ASIA-PACIFIC – JULY 2011 – After launching the global Social Creativity positioning in China last year, DDB China set up several creative teams to find a creative social solution for the agency, with the ultimate goal of connecting people in and out of the DDB offices as well as promoting the agency’s new focus in an entertaining and engaging manner. The winning team’s idea: the Time Bank campaign.
The Time Bank campaign sticks closely to DDB’s belief that “people are the most important media". The heart of the campaign was to promote positive incentive for DDB employees by rewarding those who arrived early at the office. For every day that employees swiped in before 9:30am, one extra hour of “personal time” would be awarded. Additionally, rewards were given for cumulated hours: eight hours amounted to one extra vacation day and employees who arrived early for ten or more days in a row would receive a public transportation card worth RMB 100. Running from April 1 to May 31, the two-month trial period yielded positive results, with approximately three-quarters of the DDB office participating (translating to 142 staff members) and 71 staff members gaining extra vacation days.
The Time Bank campaign provided incentive for employees both to arrive earlyand to be more enthusiastic about work. Through the positive reinforcement for the rewards given, employees at DDB were more inclined to get to work during the campaign. The campaign was received positively by those in and out of the DDB office, as seen through the responses on Weibo (a Chinese Twitter equivalent) alone: over 700 tweets and retweets during the two weeks after the campaign launched, and an increase of 400 in DDB’s Weibo followers.
The agency’s goal of encouraging a socially creative change in behavior elicited praise from competing agencies. Now that’s a good measure of success.
