Star Investors x Labubu (Acquisition Campaign)
Overview
We leveraged on the "star" IP in 2025, Labubu, to drive high-impact growth for TradingKey's product – Star Investors. By anchoring our promotion to this viral phenomenon, we successfully converted pop-culture hype into measurable financial engagement.
MY ROLE
Campaign Strategy, Art Direction, Content Writing
CHANNELS
Meta，LinkedIn, TiktTok, Social Ads
DURATION
4 Weeks
This was one of TradingKey's newly launched feature but it has almost no marketing presence. The brief was simple in ambition but hard in execution: build awareness in 4 weeks without a large brand budget.
We kicked things off with a theme titled "Monster Gains". The concept bridged the cultural hype of Labubu (literally monster-like character) with the legendary status of "market monsters" - the top investors who dominate the financial scene.
Key Decisions
WEEK 1
Launched across all social media channels and primarily targetted organic audience. This phase was meant to test out various visuals, marketing copy and the effectiveness of the mechanics. Users just had to go to the product page and leave a comment in the post on what they like about the product.
Issue: Users may not go to the website and still able to leave a comment.
WEEK 2
At the same time, we noticed the page sessions have went up as the articles are gaining traction through google search results. We then swiftly pivoted to drive social media users acquisition and relaunched subtly with the new mechanics by changing out all the copywriting and readapted the visuals to fight fatigue.
Solution: We changed to a gamified "earn-to-win" model.
WEEK 3
Although EN channels saw a huge uptake through the new model mechanics, CH and TH channels still continue to see zero engagements in the new model. Each week we announced winners to prove for full clarity and genuinity.
Solution: We went back the traditional way – all engagement done directly on the individual platforms.
WEEK 4
In the final week, it became about controlled scaling and not experimentation. Paid ads were pushed out across different channels for 5 days with a limited budget of less than USD$10 a day per channel. Although minimum budget, the final results were a total of 326% followers increase for the 3 different languages.
Creative Planning
The design brief to my designer had one non-negotiable: it cannot look like a typical fintech marketing that try to humanise everything.
For the start, we referenced to the AI generated visuals of the various Star Investors that we featured in the website. Then we look at the IP of Labubu with the visual direction of keywords "universe", "stars", and "magical". The aesthetic it eventually landed on: magical, dark background, "stars align", and rely heavily on TradingKey branded colours.
Beyond static images, videos were planned to run as paid ads to boost reach and establish authenticity through the blind box unboxing.
At the end of the campaign, the opened labubu was given away as I strategically localised only for the Thai market, our key expansion territory for the year.
The mechanic was clear: to drive participation via the "Guess the Labubu" challenge. By utilising the teasers and repurposing Popmart's existing ad assets, I created a gamified experience that rewarded users who had been following the content journey.
My Role: Strategic Leadership and Structural Foundation
I served as the bridge between creative vision and operational execution. Beyond defining the campaign direction and providing art direction for the designers, I acted as the primary strategist – pivoting tactics in real-time to maximise engagement.
My focus was not just on the strategic launch, but the impact lies in the operational systems I built. I translated the execution in a streamlined campaign template and process documentation. This equipped the team with a scalable system for future growth. By synthesizing stats into actionable learnings, I provided the "playbook" for our next execution.