Is Bilibili’s brand account “rising”?

When it comes to brand names, you automatically associate them with adjectives such as dull, boring, and serious. But recently, a hot dance video of China Merchants Bank caused crazy forwarding on Bilibili , and everyone was surprised to find that brand accounts can be used in this way? The author of this article expressed his own views on this and shared them with you.

“Thanks to China Unicom, we can see the prosperity of this brand’s internal circulation.”

This sentence has recently appeared widely under the official videos of major brands on Bilibili. So where did this sentence come from?

In recent months, there has been a "hot trend" of brand official account marketing on Bilibili, and many usually high-profile brands have come out and used their own killer products. Some people brainwash themselves through the magic of ghost-animal editing; some open up a home dance track to release their true selves; and some create funny jokes to diss themselves, and the ways of doing so are endless.

The reason why they let themselves go is that they hope to quickly gain the favor of young users by making breakthroughs in content types, maximize the traffic dividend, and achieve the goal of brand rejuvenation.

So what is the current development status of Bilibili’s brand accounts? Why is the competition within brands so fierce? As the commercial value of Bilibili gradually awakens, what is the focus of brand marketing on Bilibili?

01 Brands on Bilibili: Continuously exploring content boundaries

In everyone’s impression, what is the marketing method of the brand official account?

Is it to release fashion blockbusters and TVC materials in collaboration with celebrities, and communicate with users using prepared copy? Or cooperate with popular vertical KOLs to create a screen-sweeping effect by releasing a large number of grass-planting videos?

All of the above-mentioned marketing methods are actually the result of the platform’s characteristics. Most of them have gone through a growth path from trial and error to gradually setting the tone, and then making appropriate adjustments based on the tones of different brands, ultimately forming a consensus on brand marketing behavior code.

The content forms, means and methods derived from this are limited to a certain platform, so it is difficult to expand outward and directly copy. This also means that when a platform rises, the one who can reap the benefits of traffic is often not the first to arrive on the battlefield, but the first brand to make changes to this battlefield.

Especially after going through the text and picture era represented by Weibo and WeChat, and then to the short video era represented by Douyin and Kuaishou, the brand's execution and sensitivity have risen to a higher level. When Bilibili emerged as a dark horse in 2020, many brands also made corresponding adjustments and responded immediately, with the most obvious and extreme performance on the content side.

In the 406th issue of the [Weekly Must-Read] section of Bilibili, the article "【CMB Special Offer】 ❤Challenge the Sweetest Secretary Dance on the Internet❤" released by the official account of @招商银行 has topped the list with super high popularity. It has surpassed many top UP hosts in vertical categories such as @进击的金厂长, @老西红柿, @轩邈Elias, and @羊料理, and was praised by the platform as "the official live broadcast is the most deadly". So what kind of video is this?

Friends who are familiar with Bilibili know that the Secretary Dance is an ED in the well-known TV series "Kaguya-sama: Love is War". It is named after the dance performed by Chika Fujiwara, the student council secretary in the play. The original animation was sought after by anime fans for its amazing high frame rate performance. In the cover dance video, it once "swamped" the B station's home dance area due to the dancers' high degree of restoration of the dance and their cute and adorable dance steps. Many top UPs in the dance area, such as @=咬人猫= and @-欣小萌-, have covered it.

Different from the previous individual creators in the dance area who "cultivated themselves in their own circle", the involvement of the official account of China Merchants Bank has injected the "uniform temptation" at the conceptual level into the content. As of April 14, it has received over 3.58 million views.

When the account was first established, @招商银行官方账号 also wanted to be a cool and dedicated official. According to Kas Data, the account officially began to publish content in April last year. Like general brand official accounts, the content released by China Merchants Bank in the early days was mainly brand promotional videos. The production level of such content is extremely high, and most of it focuses on key brand projects, social welfare, etc. The intention is to have a certain degree of brand representativeness and discussion, and the style is extremely high.

But on Bilibili, such content often means being boring and dry, with nothing to watch. Some are just brands wishfully exporting their own values, which makes it difficult to resonate with the platform users.

