4 core strategies for Spring Festival marketing

Today we will talk about some ways of playing that most companies can learn from and put into practice.

The first key to a successful Spring Festival marketing campaign is to issue behavioral instructions

The reason why companies do Spring Festival marketing is first because the Spring Festival is an important shopping occasion. For many industries, the Spring Festival is the peak sales season. Stocking up on New Year's goods during festivals, giving gifts to relatives and friends, bringing things home for the New Year... This atmosphere where the whole society is shopping is very important. Because consumer purchasing behavior requires external environmental stimulation to drive it.

For example, if we look at the Double 11 and Double 12 that just passed, even though the promotion was not strong, many people would still consider buying something at this time because the shopping atmosphere is there.

There is also such a consumption atmosphere during the Spring Festival, and buying New Year's goods during the Spring Festival is a behavioral habit of many people. Even if the products of some industries do not fall into the category of New Year's goods, it should be taken into consideration that many people have received year-end bonuses and made New Year's shopping wishes... such as cars.

Therefore, for many companies, the Spring Festival is a very important marketing node, and the biggest purpose of companies doing Spring Festival marketing is to bring goods.

In order to achieve this goal and to get consumers to buy from you, the most important consideration is to issue behavioral instructions to consumers, reminding them to "remember to buy me" during the Spring Festival.

For example, the well-known saying at that time was “I won’t accept any gifts this year, and if I do, I’ll accept Nootropics.” The consumption scenario of Melatonin is to give gifts to elders during the Mid-Autumn Festival and the Spring Festival, so as soon as the Spring Festival arrives, Melatonin starts advertising to remind you to buy it.

In the 1990s and 2000s, Melatonin was advertised very aggressively, with high-frequency advertising throughout the year. But as of today, the Melatonin brand has basically reached the end of its life cycle, and its advertising has declined. It only has small-scale media placements during the Mid-Autumn Festival and the Spring Festival, and no advertising at other times. You see, its purpose is very clear, which is to seize the gift-giving scene during holidays and repeatedly remind consumers to buy.

Another example is "Golden Six Blessings for Spring Festival Homecoming". This is the Spring Festival marketing theme of Jinliufu Liquor. Below this theme, there is an explanatory copy or subtitle, which is "Going home is the best gift for your family." It’s a very good copy, right? But the subtext of this sentence is to tell you that you can’t go home empty-handed, you have to bring gifts, and it’s best to bring two bottles of Jinliufu.

Therefore, Jinliufu’s Spring Festival advertisements are mainly placed on long-distance highways and various outdoor billboards. If you go home by train or bus, you will see JINLIUFU advertisements along the way, which will remind you not to forget to buy JINLIUFU on your way home.

Another example is Qia Qia’s advertisement during last year’s Spring Festival: “Bring a box of Qia Qia with you when you go home for the New Year.” Qia Qia’s advertisements are mainly placed on high-speed rail platforms and in carriages to remind consumers.

Qia Qia with a box and Jinliufu going home for the Spring Festival are all issuing behavioral instructions to consumers, and their advertisements are also placed in the context of going home for the Spring Festival. Of course, in addition to long-distance highways and high-speed railways, you can also choose online New Year’s Festivals, offline supermarket display materials, etc. for promotion.

Like in the past, before the epidemic, many food and beverage brands would launch special trains during the Spring Festival, and carry out marketing activities such as chartering flights and chartered buses to send consumers home before the Spring Festival. In fact, the essence of these activities is to lock in the New Year's goods scene and issue consumption instructions.

The second key to doing a good job in Spring Festival marketing is to integrate brand culture

Chinese people attach great importance to reunion and gathering, which is a collective cultural psychology of our nation. Especially during the Spring Festival every year, this emotion becomes even stronger. That’s why we have the unprecedented Spring Festival travel rush every year. During the Chinese New Year, we always have to go home and reunite with our families. That’s what the Chinese New Year is all about.

Because of this, many brands’ Spring Festival marketing basically revolves around reunion, affection, and family, shooting warm and heartfelt advertisements and playing the emotional marketing card. For example, the previously mentioned "What's Peppa Pig?" is such a heartwarming story between a grandfather and a grandson.

