"Little Yellow Car + Little Minions", ofo fired the first shot in the "brand war" of shared bicycles

The new shared bicycles launched by ofo in cooperation with Universal Pictures are very eye-catching on the streets. Because they use the IP image of the "Minions" movie series, the ofo team internally calls these bicycles "big-eyed bikes."

"Now ofo bikes also have lights?" a passerby exclaimed.

What he saw was a new shared bicycle launched by ofo in cooperation with Universal Pictures, which used the IP image of the "Minions" series of movies owned by the latter. Taking advantage of the upcoming release of Despicable Me 3 , ofo launched 50,000 specially designed shared bicycles and deployed them in first-tier cities such as Beijing and Shanghai and some top second-tier cities.

The ofo team internally calls these bicycles "big-eyed bikes." In addition to the two cute big eyes in front of the handlebars, the bike also has Minions patterns on the rims and related stickers on the body.

To some extent, Minions and giant pandas have similar attributes: round, cute, but occasionally smart enough to make people laugh. It is hard not to like such an image, and Nan Nan noticed this high-quality resource that could be utilized very early on. She is ofo's vice president of marketing . She started communicating with Universal Pictures in December last year. After going through a series of necessary procedures, the other party quickly agreed to this joint marketing plan. After all, ofo's accumulated resources and user scale are also quite attractive for the promotion of the film.

"Within half a year, the number of people involved in this marketing campaign , including those within the team and external advertising companies, reached nearly a hundred people," Nan Nan told 36Kr . Ofo takes this activity very seriously. Nan Nan said that this is a true "integrated marketing". Not only hardware, ofo has also invested a lot of resources in promoting software.

On July 3, the Minions version of the App was officially launched, and the new UI design can already be seen in areas where “ ofo big-eyed bikes ” have been deployed. The icon that originally marked the bicycle parking location has been replaced with a banana, and the eyes of the Minions at the bottom of the page will move up, down, left and right with the sense of gravity. Nan Nan loves this design so much that her team even held a competition today to see who can make the Minions' eyes cross. The final record showed a few successful cases, but not many.

When the element of "play" is added to marketing, it can make the event more interesting on the one hand, but more importantly, it can enhance the audience's sense of immersion, which determines the ultimate effect of the event.

Of course, online warm-up and preparation are also very important in the digital marketing environment. In fact, on June 28, ofo’s official Weibo account released a suspense poster with the theme “We’re Yellow Together” to build momentum for the event. Afterwards, it started joint marketing with brands such as Huang Xiaochu, Xiao Ming, Meitu Family, and Koala FM.

Finally, an H5 titled “Headline | ofo reaches strategic cooperation with an internationally renowned movie star” was circulated on WeChat . In the " ofo Yellow Bike R&D Workshop" on display, the Minions become workshop workers. Users can make a "big-eyed bike" by swiping left, pulling down, and shaking. The ultimate goal of this H5 is to guide users to download the new Minions version of the App.

Nan Nan said that although this car is very popular among people, it has also caused some problems: "Some users move this car into their homes just to take selfies with the car from all angles. We can only guide everyone to put the car back to the public space after taking selfies." Some users even began leaving messages asking whether the car is for sale. Nan Nan said that ofo's point of view is that it hopes everyone can share, so there is no related production and sales plan.

In fact, this is not ofo’s first specially designed custom bike. In June this year, it customized a " princess car " for female users , with a basket made of a special imitation rattan shape; in addition, a muscular version of the shared yellow car was also unveiled in Taikoo Li Sanlitun , targeting male users.

But in Nan Nan's opinion, the significance of this cooperation with Universal Pictures is different from the past: the customized cars launched in the past still focused on the hardware level in order to meet the segmented needs of different groups of people; but the "Big Eyes Car" has a stronger brand promotion attribute and is a purer brand marketing behavior.

"We expect that by the second half of this year, the degree of homogeneity of shared bicycles at the hardware level will become increasingly higher, so the end point of the competition will be at the brand level," said Nan Nan.

This is also true. From last year till now, the shared bicycle industry has been at the forefront of the trend. With the support of capital, the number of bicycles put into use has been hovering at a high level. The total number of shared bikes put into use by the two giants , Mobike and ofo, in 2017 is estimated to reach 30 million. Many people have begun to joke that "there are too many shared bikes and not enough people to ride them."

It can be said that the focus of competition in the early stages of the shared bicycle industry was still convenience. From the consumer side, people preferred the most common bicycles. However, as it has developed to this day, when convenience is no longer a problem and where there is ofo there is almost certainly Mobike, distribution volume is no longer the most important factor in consumer decision-making, but brand image is.

Similar to other sub-sectors that were once popular, the industry reshuffle has just begun.

This also explains why ofo has been active in brand marketing recently. It has not only launched many customized bicycles, placed advertisements on different media, and continuously promoted the slogan "It makes riding easier", but also invited Lu Han to become the first brand spokesperson. Although it caused some controversy, overall, ofo was able to accumulate brand awareness through these activities and gain a good position for the next competition.

In addition to the purpose of shaping the brand image, the "ofo big-eyed bike" has another equally important purpose for Nan Nan. It may become the starting point for ofo to seek more diversified commercialization channels.

In fact, as shared bicycles are widely accepted by the public and form a high-frequency consumption scenario, more and more brands are seeking to cooperate with ofo. Nan Nan admitted that he had received requests from many heavyweight fast-moving consumer goods brands.

It goes without saying that although people use shared bicycles frequently, they face the problem of low average order value. Although ofo's official data shows that its main bike rental business can generate 20 million yuan in revenue every day, commercial monetization remains the focus of observers' scrutiny. Therefore, commercialization through cooperation with other brands has become one of the options.

In an earlier interview with us, Li Gang, the founder of Bluegogo, said that many companies were looking for advertising . Soon after, Bluegogo launched a bicycle with a smart screen that plays advertisements to stationary riders. As a result, shared bicycles became an advertising media platform, generating stable monetization income.

But for relatively strong brands like Mobike and ofo, their bottom line is that they cannot make mistakes and cannot lose their advantageous position, so they become very cautious when it comes to advertising. Nan Nan admitted that even if he seeks commercial monetization in the future, he also needs to consider whether it meets the expectations of ofo users. He will first reject simple advertising and will try this joint marketing model more in the future.

But no matter what, this is another shared bicycle brand that has begun to think about diversifying its revenue structure after the Bluegogo smart screen. Anyway, this market will face this problem sooner or later, so why not think about it early?

Recently, there have been news reports of shared bicycle companies going bankrupt ( see "Reshuffle! Shared bicycle production has dropped significantly, and some brands have stopped production | 36Kr Exclusive" ). Under the condition of oversupply, the market quickly shifted from a seller's market to a buyer's market, and the pressure of brand competition immediately arrived.

The cooperation between ofo and the Minions may just be a starting point. Competition at the brand level will become the focus of shared bicycle competition in the second half of the year, which will test the brand's marketing capabilities.

After all, the outcome of the battle is still undecided, and latecomers may rush into the first echelon at any time. The so-called "duopoly" dare not let down their guard. From "finding a bike to ride" to "choosing a suitable brand", the changes in consumer psychology caused by the change in supply and demand relations have just begun.