Mid-Autumn Festival Marketing: How to Create a “High-Level” Marketing Effect?

In the book “It’s Rare in Life to Be Calm”, Mr. Lao She said: “The three major festivals, Dragon Boat Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival and New Year, cannot be treated so carelessly”. As users, we will not be careless. Brand marketers who study user needs every day naturally cannot be careless either. Mid-Autumn Festival is approaching. Do you want to make full use of the festival to create "high-level" marketing?

I don’t think anyone in the market would want to. So what to do?

If your first reaction is: It’s just making a poster, shooting an advertisement, writing a soft article, etc., what’s so difficult about it. Then you have to be careful, because users nowadays may not buy into this kind of marketing "tricks".

Hey...what exactly is this marketing "routine" and why doesn't it work? How to “counter the routine”? Let me tell you one by one~

1. The same old Mid -Autumn Festival marketing tactics

2. Unexpected “anti-routine” marketing

1. The same old Mid-Autumn Festival marketing tactics

What are the common tactics used in Mid-Autumn Festival marketing?

After reading more than 100 Chinese Valentine’s Day marketing cases, I discovered the real “routine” of festival marketing! In the previous article, we talked about two common routines of holiday marketing:

Duplication of marketing methods: that is, not considering where your target user groups are, and blindly following other brands’ methods of holiday marketing.

Repetitive marketing content: In fact, it is just reusing old ideas, “old wine in new packaging”, repeatedly hitting user pain points, but users are already “numb”, so they will not buy it and will forget it as soon as they see it.

So why don’t these tactics work now?

I think it’s because the old routines can’t meet new needs. User needs are constantly changing, but we are still using the same old approach. Just like when a child grows from 8 to 12 years old, if you buy him new clothes in the old size, he will of course be angry because he can't wear them.

The most frightening thing is that user demands are changing dramatically, but many entrepreneurs and marketing managers have no insight into this and are still complacent with their previous “marketing achievements”, thinking they can keep doing it forever.

So how do we understand users’ latest needs?

Combine big data behavioral research with small data sentiment insights.

In fact, if we infer user needs from consumption behavior, we will find that user decision-making has always been a process of both emotion and rationality. The left brain is rational, thinking about cost-effectiveness; the right brain is emotional, thinking about whether it is enjoyable or not. It’s just that the proportion of emotional and rational decision-making varies in different industries.

What will users need during this special festival of Mid-Autumn Festival?

This depends on what users want to express during the Mid-Autumn Festival, what behaviors they will have, and what emotions will arise from these behaviors? Based on big data and small data, we all need to have a psychological prediction in advance.

So after understanding user needs, what else needs to be done? Just follow it and use it.

How to follow and exploit it? Then we must keep in mind the two elements of "anti-routine"~

2. Unexpected success in “anti-routine” marketing

Before talking about these two elements, let’s first take a look at which brands do better in Mid-Autumn Festival marketing and how they do it? (If you are impatient, you can scroll down and read the summary below)

While every household is talking about family reunion during the Mid-Autumn Festival, OPPEIN shot family-focused Mid-Autumn Festival commercials for two consecutive years from 2017 to 2018. However, this time the protagonist is not a normal human being, but a werewolf who will transform on a full-moon night. After the transformation, the werewolf always feels inferior because he is incompatible with his father-in-law and mother-in-law. The brand OPPEIN appears in time to solve the werewolf's problem. Isn’t the “werewolf” angle very novel? It will definitely attract everyone’s attention, right?

(Picture from the Internet, please delete if infringed!)

Another important character in the Mid-Autumn Festival is Chang'e. Last year, Konka's "Chang'e's Daily Life in Guanghan Palace" introduced its own products from Chang'e's perspective. Upon closer inspection, apart from the connection between Chang'e and the Jade Rabbit and the Mid-Autumn Festival, the other plots have little to do with the Mid-Autumn Festival. But because of the legendary element of Chang'e, it still took advantage of the popularity of the Mid-Autumn Festival.

(Picture from the Internet, please delete if infringed!)

In 2019, Alipay teamed up with Shanghai Animation Film Studio to launch a Mid-Autumn Festival advertising film, editing together reunion scenes from five classic cartoons, including Nezha Conquers the Dragon King and The Lotus Lantern, to bring back childhood memories and earn the tears of adults.

The reunion is fun, and mooncakes can’t be missed. The year 2018 was the year when Story of Yanxi Palace became extremely popular. Tmall took advantage of the Mid-Autumn Festival and released a stop-motion animation called "Mid-Autumn Festival Guide". It mainly tells the story of a stupid emperor choosing a concubine to accompany him in watching the moon. The interesting thing is that the film buried a lot of jokes about moon cakes.

(Picture from the Internet, please delete if infringed!)

Through the introduction of these cases, have you guessed what the two elements of “anti-routine” marketing are?

01 Insight First

For brands, after clarifying user needs, they must also clarify what they want and what their goals are? Why do Mid-Autumn Festival marketing?

For most brands, Mid-Autumn Festival marketing is to open up outlets for their products online or offline, so as to attract user attention and gain a large number of fans in a short period of time. Some brands want to increase their exposure among user groups and expand their brand influence. Different goals will determine different marketing behaviors.

02 Content is king

Content is the executive part of the entire Mid-Autumn Festival marketing and also the most important part of the marketing process.

When it comes to marketing content, setting up consumption scenarios is paramount. Whether online or offline, we should use Mid-Autumn Festival elements as the theme to create a sense of novelty, make users feel like they are "going home", and impress users with scenario-based layout.

Ariana Korisner once mentioned in his book: "Given the scope of explicit marketing that can attract everyday users, subconscious 'triggers' that appeal to basic senses may become a more effective way to closely connect with users." Therefore, whoever's marketing scenario is more realistic and can better touch the pain points of consumers can become an outlet for consumers to vent their emotions, thereby achieving effective communication.

The second is "moving people with emotion". Find the selling points of your own brand or product, align them with the needs of target consumers, and then link them with the Mid-Autumn Festival hot spots. By mobilizing users' "emotional thinking" to achieve marketing goals, users' favorability towards the brand can be enhanced.

However, it should be noted that if you don’t find a point of fit between your own brand and the festival, you must not force it. Otherwise, at best no one will be interested, and at worst you will become a laughing stock.

The last step is to ignite the creativity of marketing activities. For many young users, fun and personalization are their biggest advantages. Therefore, when conducting marketing activities, brands may wish to add many interactive links to allow young users to actively participate, arouse their spontaneous dissemination, and further increase brand exposure.

Conclusion

If you want to achieve unexpected marketing results during the Mid-Autumn Festival, you must "cultivate both inside and outside". We must learn to find the right entry point and the corresponding target group. We must not only innovate in content to resonate with the audience, but also find the commonalities between festivals and brands to create a marketing model that suits us.

Author: Brand Talk

Source: Brand Talk