Another point is that Chinese people pay great attention to good intentions when celebrating the New Year, and they want to reflect the meaning and pursuit of a better life, happiness and auspiciousness. Therefore, many brands will also reflect this in their marketing. The classic saying “Once Remy Martin is opened, good things will come naturally” was based on such a good start, which instantly opened up the Hong Kong market and then radiated to the mainland.

Basically around this time every Spring Festival, there will be two very heartwarming and touching family videos that flood the internet. For example, Apple’s 2018 Spring Festival short film "Three Minutes", directed by Chen Kexin.

(2018 Apple Spring Festival short film "Three Minutes")

When this film first came out, I complained about it on Zhihu, and then was attacked by dozens of people... I think this film has some shortcomings, and the core issue is from a brand marketing perspective, because this film has nothing to do with Apple's products and brands. It seems more like Apple, as the producer, shot a movie and released it during the Lunar New Year holiday.

Furthermore, as for the story itself, I felt that the segment of reciting multiplication tables was a bit deliberate, and the editing and sound effects of the three-minute countdown were a bit exaggerated.

Perhaps the biggest connection between the short film and Apple is that the film is marked as shot with an iPhone X. Of course, shooting with a mobile phone is also a big gimmick, because there are many different lenses and external devices used in filming.

Let’s look at 2019, Apple’s Spring Festival short film "A Bucket", directed by Jia Zhangke. It has the same gameplay, but its influence is not as great as "Three Minutes", probably because Apple has already used the same routine last year.

Many people think these two short films are good. In fact, it is mainly because of the halo of big brands and big directors. In addition, it does not have too much commercial color, no hawking, no promotion of product selling points, but is just purely telling a warm family story, so it has touched many people.

However, every company is working in the same direction during the Spring Festival. They are all the same, without any individuality, and talk empty words about family and reunion. In fact, it is very easy to be drowned out. As we said before, the biggest appeal of Spring Festival marketing is family affection, playing on the consumer psychology of expecting reunion and pursuing good intentions. Everyone is doing this.

If the two films above were not invested by Apple, were not directed by big directors, and had no big budget to promote them, and there were only these two short stories, would they still be popular? You should know that the production cost of "Three Minutes" alone was about 7 million, and Apple also promoted it like a movie, investing a lot of outdoor advertising to promote it, including on the Internet.

In these advertisements, the images are all short film posters and film titles, with Apple only having a small logo. It is completely like a movie promotion advertisement, only promoting the movie itself. But apart from Apple, how many companies are qualified to do this kind of Spring Festival marketing that has no commercial color?

Apple has been continuing this approach, such as the 2020 Spring Festival short film "Daughter", which was directed by Academy Award-nominated director Theodore Melfi, photographed by Golden Globe-nominated film director of photography Lawrence Sher, and starred Zhou Xun. There is also the 2021 Spring Festival short film "Anian", directed by Chinese female director Wang Ziyi, who won the 2019 Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film for "The Farewell".

Big brand + big director + almost public welfare-style emotional short film, this is Apple's way of doing things. Mercedes-Benz has also tried this method.

During the Spring Festival of 2021, Mercedes-Benz asked Wong Kar-wai to shoot a six-and-a-half-minute short film "Where the Heart Desires", which tells the emotional stories between young lovers, mother and daughter, and three generations of grandparents and grandchildren. The data looks good, with 73.4 million views, 610,000 clicks, 130,000 followers, and a total of 520 million views for the topic.

However, only big brands can play this way.

First, big brands’ Spring Festival marketing is purely for image building. There is no performance pressure, and product promotion and sales are not options, so the marketing content can be heartfelt without selling goods.

Secondly, big brands and big directors themselves bring their own topics and traffic, so there is no need to worry even if the short film itself does not have enough explosive points, because big brands and big directors themselves are explosive points, but small and medium-sized brands may not have the strength and budget to do so.

