A "good time" recruitment campaign, rethinking the fit between event marketing and brand

There have been many event marketing plans in recent years. Before the spontaneous travel, there was an event called “Escape from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou in 4 hours” which attracted a lot of attention. During the Singles' Day in 2016, a campaign to save singles with the theme of "Make the most of the good times" came again. It seems very similar in concept of just going on a trip, but there is a little difference: the former is a solo action participated by an individual, while the latter is an action to get rid of singleness combined with Singles' Day. It sounds very interesting to meet an unknown person in an unknown trip!

This event was initiated by Tencent Video, Tencent Travel and Shandong Airlines, recruiting six "single dogs" for a spontaneous date trip at 30,000 feet in the sky. After more than a month of warm-up preparation, on December 17, the six successfully recruited single men and women spent two days of romantic time together in Qingdao.

There are two insights from this case:

1. Non- e-commerce brands take advantage of Singles ’ Day to adopt differentiated thinking

It seems that Singles' Day has become the Double Eleven Shopping Festival. The marketing of most companies is naturally related to shopping, and they try to take advantage of Double Eleven. However, this time the "Make the Most of the Good Time" campaign goes straight back to the essence. The action to save singles is also launched on Double Eleven, but it takes a different approach in terms of theme, communication media, and event format. Participants are targeted at young user groups. This is worth considering for more non-e-commerce brands.

2. Let the brand theme become user interpretation through activities

Tencent Video’s brand spirit is “Make the most of the good times”, and this event also uses “Make the most of the good times” as the theme of saving singles, which is very appropriate. This highly consistent and thoughtful planning is worth learning from.

Recruitment started on November 11 and lasted for more than a month, and the dating trip started on December 17. During this period, Tencent integrated its strong own resources and external integrated communications. Through videos and travel platforms, focus pictures, full-width ads, splash screens, etc. were recommended. The Tencent video splash screen received up to 40 million exposures , and linked with 13 major network resources such as Tencent Dayan.com and Daliao.com to cover second- and third-tier cities, attracting more than 10,600 interested people and nearly a thousand people signed up for the event. The Weibo topic #30,000-foot high-altitude date# received 5.011 million views, and the main topic #Don't waste the good times# received 180 million views (including the popularity effect of previous activities). Many travel and emotional KOLs participated in the interactive sharing, with a total coverage of more than 20 million people. Why did a recruitment campaign of "Don't waste the good times" attract so much attention?

1. The activities are heartfelt and hit the user's pain points

The e-commerce Double Eleven turned Singles' Day into a shopping festival. In addition to shopping, single young people hope to meet true love and successfully find a partner on Singles' Day. Therefore, Tencent Video, Tencent Travel and Shandong Airlines have launched a campaign to save singles with the theme of "Make the most of the good times". The unknown destination, unknown strangers and unknown travel hit the mark of young people's strong curiosity and sense of participation.

Why do we say this is a heartfelt event?

(1) The campaign to save singles takes advantage of Singles’ Day

Most of the activities on Singles’ Day, apart from the Double Eleven e-commerce promotions, are either “dog abuse” actions, or caring activities that take advantage of Singles’ Day also hijack product promotions. This time, the “no promotions throughout the process” rescue operation is permeated with warm love!

(2) Stimulate the curiosity of young people

Unknown people and unknown destinations arouse the curiosity of young people, especially for those single young people, a wonderful encounter may lead to love. From those born in the 80s to those born in the 90s and 95s, the view of love is obviously different from before. Meeting beauty in uncertainty is probably the attraction of "making the most of the good times".

2. Spread content with both coverage and connotation

For this communication, Tencent integrated its own media resources, with the participation of 13 "big websites", as well as external network resources such as Tencent Travel, Tencent Video, Tencent News, and Weibo.

What are the specific highlights?

(1) Tencent’s media resource integration

Tencent Video, Tencent News, Tencent Travel and others promoted the warm-up of this event.

(2) The “big network” covering second- and third-tier cities has become the main entry point for registration

Tencent Dayan, Daliao, Dazhe, Daqin and other 13 "big networks" jointly launched the event registration information, and the main registered users all come from this channel .

(3) Interactive topics + KOL promotion

We created the Weibo topic #30,000-foot high-altitude date# and the interactive discussion on the topic #Don’t waste the good times#, and used travel KOL @漫步40国, emotional KOL @他给他梦@情感树心@思考核心 to spread the pre-heating posters and good times series posters to specific groups of people, reaching a total of more than 20 million people.

(4) The content has warmth

Under the theme of "Don't waste the good times", the warm-up posters such as "This may be your last Singles Day..." and "The best time is not somewhere else, it is here" and other good time series posters are all warm and touching.

Why did Tencent Video launch this spontaneous campaign to save singles?

(1) User-related

Tencent Video, which targets young people, plays the role of planner and recorder in this singles campaign. Video is a topic for young people to communicate and a carrier for recording unforgettable moments. This should be the basic point of planning this event.

(2) Market related

An interesting discovery this time is that Tencent Video used a "big network" of resources covering mainstream cities across the country to select registration channels, attracting more young users to participate. This is related to Tencent Video's user strategy.

(3) Related to positioning

This event used Tencent Video's brand positioning slogan "Don't Waste the Good Times". These five words are familiar to Tencent Video netizens, and happen to have a good connection with the beautiful time like love. The brand connotation of "Don't Waste the Good Times" naturally became the theme of this event.

The competition in online video is intensifying, from content wars to user wars. How to stand out in the mad rush for traffic? Tencent Video has indeed changed significantly this year, from focusing on film and television drama copyrights, to creating its own web dramas and original variety shows, from online variety shows such as "Please Take Care of My Refrigerator" and "Please Take Care of My Wardrobe" to the recent popular IP drama "The Lost Tomb: The Mystical Ancient City". In addition to attracting users with content, event designs like this "Operation Save Singles" are a good attempt, allowing users not only to chase hot dramas, but through activities to transform users from "viewers" to "participants", and at the same time conveying the brand spirit of "making the most of the good times" through young people, and through activities to resonate with more young users.

Through this case, we take a new look at the fit between event marketing and the brand. The six young people who participated in it watched Tencent Video, which is positioned as "Don't Waste the Good Times", and participated in the "Don't Waste the Good Times" campaign to save singles. Everything went with the flow. I don't know whether their good times are continuing. I wish them the best, love bravely, meet their own beautiful moments, cherish them, and don't waste the good times!

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media information flow

This article was compiled and published by the author @魏家东 (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!