How to set up event prizes like Alipay Koi?

During the National Day Golden Week in 2018, marketing/ operations / sales colleagues were quickly brought into work mode by a message about " Alipay Koi". When you were squeezed in a scenic spot with 3 million people during the National Day, someone organized an online event with 3 million participants, and created a new marketing method of "2018 Alipay Koi".

01 What did Alipay’s Koi event do?

The Alipay Koi event is a very common Weibo forwarding lottery. You can participate in the lottery by forwarding a Weibo post, but it has a theme of "May you become a Chinese Koi". The prize is a gift list that takes 3 minutes to read through, including free meals around the world, free meals, two mobile phones...

So how is it that a single forwarding lottery event can be forwarded over a million times in 6 hours, and the cumulative number of forwardings exceeds 3 million? Because it is Alipay?

Yes and no.

Because it is Alipay, there is such a long list of gift resources, the benefit of free orders by swiping Alipay within a certain limit, and the promotion of various channel resources ; but it is not just because it is Alipay, because from the event theme design to the gift design to the communication design, all reflect the operator's ingenuity.

02 How attractive is this gift list?

It took me 30 seconds to roughly count. This gift list includes prizes provided by 56 organizations around the world (maybe the number is not accurate). The prizes that can be directly obtained include a pair of limited edition shoes and a limited edition bag in France, a handbag in Japan, a pair of snow boots in Australia, a bottle of wine in Hong Kong, a can of milk powder in a designated supermarket in Macau, a free meal in Guangzhou, 2 kilograms of salmon in a designated market in Sydney... The most direct way is probably to get a mobile phone from a Samsung store and place an order for a mobile phone from the Huawei Mall.

Of course, there are many free prizes that are not listed. In addition to free prizes, there are also some gift certificates, and prizes such as 2 10 ml skin care essences.

It seems that if you want to claim all these prizes, you probably need a plane ticket that can travel all over the world and go to various countries to claim the prizes. Do you still want to be this lucky carp?

03 Why did this event attract 3 million participants?

Whether it is a Huawei or Samsung mobile phone, a limited edition package of a certain brand , or a meal in a high-end restaurant, none of them would have such a big activity effect when taken out separately, but Alipay cleverly put all the high-end-looking prizes on a form, which turned it into a big gift package that looks extremely expensive.

In addition to the extremely expensive long gift list, another highlight of this marketing campaign is the theme of "Chinese Koi". Retweeting koi has become a common phenomenon on social channels such as WeChat Moments and Weibo. In recent years, koi has evolved from traditional carp to "lucky people". The winner this time has naturally become the "2018 Alipay Koi" certified by Weibo.

04 How to design event prizes to make them look expensive?

The design of event prizes has always been a rather troublesome topic in the marketing process. If the prize value is low, it will be unattractive; if it is high, there will be no budget; if there are too many winners, the prize value will be low; if there are too few winners, the participation rate will be low.

In the design of event prizes, you can refer to three routines:

Routine 1: Koi gift pack, quantitative change brings qualitative change

After we carefully studied the contents of the Koi gift package, we found that each prize taken out individually was not very attractive and was also very common. In addition, the threshold of going abroad to receive it greatly reduced the interest in participating. However, when put together, they become extremely expensive prizes.

The same type of prize design also includes activities in the form of "resource packages". For example, it is very common in fission courses that when you sign up for a course, you will receive a 10GB gift package of useful information . The 10GB gift package may contain 3,000 pictures and 10 videos, but the real useful information is those flowcharts and PPTs that are only a few MB in size.

Another example is various practical manuals. A single practical article has low appeal, but 10 practical articles put together become a manual with the "magic" of insight into the industry and foreseeing the future.

Trick 2: Using overall value to cover up the value of a single product

This routine can also be learned from Alipay. Every year, the Five Blessings Collection activity has a total prize of 200 million or 500 million yuan, but except for a few lucky people who can get prizes exceeding three digits, most people’s prizes are only a few dollars. If I tell you that you can win 2 yuan by collecting the Five Blessings, will you still play?