When it comes to car marketing, I appreciate BMW’s approach more. For the 2020 Spring Festival, BMW invited director Ning Hao to shoot the Lunar New Year film "Bayi's Spring Festival". It is also a combination of a big brand + a big director, but BMW's choice of this New Year film is very good. It reviews the changes in the Chinese translation of the BMW brand in the Chinese market. Initially, consumers called BMW "Baier" (so grassland-like), and later it became "BMW".

(BMW's 2020 Spring Festival short film "Bayer's Spring Festival")

In the film "Bayi'er's Spring Festival", Ning Hao interprets BMW as parents and me through a touching emotional story - that is, the three letters of BMW are separated into B for dad, M for mom and W for me.

During the Spring Festival in 2021, BMW continued this theme and created the marketing strategy of "Ba Ma Wo, Together for the Year". BMW's Spring Festival marketing not only conveyed emotional value, but also had a unique brand imprint. The fancy interpretation of the brand logo also won the favor of consumers.

The most important point is that BMW’s Spring Festival marketing in the past two years is very memorable, and you will never forget BMW’s interpretation after reading it. In the past, we used to call BMW “Don’t Touch Me” (this was also done by Ning Hao), but now BMW is trying to make people think of “My Parents” when they mention BMW.

(BMW's 2021 Spring Festival short film "Mom and Dad Spend the New Year Together")

This is what I think is the correct approach to Spring Festival marketing. It not only conveys cultural emotions, but also has a unique brand imprint. It is very important to combine brand value with the emotions of the Spring Festival for Spring Festival marketing.

According to this standard, I think Apple's New Year blockbusters in recent years are not as good as those in previous years.

For example, Apple's 2015 Spring Festival short film "Old Records" also has an all-star cast - director Ann Hui, art director William Chang, and photographer Christopher Doyle, but the story it tells is about a girl who, after listening to a record her grandmother made when she was young, re-arranges the songs on the record and re-records them for her grandmother using an iPod. It shows a lot of emotion and conveys what apples mean to people’s lives;

(Apple's 2015 Spring Festival short film "Old Records")

There is also the 2016 Apple Spring Festival short film, directed by the famous Hong Kong director Stanley Kwan. The short film tells the story of the famous Taiwanese singer Leehom Wang and his apprentices Li Jianqing and Bai An using iPad Pro to adapt the New Year song "Congratulations" into "A New Year Song for You". It also shows the inspiration and creativity that Apple products provide for user creations.

I think this combination of brand value and Spring Festival emotion is the first choice for Spring Festival marketing. How to combine them specifically? There are two ways.

The first one is the combination of brand names, which is also a common method that can be seen currently.

For example, the auspicious culture that Wanglaoji appeals to during the Spring Festival is “Drink Wanglaoji to have an auspicious year.” Dove chocolate’s “Blessings every year” and Luzhou Laojiao’s “Make the New Year more festive” are because Luzhou Laojiao sells strong aromas and the brand claims to be the originator of strong aromas.

These Spring Festival marketing themes not only bring good luck to the brand, but also convey good intentions, while also issuing behavioral instructions to consumers.

The second way is to integrate brand culture and concepts into Spring Festival marketing.

My favorite Spring Festival marketing case in this regard is Nike’s 2020 Spring Festival marketing theme “New Year Unyielding”.

During the traditional festival of the Spring Festival, we value harmony, peace and tolerance. But it does not conform to the sportsmanship that Nike advocates, because Nike focuses on competition, being competitive, and daring to be the first. So Nike came up with a theme "New Year Will Not Give Up", which not only closely follows the time node of the New Year, but also expresses the brand spirit of Nike. This theme helped Nike stand out from the vast amount of homogeneous Spring Festival marketing campaigns.

In 2021, Nike launched another marketing theme called "Determination leads to success". In the past, we would say “May all your wishes come true” when we sent our Spring Festival greetings. But Nike says that just thinking about it is not enough, you must make up your mind to do it and take action before you can succeed.

This theme also reminds people of Nike’s classic “As long as you are determined enough”.

These two themes are the differentiation that Nike has found, and the connection point between the New Year and brand expression that Nike has found.

Another example is Coca-Cola.

