How to create a screen-sweeping event promotion and marketing?

Review of the Phenomenon-level Screen Sweeping

July 10

Planet Research Institute's "What is Wuhan" went viral

A single tweet has been read over 10 million times

Set the best reading record in history

Reposted by People's Daily official microblog and more than 200 other media

July 11

5 short videos of "Wuhan 1 Minute"

90 million+ views on the entire network

New media from 6 major cities gathered for the first time to support #ThisisWuhan#

July 12

5 creative city posters

Jianghu Renjian/ Cosmic Pier/ Guo Zao/ Randu/ Hormones

Cooperate with peripheral derivative products

24 million followers

3 products are popular all over the network

Topic popularity: 270 million+

What was the reason for this phenomenal screen-sweeping event in July 2019? What is our revelation?

1. Traffic topic: Do what no one has done before

"The bonus period is over, which means the wild growth period is over. But new media entrepreneurship is a long-term race, and what matters is the ability to continuously produce high-quality content. If you have good content, you can still stand out, so you don't have to worry about not having opportunities."

——Geng Huajun, founder of Planet Graduate

When self-media is selecting hot topics, they need to consider three questions: What do I want to do? What can I do? Who will repost my content?

"Planet Research Institute" is a self-media for geography enthusiasts, and introduces itself as "a group of National Geography fans, focusing on exploring the ultimate natural scenery." For the "Planet Research Institute" team, interpreting cities from a purely geographical perspective is what they want to do, what they can do, and what no one has done before.

Why can the “What Series” launched one after another on the Planetary Research Institute continue to dominate the screen? Why did the topic #What is Wuhan# become such a hit?

From an economic perspective, it is the imbalance between the demand for user pride and the supply of content.

During the National Day in 2018, the Weibo topic #中国一分钟# had over 100 million views, followed by #湖北一分钟# and #重庆一分钟# which were reprinted by government media such as People's Daily. In 2019, when the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China is approaching, the popularity of the topic #是什么中国# will continue to rise and return to the topic list. October 2019 coincides with the holding of the Wuhan Military Games. Users' pride in China's urban development (Wuhan) urgently needs a channel to release, and the local accounts of self-media in most areas of Wuhan focus on eating, drinking and having fun. Users' demand for releasing their pride is greater than the supply of Wuhan's urban development content on social media, so the topic of "What is Wuhan" has its own traffic and great potential for dissemination.

On July 10, the long picture and text "What is Wuhan" was first released, and the number of online clicks exceeded 130 million in 12 hours; on July 11, the series of short videos "Wuhan 1 Minute" took over, and on July 12, five creative posters were unveiled, continuing to sweep the screen. In just a few days, Wuhan became an unrivalled "Internet celebrity", and "What is Wuhan" became a phenomenal topic. As of 21:00 on the 14th, the total number of clicks and reads on the entire network exceeded 260 million, and "What style" attracted many city self-media to imitate.

2. Traffic Values: Pride is Value

"This series of works can achieve relatively good results. Production may be just a foundation. More importantly, in the collective screen swiping, we see the enthusiasm of Wuhan people for this city, which happens to be the charm of Wuhan."

——Head of HANS

It reached over one million views in 3.5 hours and over 10 million views in 33 hours, far exceeding the record of 6 million views held by the official account. Why did it explode on the Internet so quickly? Founder Geng Huajun believes that "this is an open topic about the city. One million people may have one million different understandings of 'what is Wuhan'. We can also see that Wuhan's influence is growing. There are many people working in other places and overseas. The long pictures and texts also stimulate everyone's hometown complex, so it has attracted a lot of reposts and comments."

Opening the historical news of the "Planetary Research Institute", you will find that the articles produced cover a wide range of areas. When introducing a place, an article can compare its geographical causes horizontally and explain its historical background vertically. It can present a magnificent history of a period or become a geographical record of the changes that have taken place over the past century, which makes people feel excited when reading it.

Geng Huajun said that writing about Wuhan is not just about introducing Wuhan’s geography and history, but also about the impact of geography and history on the city and on people, and presenting the bustling world of Wuhan. Popularizing geography cannot just be about imparting knowledge and showing beautiful pictures, it must have values . It’s not enough to just let fans feel beauty, they must see something behind the beauty.

At the end of the article "What is Wuhan", the fan "Xinyi" left a message: My eyes were wet after reading it. As a native Wuhaner who has been wandering overseas for 15 years, I have never been so proud of my identity as a Wuhaner. Thinking that I will return to Wuhan next month (the second time in 15 years), I am destined to have insomnia tonight... "The screen is full of pride. I love Wuhan's profound history and cultural heritage..." Pauline left a message.

Indeed, pride is a value. Just like the audiences who have watched the movie "Wolf Warrior 2" will say "burning", because the patriotic sentiments conveyed in the film are like a match, igniting the patriotism of countless citizens and their desire to express their national emotions. Similarly, "What is Wuhan" ignited the pride of Wuhan people and their desire to showcase the achievements of Wuhan's development.

3. Traffic team: the trust value of PGC

According to an interview with Geng Huajun, the person in charge, by Chutian Metropolis Daily, a team of 9 people was formed when the topic of this popular article was first decided, including 4 people from Hubei, and 2 of them had studied in Wuhan.

It is indeed worth learning to customize a content team for a piece of content and treat the content as a product.

