NetEase Cloud Music's marketing campaigns in the first half of 2017

NetEase Cloud Music is a music product that focuses on discovery and sharing and has light social attributes. Since its official launch in 2013, it has exceeded 300 million users in four years.

This achievement is inseparable from the product’s initial correct positioning and NetEase Cloud Music’s increasingly mature marketing methods.

In the first half of 2017 alone, NetEase Cloud's marketing has already come up with new and exciting ideas.

List of NetEase Cloud Music's online and offline integrated marketing activities in the first half of 2017

In these few short months, the most sophisticated activities include the "Music Review Train" on March 20, the "Music Plane" on June 5, and the "NetEase Cloud Music x Nongfu Spring cross-border marketing" on August 6.

Music Review Train

On March 20, passengers boarding Hangzhou Metro Line 1 were dazzled by the bright red color.

The interior of the car adopts the theme color of NetEase Cloud Music - red. 86 selected music reviews filled the subway cars of Line 1, making this train a veritable " Internet celebrity ".

These music reviews are excerpted from the highly praised comments under various playlists on NetEase Cloud Music, and all come from users.

"Ten years ago you said life is as gorgeous as summer flowers, ten years later you said ordinary is the only answer"

"If we don't want to be together, then let's not be together. Lifetime isn't that long anyway."

"Don't frown, I'll just leave"

“When I was young I wanted to be anyone but myself”

"I don't like this world, I only like you"

…

The subway is a place where loneliness and fatigue can easily breed. On every train in every city, the vast majority of people coming and going are people rushing to every corner of the city. NetEase Cloud's choice to place such music reviews in such a venue has undoubtedly perfectly captured the audience's pain points.

Therefore, this marketing storm was extremely enthusiastic, being shared and discussed by netizens across the country on various social media , and also causing people from all walks of life to imitate it .

The music review function of NetEase Cloud Music is very simple, with only likes and replies.

But this simple community, with its own unique charm, turns songs into scenes and stories through users' comments, and it continues to thrive. Some people even say that they can spend hours listening to NetEase Cloud Music.

We found that NetEase Cloud Music is subtly changing the usage habits of listeners: from pressing the play button and putting the music in their trouser pockets to listening to music while reading comments.

So some people say that NetEase Cloud Music is breaking the myth that a music product is just a player.

Music Plane

While many people are still imitating the idea of ​​contracting an entire subway train to write copy, the arrogant NetEase Cloud Music has already reached out to the blue sky.

On June 5, NetEase Cloud Music and Yangtze River Airlines jointly launched the first "music plane" in China. On that day, hundreds of passengers flying from Shanghai Pudong to Sanya, Hainan had the opportunity to experience some fun at 30,000 feet.

The interior of the cabin adopts red and white as the main colors, and is decorated with musical elements such as vinyl records; the previously monotonous seat headbands have been replaced with cute animals such as "folk cat", "country crayfish", and "post-rock sheep" representing different musical styles.

The luggage racks and small tables are printed with 18 high-quality UGC playlists selected from NetEase Cloud Music. Passengers only need to open the Pad prepared by the airline and put on headphones with extraordinary sound quality to turn on the music mode that suits their taste and turn a boring flight into a relaxing and enjoyable music journey.

The main feature of the “Music Review Train” is “Music Review”, while the main feature of the “Music Plane” is “Playlist”.

For NetEase Cloud Music, which focuses on discovery and sharing, playlists are its core advantage or selling point. Users can search other people's playlists, comment on them, collect them, and even create their own playlists. At the same time, NetEase Cloud Music will regularly recommend playlists that may be of interest to certain users on its homepage.

This approach not only satisfies the sense of accomplishment of the recommended persons, but also promotes the development of unpopular and niche songs, and maintains a healthy ecology where multiple music genres coexist.

Advertising guru David Ogilvy once said, "Position your product before you create something creative." NetEase Cloud Music has achieved this famous saying.

NetEase Cloud Music and Nongfu Spring cross-border marketing

On August 6, the official WeChat account of NetEase Cloud released a tweet titled "The lipstick marks on the cup are so sexy..." and invited a group of beautiful young ladies to reveal the photography rules of major INS celebrities.

Do you find anything in common in each of the above photos? That’s right, it’s the quilt in the hands of all the young ladies!

The sensitive marketing dog smelled something unusual. On August 7, NetEase Cloud Music and Nongfu Spring revealed the answer and brought the "Happy Bottle" to everyone.

I have to say that no matter what kind of marketing NetEase Cloud does, its appearance is always perfect. For this event, NetEase Cloud Music and Nongfu Spring launched the first limited edition "Music Bottle" in 69 cities across the country, and sold it simultaneously on JD.com .

NetEase Cloud Music's iconic vinyl record pattern and user music reviews are distributed on the Nongfu Spring bottle, and each music review gives the bottle a unique emotion. By scanning the QR code, you can also jump to the related playlists of NetEase Cloud Music.

Compared with previous events, this event adopted the popular AR technology. Users can not only "see", but also scan the customized starry sky AR through the latest version of NetEase Cloud Music APP, which enhances interactivity and users' desire to share.

Cross-border marketing enables both parties to expand user channels while enhancing the reputation of their brand. NetEase Cloud Music can undoubtedly leverage the strong brand awareness of fast-moving consumer goods brand Nongfu Spring to further integrate the music experience into users' life scenarios.

From the above, we can find that NetEase Cloud Music’s marketing has always been combined with its two core features: playlists and music reviews. Since a large amount of the content is UGC and users produce the content, as long as there are users and they are active, there is basically no problem of content exhaustion.

But how to combine these two core features to continuously innovate marketing methods may be the challenge facing NetEase Cloud.

During this period, NetEase Cloud Music had to remove a large number of songs because many songs did not have copyright, which affected the user experience of some users. This may also be an emergency hurdle it faces.

In any case, NetEase Cloud's marketing is still remarkable. Personally, I am still looking forward to NetEase Cloud’s next move!