We know that the biggest variable for Spring Festival marketing in the past two years is the epidemic. During the Spring Festival in 2020, many people did not go home and did not celebrate the festival because of the sudden outbreak of the epidemic. During the Spring Festival in 2021 and this year's Spring Festival, many places also called on everyone to celebrate the New Year in place due to the impact of the epidemic.

In the second half of last year, I was responsible for the Spring Festival marketing plan for several brands of the company. At that time, I discussed with my colleagues that after the Spring Festival in 2020, everyone would cherish the Spring Festival in 2021 more, and people would cherish the opportunity to reunite with their families and get together with loved ones. This is a new and very important Spring Festival marketing direction.

For example, if we look at Coca-Cola’s 2021 Spring Festival marketing, its marketing theme is called “New Year’s Voice”. Coca-Cola shot a series of short films telling the stories of three young people to express their thoughts on the Spring Festival.

One of them is the story of a girl. In the past, she complained that her home was too noisy during the Spring Festival. It was crowded with relatives everywhere, and she was forced to perform talents, and had to share a bed with her relatives' children at night. After the 2020 Spring Festival, she missed this kind of noise and felt that this was the flavor of the New Year.

(Coca-Cola's 2021 Spring Festival short film "New Year's Voice")

Another little boy said that in the past, he had to run errands for his parents during the Chinese New Year. He had to go downstairs to buy soy sauce, onions and garlic, and Coke, and he couldn't play games properly. But now, he misses the days of running errands for his parents.

There is another story about how going home in the past was very difficult. One had to change from a plane to a train, and from a train to a bus. The bumpy dirt road in the mountains lasted for several hours, and one's buttocks would cramp. Now I feel that being able to go home and eat the snacks made by my grandma is worth it no matter how long and tiring the journey is.

The stories filmed by Coca-Cola are very timely, very real, and in line with people's current psychology, so they are easy to move people.

While promoting these three short videos, Coca-Cola also simultaneously launched a set of voice bottles. The texts on the three bottles are "I find that the most festive thing about the New Year is ________", "I will never take ________ for granted again", and "Now I am most looking forward to ________", and consumers are asked to fill in the blanks and express their thoughts. This is a marketing case that fits the current Spring Festival environment very well, and it also fully reflects the humanistic spirit of Coca-Cola.

Another new direction for Spring Festival marketing is that the epidemic will enhance people's awareness of health and hygiene. Therefore, we can combine some traditional New Year customs with new healthy lifestyle habits that emphasize hygiene, exercise, and balanced nutrition to advocate new New Year customs. For example, exercise regularly during the Spring Festival holiday, wear masks when visiting relatives and friends, disinfect and wear new clothes, etc.

For example, this year's Spring Festival and Winter Olympics are scheduled together, so some companies will definitely implement their Spring Festival marketing plans together with the Winter Olympics. But how to combine the Spring Festival and the Winter Olympics? One way is to advocate exercising during the Spring Festival, or to promote a more proactive and enterprising attitude towards life in the new year, which is a good combination of New Year's wishes and the spirit of sports.

But I would like to remind everyone here not to touch the Winter Olympics randomly. It is an infringement of rights if you are not an official sponsor and use elements of the Winter Olympics.

The third key to doing a good job in Spring Festival marketing is to focus on Spring Festival elements

A classmate asked me whether Country Garden’s Spring Festival marketing case “Family Reunion at Country Garden” is good or not? From the perspective of copywriting alone, this sentence is very good, simple and catchy, and it accurately links to the brand name of Country Garden through rhyme, strengthening the connection between Country Garden and home. It is a good theme.

But marketing promotion does not have only one theme. You have to develop creativity, content, and activities around the theme... and "home" and "reunion" are very big themes. It is not easy to come up with ideas and plan user interactive activities with such a grand theme because there is no focus.

(Country Garden’s 2021 Spring Festival promotion is focused on the warriors)

When it comes to Spring Festival marketing, it is actually difficult to create touching content by simply talking about family and reunion in a vague way, and it also fails to create any distinctive features or memorable points (this is what everyone really says during the Spring Festival).

