Leo Burnett Beijing Launches Film to Demonstrate How Life Could be with Baidu Duer

At the Baidu’s 2015 Annual Corporate Conference held in Beijing last week, the Chinese search giant unveiled its very own virtual assistant named Duer, which roughly translates into "Du Secretary”.

This is the first Chinese competitor to go against Siri, Cortana, and Google Now. In the midst of a flurry of tech articles that were published following Duer’s reveal to describe its high-tech features, some people start to wonder how exactly can it help with our daily life?

In a newly-launched 44-second film, Chinese popular star Angelababy, who has been signed as Baidu brand ambassador in January this year, shows us how wonderful her life could be with this virtual and smart Du Secretary. Booking a hotel with hot spring is not hard,
but which one you can take your kitty with you?

Leo Burnett Beijing is the creative agency behind this mobile Baidu campaign.

“Not only does Baidu Duer have the unique position of being both the medium and the product itself, it also combines various Baidu digital sub-brands into a single device. What we aim to do is to demonstrate the innovation it brings to the users’ experience – whether it is the keywords search function, or the voice search function that is the entry point of Baidu - to connect consumer and service. Very importantly, we strive to present all these interestingly so it resonates with people,” says Frank Liu, Managing Director of Leo Burnett Beijing.

To do this, the creative team needed to find out a way to show the wonderful life possibilities with Duer which stays true to its capabilities. “We decide to do it via a simple yet slightly whimsical approach of transporting Angelababy into an animation to demonstrate how wonderful her journey is, with the help of Baidu Duer” , says Qifei Xu, Senior Creative Director of Leo Burnett Beijing.

Earlier this year, Leo Burnett Beijing also launched the very successful spring festival marketing campaign for Mobile Baidu movie tickets.

“We are very excited to contribute our creative intelligence on Baidu’s strategical transition.” says Frank Liu, “It is a very good learning journey for both of us. Baidu is turning itself from a simple search engine to a connector of human and service, while Leo Burnett is adjusting our creative service model, leveraging on our brand experience and HumanKind creative philosophy, to explore the best way of creativity communication for new products on different platforms.”