The archive · Marketing & Growth · Marketing decision · 2017
Nongfu Spring prints NetEase Cloud Music comments on 400M water bottles
Nongfu Spring and NetEase Cloud Music print 30 user comments on 400 million bottles; scanning the label's vinyl pattern opens an AR starfield.
Nongfu Spring (农夫山泉) · NetEase Cloud Music (网易云音乐)
What it had to solve
After its 'comment train' (乐评专列) subway campaign, NetEase Cloud Music wanted to reach lower-tier cities its app hadn't penetrated. Nongfu Spring wanted its packaging to feel younger. A joint in-house team of about ten people, with no ad agency, built the campaign in weeks.
How it works
On August 7, 2017, NetEase Cloud Music and Nongfu Spring launched '乐瓶' (Music Bottles): 30 selected user comments printed on 400 million bottles of Nongfu Spring natural water, rolled out in 69 cities with JD.com selling online the same day. It was the music platform's first major campaign after its brand refresh to the slogan '音乐的力量' (The Power of Music).
The comments were chosen from 400 million user comments: the top 8,000 by likes were shortlisted, then filtered for brevity and for making sense outside their original songs. Scanning the vinyl-record pattern on the bottle with the NetEase Cloud Music app opened an immersive AR starfield, built by NetEase's in-house AR team Insight (网易洞见); tapping each star revealed another comment, and users could photograph themselves with the starfield and share it.
The campaign won a 2018 ROI Festival (金投赏) Silver in integrated communication. The award entry reports app downloads exceeding target by 300%, Nongfu Spring water sales exceeding target by 6x, more than 500,000 AR experiences, over 8 million views of the brand film without paid placement, and 1,700+ media mentions, 93.5% of them unprompted — with 97.9% of Weibo coverage unprompted.
Why it lands
- A water bottle is the most penetrated media in China: 400 million units carried the message into stores and homes no ad network could reach.
- The comments were already proven emotional content — the subway 'comment train' campaign had tested them at scale.
- AR gave a static label an interactive, shareable second act; NetEase Cloud Music's VP called it the first AR-plus-music marketing case in China.
- A small in-house joint team moved from idea to shelf in weeks, keeping the concept sharp without agency layers.
What it did
The campaign won a 2018 ROI Festival (金投赏) Silver for integrated communication. The award entry reports app downloads exceeding target by 300%, Nongfu Spring water sales exceeding target by 6x, more than 500,000 AR experiences, over 8 million brand-film views, and 1,700+ media mentions, 93.5% of them unprompted.
What you can take
The product is the media: a mass-market SKU carrying emotional content turns every store shelf into a placement, and AR gives the label an interactive second life people photograph.
Since then
The Music Bottle became a frequently cited example of package-as-media marketing in China and a signature move in NetEase Cloud Music's strategy of taking user UGC outside the app — following its comment train and music plane, and ahead of further bottle collaborations with other beverage brands. For Nongfu Spring, it reinforced a run of packaging-led marketing and young-brand plays that continued in later years. The campaign's award entry remains in the ROI Festival winners archive as a documented integration case.
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