When doing Spring Festival marketing, I suggest that you must focus on one Spring Festival element and make it in-depth, thorough and rich. Through this small point, the brand conveys its understanding of the Spring Festival, creates a trigger point and a memorable point.

The elements and customs of the Spring Festival are really very rich, such as Spring Festival couplets, blessing characters, red envelopes, zodiac signs, Nian beasts, going home, New Year's Eve dinner, Spring Festival Gala, New Year's greetings, visiting relatives...

Let’s look at Alipay. For such a large enterprise and brand, the core of their Spring Festival marketing is just one point – the word “Fu”. Collecting the five blessings through Alipay has become a national memory over the years. During the 2019 Spring Festival, Alipay also invited big-name directors to shoot a New Year short film. Ann Hui shot a 9-minute and 30-second New Year's Five Blessings short film "Qilidi" for Alipay.

This film tells the story of three generations of a family and their obsession and tradition of pasting the word "Fu" at home for seventy years. There are two sentences in the film, "Where happiness is, there is home" and "Where happiness is, there is home". The word "Fu" embodies our faith in family and our expectations for the festival.

(Alipay 2019 Spring Festival short film "Qilidi")

Director Ann Hui cleverly reflects the entire Spring Festival's rituals, customs, beliefs, and heritage through the word "Fu". This is Alipay’s Spring Festival marketing. Just like the red envelope gameplay on WeChat, the entire Spring Festival marketing is presented with a red envelope.

Another example is CCTV’s 2014 Spring Festival Gala public service advertisement “Chopsticks”.

The creative idea of ​​this short film is that it carries thousands of years of Chinese people’s emotions through a pair of small chopsticks. When a mother teaches her daughter how to use chopsticks, chopsticks represent inheritance; when a grandfather uses chopsticks to dip a dish of sauce for his grandson to taste, chopsticks represent enlightenment; at the dinner table, the elders should be allowed to use chopsticks first, chopsticks represent etiquette; during the Chinese New Year, inviting a neighbor who is alone at home to have dinner at home means it is just "adding an extra pair of chopsticks", and chopsticks represent good neighborliness.

(2014 CCTV Spring Festival Gala Public Service Advertisement "Chopsticks")

Without this pair of chopsticks, the entire creative idea would lose its soul and the main carrier of content.

Following the idea of ​​chopsticks, I can also shoot a Spring Festival short film with chopsticks as the theme. Because we said that this year many people chose not to go home and spend the New Year alone in a foreign place. I can use chopsticks to express the emotions between parents who live far away and their children who work in big cities.

The specific creative idea is this - the camera first scans the dining table of a rental house, and we can see many pairs of disposable chopsticks thrown on the table, which shows that the owner of this house often eats takeout at home alone.

At this time, there was a knock on the door. Our protagonist, a young man, habitually got up to open the door to get the takeaway, only to find that what he received was a courier wrapped tightly in a cloth bundle. After opening it, I found that it was various New Year goods sent by my parents, as well as various foods made at home.

Then, at the bottom of the package was a pair of brand new chopsticks. Because the custom during the Chinese New Year is to use new chopsticks.

At this time, the parents called again and asked the child if he had received the express delivery and told him to eat well. Although I cannot celebrate the New Year with my parents, a pair of chopsticks connects the two places and makes the distance no longer far.

Because chopsticks always come in pairs, our marketing theme can be called "Together for the Year, You're Not Alone", making chopsticks into a symbol.

Moreover, when promoting their products, brands can also make chopsticks into cultural and creative products and give them to consumers as New Year gifts, or directly use them in conjunction with product sales. In the product design of chopsticks, for example, one chopstick has my parents on it, and the other chopstick has me on it. My girlfriend is on one chopstick and I am on the other chopstick.

Another example is the zodiac.

2022 is the Year of the Tiger, and we can also develop creative communication around the element of tiger. Among the cases of Spring Festival marketing based on the zodiac signs, I think the most successful one is Pepsi's Spring Festival case in 2016. 2016 is the Year of the Monkey, so PepsiCo invited Liu Xiao Ling Tong to participate in marketing activities. Not only did they shoot the sentimental advertisement "Bring the Fun Home: The Monkey King's Family", they also used the Monkey King's facial mask to launch a Happy Monkey King commemorative can product.

