In 2021, amid the pandemic, NIVEA launched its brand purpose and CSR program based on the transformative power of touch. Named “Care for Human Touch to inspire togetherness”, it aims to support human touch projects to promote quality of life for people at risk of loneliness. NIVEA chose to put the spotlight on those for whom touch is a vital need: babies born preterm, visually impaired individuals, and elderly people with dementia. The project “The Value of Touch” investigated the powerful role of touch as a primary sense – and the impact it has on all of us. With the main objective being to generate awareness for NIVEA's CSR projects and get a broad audience involved online, NIVEA entered the world of NFTs (non-fungible tokens) to create a piece of art that could showcase the true value of touch.

Recent research showcased that touch is perceived as one of the least important senses, with 88% of people ranking sight as their most valuable sense. How could we make touch relevant to younger audiences, mostly distanced by lockdowns? This insight led to the idea of a touch-inspired NFT that is highly valuable and free at the same time – making it attractive for a tech-savvy, trend-loving audience. With a culturally relevant story that tapped into the hot topic of NFTs, NIVEA was able to create a conversation about the power of touch and help people realize its true value by subverting the value equation usually associated with digital art. Our NFT is valuable not because it is rare, but because it is free. It was the core of an integrated campaign: The first free NFT created and inspired by touch: a digital piece of art representing the value of touch.

NIVEA wanted to increase the reach of its brand purpose message to a younger and more digital-savvy generation, reclaiming the role and value of touch in today´s culture. NFT and cryptocurrency chatter have been dominating the publication cycle and it was identified as the perfect vessel to deliver our simple message: touch has value because it is immediate, always available, and free.

To bring the project to life, we partnered with visually impaired artist Clarissa Baldassarri to create the first touch inspired NFT, making 15,000 copies of it available for free on the blockchain, inviting a new generation to discover the value of touch online.

A content hub dedicated to Clarissa`s story and social content were developed to boost engagement and drive conversions. To attract existing NFT lovers, the 15,000 minted NFTs were also batch listed on OpenSea, the largest NFT trading market.

The announcement was timed for December 13th 2021, as forecasts predicted a surge in NFT chatter in the pre-holidays period. All press materials distributed had direct links to our content hub, where interested visitors could deep dive into the story of Clarissa Baldassarri, understand the world of NFTs and claim their own piece of digital art.

The distribution of the press release was coordinated at 2 levels:

- At local level, One-to-One pitches helped secure monographic articles and quality coverage in top tier publications.

- At global level, we partnered with a newswire service to secure widespread distribution in general news and NFT/crypto oriented publications.

In parallel, NIVEA global channels on Instagram and Tik Tok were activated with content to reengage our brand lovers with our campaign message.

The results speak for themselves: 15,000 people claimed their free NFT in the first 72 hours of the campaign – meaning that every single piece of the limited edition was taken after only three days. In the same time span, the campaign achieved global PR results of more than 1,000 earned articles, adding up to an estimated reach of over 513M people around the world.

To date, the project has been covered by the likes of Yahoo! Finance, Elle Russia, CNET Japan, Glamour UK, O Globo, Trendhunter, Forbes India and even became a case featured at the Harvard Business Review.

The campaign website and NFT hub had over 100,000 aggregated visits in 3 days, with consumers spending on average 4:48 minutes interacting with our content.

Mentions across social channels were 100% positive or neutral, with many channels organically promoting the activity and commenting on the feel-good message of the campaign, even after the NFTs went out of stock.

Most importantly, the “The Value of Touch” NFT stayed true to the NIVEA brand essence, with many of those who claimed it appreciating it as their first experience in the NFT world, just as NIVEA is a steppingstone into the skincare world for many consumers. With the project, the brand has successfully proven the undeniable value of touch – and will continue to execute international projects for different vulnerable groups under the “Human Touch” umbrella.