The person in charge of "HANS", who participated in the planning and implementation of the #What is Wuhan# topic dissemination, revealed that in order to produce this series of works, not only a team of 15 people was dispatched, but also more than 40 professional external partners were invited, including consultants, directors, photographers, illustrators, etc.

High-quality content requires professional production. From the recruitment information issued by the "Planetary Institute" in May this year, it can be seen that all the chief writers/contributors recruited must have a master's degree or above, with majors including urban planning/urban geography/regional planning/urban economy/architectural history/historical geography/human geography, and are required to have multiple personal works.

Compared with the bachelor's degree or above requirements in Chinese/Journalism/Chinese Language and Literature/Advertising for ordinary new media positions, the content operations of the top self-media in first-tier cities have entered the PGC discipline era. At this year's Huxiu's new media in-depth sharing meeting, Dingxiang Doctor's operations manager shared his views: The key to establishing trust in self-media is professional endorsement. Dingxiang Doctor uses doctors to produce content and adopts a professional doctor review and peer review mechanism to produce high-quality professional content to complete the cold start from 0 to 1.

Similarly, Xiaomi’s approach to finding the right type of people to run its own media is also anti-traditional. Traditional companies will look for marketing planners to do this, but for Xiaomi, it is about doing self-media and content operations. Therefore, the first requirement for Xiaomi's social media marketers is not to do marketing planners, but to be product managers.

Xiaomi emphasizes using product manager thinking in marketing. Since new media places more emphasis on two-way communication and interactions occur anytime and anywhere, it is difficult for new media operators to explain the product's features to users if they do not understand the product.

4. Traffic images: Aesthetic value becomes increasingly important

The pictures presented in "What is Wuhan" are extremely shocking and fascinating. Geng Huajun said that it took more than ten days to select the pictures. He found many local photographers in Wuhan and collected 30G of resources. "The screening process was quite arduous. The photos presented in the end are very different from the ordinary people's vision, because the charm of photography lies in discovering other people's different perspectives."

The articles of the "Planetary Research Institute" have a broad vision. The starry sky, mountains, rivers, earth, and the universe are all themes. The exquisite and magnificent pictures complement the texts full of humanistic care. The pictures they choose are mostly large-format photos presented from a "God's perspective", and each one gives people a feeling of being "completely shocked and thoroughly opened". Some fans say that this is "the only top public account."

"New Media Chief of Staff" Fan Weifeng once mentioned in his "Ten Lectures on New Media" that as a thin media, it contains three values: information value, trust value and aesthetic value. As a "Planetary Research Institute" focused on exploring the extreme world, while providing information value such as history and geography, it also breaks away from local vision, possesses higher aesthetic taste, occupies a commanding and leading position, and brings higher added value.

HANS, which also participated in the planning and implementation of the #什么武汉# topic spread, subsequently launched the video "Wuhan 1 Minute" and the graphic article "What is Wuhan? We might as well draw it for you!" The five creative hand-painted posters in "What is Wuhan" have added a lot of color to the topic #What is Wuhan#. As a regional leading self-media, the videos and pictures in HANS's content are all taken by professional photographers. Smooth editing and dubbing, scene-based pictures and branded typesetting style have become standard for leading self-media.

As a new media operation for an enterprise, in the early stages of operation, having professionals conduct scenario-based shooting of the company's office environment and products is a guarantee for improving the quality of content operations. For example, the content recently produced by the team , such as "The Twelve Hours of Huashan" and "Summer Solstice New City, Joyful Huashan", show the ecological environment of the region through pictures from different angles, providing aesthetic value for users.

5. Traffic Bonus: Earn Media and First Order Bonus

The city-level promotion of "What is Wuhan" covering the entire Internet has made the world know about Wuhan. The pictures and texts of "What is Wuhan" have been reprinted by more than 200 media outlets including the People's Daily official Weibo account, which is a textbook-level phenomenal urban communication case.

I believe that the core of the phenomenal spread of "What is Wuhan" is, first, obtaining earned media through the distribution of high-quality content, and second, finding the high-quality geographical giant "Planetary Research Institute", thus obtaining the first dividend of self-media.

*Earned media refers to exposure and mentions gained through word of mouth or users.

Local self-media, government self-media, and vertical field giants have formed a complementary and co-creative relationship of complementary traffic, complementary expertise, and complementary resources in this city-level communication. The local self-media HANS has maximized its own advantages in resources and content breadth, and co-created high-quality content with the geographical giant "Planetary Research Institute", forming a hit, and tapping into the first bonus of the "Planetary Research Institute" interpreting Wuhan from a geographical perspective.

Last October, the original promotional video for Wuhan Software City, “Three Minutes of New City”, planned by our team, went viral on WeChat Moments. It’s a classic case of premium content earning earned media. "New Town Three Minutes | Tribute to Thirty Years of Optics Valley" attracted the attention of the Optics Valley government and media, and ignited the resonance and pride of the Optics Valley park circle, industry circle, and media circle. 12 governments and self-media took the initiative to forward it, and hundreds of park bosses and Optics Valley opinion leaders shared it in their circle of friends.

“Geography is such a way of thinking, a way that allows us to look at the world from a more macro perspective. If you master it, the world will be completely different in front of you.”

Related reading:

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2. How to write a 99-point event promotion plan?

3. How to plan a hit promotion event that will go viral?

4. A complete online event promotion planning plan!

5. New media planning event promotion and operation tool library!

6. How to promote offline activities?

Author: Tang Xiaohan

Source: Tang Xiaohan