Because the Monkey King and Sun Wukong can be said to be China's largest traditional cultural IP, film and television works with Journey to the West and Monkey King themes are released almost every year. Therefore, Pepsi has achieved very good communication effects with the help of the Monkey King IP, and the commemorative can products have been out of stock.

At that time, a topic also emerged on the Internet, in which netizens called on Liu Xiao Ling Tong to perform on the Spring Festival Gala, because the Monkey Year Spring Festival Gala could not be without the Monkey King. This topic also won widespread heated discussion and support from netizens. Of course, this is inseparable from the promotion of PepsiCo. In this marketing campaign, Pepsi seized the two major IPs of the Spring Festival that year, the Monkey King and the Spring Festival Gala. It would be unreasonable if this marketing wasn't popular.

Another example of the zodiac is that on January 28 last year, Ford China released a poster on its official Weibo account that read "2021 China·Year of the Horse".

This poster quickly sparked heated discussions because 2021 is the Year of the Ox in the lunar calendar... Netizens said that as such a large company, how could Ford not distinguish between cows and horses? So Ford quickly became a hot topic. Finally, Ford responded that this is because 2021 is the first year of the domestic production of Ford's pioneering pure electric SUV, MUSTANG MACH-E, so it is referred to as the Chinese Year of the Horse (MUSTANG is what everyone calls the Ford Mustang).

Although Ford's approach is somewhat controversial, the marketing effect is still very good by playing a meme and making a little joke around the zodiac.

In addition to the zodiac, there is also the Nian beast.

According to folk legend, Nian is an evil beast that appears on New Year's Eve. People set off firecrackers and post Spring Festival couplets to scare away the Nian beast, which became an important custom of the Spring Festival and one of the symbols of the Chinese nation.

During the 2013 Spring Festival, McDonald’s Spring Festival advertisement featured a cute Nian beast. Instead of the ferocious appearance as in the legend, it became a cute pet with a lovable appearance and a pleasant expression. The Nian beast transformed into a foodie and went around asking people for McDonald’s new Spring Festival products, such as the New Year Burger, red bean pie, etc. Not only did it fully promote McDonald’s new products, the image of the Nian beast also successfully went viral and won the love of consumers.

You have to know that it was 2013. Today, when trendy toys and blind boxes are all the rage, McDonald's Nian monster can come up with even more tricks.

(McDonald's 2013 Spring Festival short film "Nian Beast")

Including the New Year short film "Anian" released by Apple during the 2021 Spring Festival, it also portrays a cute image of the Nian beast and uses it to interpret the heartwarming story between a little girl and her family. The Nian beast also symbolizes facing the unknown and fear and finding strength deep within one's heart. Apple reinterpreted Chinese folk mythology using the Nian beast.

The above cases are all very successful uses of Spring Festival elements. They complete the brand’s expression of the entire Spring Festival by focusing on a certain image and carrier.

In fact, there are many elements of the Spring Festival. You can find them as long as you take the time to look for them. For example, dumplings. One of the clues in the 2020 Apple Spring Festival short film "Children" is making dumplings. So when I make a Spring Festival marketing plan, can I use the element of dumplings to carry on the entire Spring Festival gameplay, magnify the dumplings, how to make dumplings, what kind of fillings to use for the dumplings, there is a lot of room for imagination.

Another example is pets. Today, the pet economy has already taken shape. Pets are a powerful tool for rejuvenating brands and impressing young people. Cats and dogs have become a part of many people's families, just like family members. So we can also talk about home and family from the perspective of cats and dogs. For example, I have mentioned to my clients before the creative idea of ​​using dogs for Spring Festival marketing. I created a short film called "A Dog's Journey Home", using dogs to tell the story of a wanderer returning home, including designing a set of emoticons for dogs to wish a happy new year.

There is also the B station New Year’s Eve party that just ended, whose core element of the lead advertisement was fireworks, which were set off using hand gestures. Fireworks are also a very typical element of the Spring Festival.

