything that would like to maintain about their current positioning. For example the brand is interested in continuing to use its animal character as it is highly recognizable to consumers.

The brief is slated to be published on Ideabounty.com this coming Friday, whereupon interested participants will be invited to submit ideas for the next press and television ad campaigns. The winner of that contest will receive $10,000 for their idea. (more…)

MOFILM, a leader in sourcing user-generated content (UGC) for TV, online and mobile just announced itself as the main sponsor for the Times BFI 53rd London Film Festival. Open to entrants of all skills - and over the age of 16 - from around the world, the competition will be looking for advertisements for some of the biggest brands today. (more…)

Unilever’s Klondike bars have turned to Story Worldwide and Mindshare Entertainment to follow up last year’s successful campaign with a new one called What Would You Do For a Klondike Bar Now? The campaign is using Facebook and social media platforms, hoping to hit men’s sweet spots.

Where last summer’s promotion included an online video contest, this campaign extends over several social media platforms, encouraging user engagement, as well as user-generated content (UGC).

The revamped Klondikebar.com shows a kitchen freezer, where visitors can check out all the new shell flavours as well as the variety of products and any nutritional information that consumers might want.

The site also mentions a separate application called The Man Cave, which will be open as of June 5, 2009. The cave consists of a virtual entertainment centre where consumers can watch Man on the Street type videos on a TV set, access a Facebook application via a laptop, and play a video game - which takes users through some hilarious obstacles to reach a virtual Klondike bar. (more…)

Unilever’s Axe 100 Girls website will be the FWA Site of the Day (SOTD) for February 16, 2009. The FWA is a group that was formed in 2000 and highlights examples of great use of technology and design in website creation.

The Axe Hair Crisis website asks men to upload pictures of themselves. Once the picture is up, the women of Axe comment on the hair. The women sometimes offer help and sometimes just biting criticism. (more…)

Unilever has announced that Joel Levinson of Los Angeles has won the $100,000 grand prize for his “across-the-world” video in the What Would You Do For A Klondike Bar? contest.

His entry shows a variety of different locations he’ll go to have a Klondike bar, including Paris, Hollywood and the arctic.