The overall value masks the value of individual products, which is suitable for activities with a large number of prizes. The same routine can also be seen in offline lottery activities. The grand prize is a car, but there is only one. Other prizes are rice cookers, microwave ovens, and even vouchers. Users are induced to participate through small tricks that see the big picture as small.

For example, there was a fan-attracting event for a public account with the theme "We have prepared 100 books, all for you", but in fact, you need to be ranked according to the number of friends you invite to be eligible to choose any paper book. Those who do not reach the ranking will receive electronic materials. Of course, it can also be called an "e-book".

The benefit of this type of activity is that in addition to inducing the overall prize value, it can also induce the winning rate, which reduces the user's vigilance. If there is something to gain from participating, it will be easier to win big. But it may also bring negative word of mouth. Every year after the five lucky red envelopes are awarded, there is a lot of complaints.

Trick 3: Give users what they want most

Although the first two methods save the cost of prizes, they still require certain resources to be implemented and are not applicable to some industries. But the point of giving users what they want most can be applied to all products.

So how do you find what users want most?

Through data.

The e-commerce industry can give users the items they have recently added to their shopping carts, the content industry can design gifts based on users' content preferences, and the education industry can give users an upgraded course based on the course they are currently studying. The event is still an event, but the prizes can be different for each person.

Of course, the prerequisite is that you have a set of data analysis tools for user behavior insights.

05 Besides being clever with the prizes, how else can you play the lottery?

In addition to working hard on the design of the prizes, you should also pay attention to the packaging of the prizes. For example, the gift list of Chinese Koi can also be called the collection of free items by swiping Alipay, but the former can make people fantasize to the sky, while the latter makes people bored to the dust.

The so-called prize packaging is to use some emotional "teasing" to make users have an unexpected understanding of the value of the prize.

Just think about it, what could be better than becoming the "lucky fish" that everyone forwards?

Similarly, Tmall held a similar event during the 618 shopping festival, with the theme "The Chosen One". The Chosen One is for individuals, while the Chinese Koi is relevant to everyone.

There are also three ways to package prizes:

Trick 1: Get endorsements to make the prize seem more meaningful

Endorsement includes common forms such as celebrity recommendations and brand recommendations. For example, if I want to do a book giveaway, simply giving away a book is not attractive, but if I say that this is a book recommended by Mr. Jack Ma , the participation will be higher.

Endorsement is also a common method in marketing, where free prizes are marketed like commodities, because commodities bring users money, while prizes are exchanged for user actions.

Tactic 2: Find resonance and establish a connection between prizes and people

Activities designed for specific groups of people naturally need to observe the attributes of the group, and the needs of the group must also be grasped when designing prizes. For example, for customers in the product/operation/marketing industries, how should we send Spring Festival gifts? Since he is the sponsor, it doesn't matter how expensive the gift is. The problem is that I have no money.

You can send a customized gift package that records the love-hate relationship between Party A and Party B in the past year, or a knowledge manual related to the industry plus small gifts such as cups, pens, and USB flash drives. It is also a collection idea, but with the characteristics of the crowd added.

In addition, cultural and creative products tell us that users can not only pay for caviar, but also for a sentence.

Routine 3: Add halo, miss it once and wait another ten years

First of all, I want to emphasize that adding a halo does not mean cheating.

Product concepts such as limited edition and special edition will make people take a second look. The same idea can also be applied to gift packaging. For example, when giving away mobile phones, the ones given away at Tencent's annual meeting will be engraved with each person's name, or foreign programmers like to wear T-shirts given away at various IT conferences. The prizes are no longer prizes, but proof of experience.

Other ways of adding halos include using various awards, celebrity signatures, customized items, unique pieces, and out-of-print items.

06 Conclusion

As mentioned above, there are many aspects of the Alipay Koi event that can be reviewed, but as a lottery event, the prize design gives us more inspiration. The prize design must first maintain consistency with the overall attributes of the event, secondly, it must cater to the preferences of the crowd, and finally, it must show the significance of the prize.

Source: Zhuge iO