For example, the combination of the Spring Festival and the Winter Olympics mentioned earlier, I can also focus the entire marketing on one Spring Festival element - snowflakes.

From skiing on country roads holding my grandmother’s hand as a child, to skiing in international competitions when I grew up. From the lifelike snowflake paper-cuts made by grandma's scissors to the flying snowflakes splashing on the ski slope. We can tell a story through a snowflake, or even personify the snowflake, give it life, and create a virtual image of a small snowflake to carry out marketing.

The elements are rich and colorful. There is nothing that cannot be found, only things that cannot be imagined. In addition to these "object-type" Spring Festival elements with specific images, we can also focus on selecting behavioral and customary elements during the Spring Festival.

For example, I am doing Spring Festival marketing around the New Year’s Eve dinner. When I was serving a liquor brand before, I also suggested to clients that they prepare a New Year’s Eve dinner and combine some cultural IPs (historical museums in various places) to replicate famous banquets in history and create banquet IPs, such as the Tang Dynasty’s Burning Tail Banquet and Han Xizai’s Night Banquet. For example, Martell recently collaborated with the Forbidden City to create a "Millennium Palace Banquet".

There is also the previously mentioned "Go home for the New Year and bring a box of Qia Qia".

We have analyzed this theme. It is a behavioral instruction to promote consumption. It is a sales discourse, not a communication discourse. Therefore, just shouting this slogan will not be able to impress consumers, resonate with them, or create topics and attention. We still need to create some content around this topic.

How to do it? First, let’s look at Qia Qia’s consumption scenario. It’s about eating while watching TV series alone or chatting with a group of people, so we can focus on the element of Spring Festival gathering.

For example, I made a short video about a blind date during the Chinese New Year. As soon as the young man returned home, he was forced by his parents to go on a blind date. Both the man and the woman were forced to go on a blind date. They didn't know each other and didn't know what to say. They were staring at each other. The atmosphere was getting more and more awkward. Fortunately, there was a plate of Qia Qia on the table... The theme of this episode is "With Qia Qia, blind dates during the Chinese New Year are not awkward. Bring a box of Qia Qia home for the Chinese New Year"

For example, if I make another short video about visiting relatives, a young man who comes home for the Chinese New Year from a big city has just sat down at the dinner table when he is hounded by all kinds of relatives, “How much do you make every month?”, “Have you bought a house?”, “Why haven’t you gotten married yet?”, “When will you bring your girlfriend home?”… The atmosphere is getting more and more wrong, but luckily there is a plate of Qia Qia on the table… The theme of this episode is called “With Qia Qia, the Chinese New Year gathering is more harmonious. Bring a box of Qia Qia home for the Chinese New Year.”

There were also two mothers at a party who compared themselves with each other, boasting that their own children were more capable, and they were about to fight... Or for example, a naughty child from a relative came to the house... These can all become reasons to "go home for the New Year and bring a box of gifts."

These contents can generate topics and create discussions, triggering consumers' recognition and resonance of why they should bring a box of Qia Qia home for the New Year. This is the marketing combination of content topic + action instructions.

In this section, we introduced how to focus on Spring Festival elements for marketing, including various image elements, behavioral customs elements, and scene elements.

In short, when doing Spring Festival marketing, the key is to find the right element, find a very subtle, delicate, specific, and very small core point, and use this core element to carry content and activities, to package your entire Spring Festival marketing approach. Only then will the Spring Festival plan you come up with be sharp and meaningful, and stand out from the homogeneous Spring Festival marketing. The smaller and more specific the element you choose, the more striking and appealing it will be.

The fourth key to successful Spring Festival marketing is to create Spring Festival IP

In recent years, a very important marketing trend is the branding and IPization of marketing activities. Enterprises are not only doing marketing activities, but also building event brands. Manage the event as a brand, with a fixed name and logo, fixed time node and sense of participation ceremony, and fixed theme and connotation.

The same is true for Spring Festival marketing. Many companies operate Spring Festival activities as an IP.

