Designed for Living: How We Positioned Midea as a Premium Home Tech Brand
distillery partnered with Midea to create a comprehensive marketing toolkit, boosting brand perception for home appliances across the APAC region.
Despite $56 billion USD in 2024 annual revenue, global sponsorships, and a portfolio of global consumer tech brands suite, Midea’s target audience still preferred splurging on Samsung and LG when outfitting their kitchens.
The challenge was not product capability: it was brand perception.
And, with a new home appliance range poised for launch across APAC, Midea needed to rewrite that story fast.
The Brief
Midea came to us with a desire to shift positioning for Suite 1.0 - a comprehensive, AI-powered home appliance ecosystem designed for couples and young families.
The product was premium yet accessible, tech-focused and genuinely innovative. But… the market didn't know it yet.
The JBTD? Create a campaign toolkit powerful enough to work across multiple markets, flexible enough for local activation, and compelling enough to launch Midea onto the shortlist for first home owners, families and appliance upgraders across APAC.
The stakes were high. This wasn't just a campaign: it was a factory reset button for an entire region.
Our Approach
We developed a comprehensive marketing and sales toolkit designed to empower local markets to bring Suite 1.0 to life in ways that felt both global and intimate.
Our strategy was powered by a fundamental insight: home appliances aren't about the products themselves. They're about the life they enable - the big moments, the mundane moments and everything in between - to create within four walls.
So, with this in mind, we built the campaign around three integrated pillars:
Aspiration: Positioning Suite 1.0 as the undisputable first (or second) choice for modern couples and families who didn’t want to compromise on tech or design features
Accessibility: Proving that premium tech didn’t require a premium price, and that Suite 1.0 could be both sophisticated and attainable.
Connection: Emphasizing that AI could understand and adapt to how folks actually lived, not how product managers and engineers imagined they would.
Our creative strategy centered on the concept of "AI That Cares”, allowing our teams to move beyond technical specs to showcase Midea's emotional value.
To strengthen this, we developed a visual language that felt premium and aspirational while remaining warm and human. The "SmartMaster" product line became the hero, but always in the context of artfully composed homes where real people lived their real lives.
The Experience
The toolkit we delivered was designed to work across the full customer journey from awareness to consideration to conversion.
Films formed the creative backbone—a series of 11 films (ranging from 15 seconds to the main hero film) shot on location in China to showcase the range and its AI capabilities.
Product Key Visuals brought each appliance to life within lifestyle contexts—couples and families interacting with everything from washers to ovens to air conditioning units. Each visual told a micro-story: "Smart cycles, better control" or "Smart cooling, effortless savings.”
Sales Enablement Materials included a detailed product brochure layering technical specifications with emotional benefits, digital banners for media buys, and an immersive product display zone concept designed for retail booths, event spaces and distributor showrooms
We also developed a comprehensive KOL Guide and IMC deck to arm influencers and country marketing teams with campaign strategy, messaging frameworks & guides to ensure consistent storytelling regardless of channel or market.
The Results
As of December 2025, we’ve delivered all assets and expect the campaign to go live across APAC markets in H1, with Malaysia as the first market. Watch this space for more updates!