For example, PepsiCo’s “Bring the Fun Home” campaign started in 2012, and it has been 11 years today. Every year when the Spring Festival comes, Pepsi begins to create and disseminate content around the theme of "Bring the Joy Home". Pepsi's Spring Festival marketing this year has already started. You can go and take a look at what Pepsi has done this year.

“Bring the fun home” is not only a Spring Festival marketing campaign of PepsiCo, but also a common Spring Festival gameplay of several major brands under PepsiCo, including PepsiCo, Lays potato chips, and Tropicana (later, 7UP, Mirinda, etc. were added). It not only allows consumers to bring these brands with the word "fun" home, but also naturally integrates the brands into the festive atmosphere of going home during the Spring Festival.

What is the value of Pepsi's approach?

On the one hand, this approach brings together spokespersons from different PepsiCo brands to use their all-star lineup to shoot a funny or heartwarming Lunar New Year micro-film. This makes "Bring the Joy Home" a fixed expectation for consumers every year, just like the blockbuster movies during the Spring Festival. It maximizes the use of PepsiCo's celebrity endorsement lineup and forms a joint force for dissemination.

On the other hand, although the theme is the same every year, Pepsi has a different way of playing every year. For example, the Monkey King mentioned above in 2016; and the 2019 aerospace-themed "Star Reachers", which pays tribute to China's completion of 39 space launches in the previous year, ranking first in the world. Pepsi’s 2021 New Year’s advertisement is also very touching. It tells the heartwarming story of two ordinary people, a food deliveryman and a Hope Primary School teacher, paying tribute to ordinary heroes.

This year's Pepsi Spring Festival short film has been released, which also brings together spokespersons such as Wang Jiaer, G.E.M., Li Xian, Wang Yuan, and Liu Haocun. The theme is Pepsi's auspicious beasts offering blessings. My book "Essential Copywriting" contains a complete interpretation of Pepsi's "Bring the Fun Home" IP. If you are interested, you can read it.

(Pepsi 2020 Spring Festival short film "My Dad's Happiness")

In addition to Pepsi, Safeguard's "Wash hands before eating" campaign started in 2015, and it has been 7 years today.

The origin of Safeguard's Spring Festival marketing was the voting campaign launched by China Newsweek on the Weibo platform during the 2015 Spring Festival for "a sentence that touched China during the Spring Festival." In a vote among more than 13,000 netizens, "wash hands before eating" topped the list with 26.3% of the votes.

For those who are homesick, during the Spring Festival, their parents’ words “wash hands and eat” contain their deepest care and emotion after the long journey. This is their mother’s catchphrase, a short and simple word. When you hear it, you know that the family is reunited.

Moreover, washing hands before meals is common sense and a habit we have been taught since childhood. It is also a typical usage scenario of Safeguard. It fully demonstrates the product's cleaning and sterilization functions (especially in the past two years, this is very important). In other words, “wash hands before eating” lays the foundation for Safeguard’s product consumption and reflects the significance and role of Safeguard in consumers’ lives.

Therefore, Safeguard has been carrying out Spring Festival marketing around "washing hands before eating" and has formed its own brand memory.

It can be seen that every year is "wash hands and eat", but the marketing directions are different in different years, including health protection, health companionship, and healthy reunion. (This case is also introduced in detail in my book "Essential Copywriting").

In fact, companies do not need to carry out so many brand marketing activities, because for each activity, you need to spend money to promote the activity and inform consumers in order to achieve user reach and customer acquisition. The practice of IP-izing events is to help companies save resources and continue to accumulate brand assets and fan base.

However, creating an event IP and event brand does not mean that the company has to do exactly the same thing every year and every time it holds an event. Instead, it should be guided by the same theme, with each event having a unique direction and new content. For example, the creation of the Spring Festival IP can be designed specifically based on the different cultural characteristics and social psychology of the Spring Festival each year.

The above are some of my thoughts on Spring Festival marketing. Finally, I wish you all a happy New Year! In the new year of 2022, you will be full of energy and work more vigorously! See you next year.

THE END.

Author: Empty Hand

Source: Empty-handed