After three months of trialing the platform, starting from July, China Merchants Bank began to try two types of content simultaneously. One type is popular science content about financial management knowledge; the other type is entertainment-oriented singing and dancing content. The two types of content compete with each other to see which style succeeds first and then focus on developing in that direction.

I have to say that China Merchants Bank has a very sharp vision. Whether it is knowledge or home dance, they have a large user base on Bilibili.

Firstly, in terms of knowledge popularization content, China Merchants Bank has currently released two series of content, namely [Xiao Zhao Financial Management] and [BB Economics]. They have different focuses. The former mainly answers specific personal financial issues, such as: how to manage finances scientifically, how to keep accounts, how to divide property after divorce, etc.; while the latter focuses on one key point to explain the economic principles behind it, such as: the economic code behind mooncake coupons, etc.

This can be seen from the performance of China Merchants Bank in knowledge-based content. First of all, the content direction is very cleverly chosen. Because for general knowledge accounts, establishing users' recognition of their professionalism is a big challenge. As a listed commercial bank, China Merchants Bank's professionalism in the financial and economic field is unquestionable. It does not need to spend time building credibility and can quickly carry out knowledge popularization work. Secondly, it is very good at taking advantage of hot topics. The content is closely related to current popular social and entertainment topics, including leveraging last year's hit "Nothing But Thirty" to discuss how to divide the property if Gu Jia and Xu Huanshan divorce. There are also discussions on how to find a partner during the start of the school year and why everyone goes on a shopping spree during Double Eleven, all of which are full of highlights.

The second largest category is the entertainment-oriented dance content that has attracted special attention recently, from "Love Cycle" by Hanazawa Kana to "How You Like That" by Blackpink, from anime two-dimensional to trendy idols, covering all aspects of young users' preferences, until this time's "Secretary Dance", which ushered in a full-scale explosion of traffic.

In fact, China Merchants Bank’s “crazy” performance on Bilibili is not an isolated case. Other brands have already gone “crazy” in the dance area. This dance extravaganza brought about by China Unicom has shown everyone how terrifying a brand’s official account can be.

@China Unicom Customer Service Official has started his singing and dancing career since the end of 2019. From New Treasure Island to the Divine Comedy Shoulder Dance, he has opened up new ideas for brand account operations and refreshed users' perception of brand official accounts.

This constant exploration, extension, re-exploration, and re-extension of brand content has caused users who originally had no expectations for brand content to begin to embrace brand content and constantly follow updates. Major brands have also tried to change their identities when facing consumers, and their marketing ideas have undergone earth-shaking changes. Regardless of whether the brands can reach young people through singing and dancing, at least they have taken the first step in communicating with young consumers.

02 On Bilibili, brands are young

Today, Generation Z, a generation that grew up with the Internet, has both strong purchasing power and an acceptance of new things that other generations do not have. It has gradually gained control over consumption. For this reason, brands have entered a critical window period for communicating with young consumers.

At this time, as a gathering place for those born after 1995 and 2000, Bilibili has been increasingly valued by brand owners as its circle influence, user consumption power, community cultural atmosphere and other advantages have been proven to be unique through a series of marketing events. The huge consumer market hidden behind Generation Z is stimulating brands to continue to work hard on Bilibili.

According to the "Bilibili 2021 Brand Marketing Manual" recently released by the Bilibili Marketing Center, in the next five years, there will be 40 million new car owners; nearly 60% of home buyers; and 44% of maternal and child consumers. These new consumer forces are all from Generation Z, which shows the unlimited potential behind them.

Long before the official platform put commercialization on the agenda, many brands targeted the content influence of vertical UP in various regions and started cooperation on PUGV content. The game area has joint trials of well-known UPs and newly launched games; the beauty area has invisible recommendations of domestic and foreign brands; the food area has offline store visits with scene implantation, with a variety of types to choose from.

In 2020, the platform continued to make efforts in commercialization. The Fireworks platform was launched in July to further standardize the cooperation between brands and creators; B station's unique special plan advertising was also open to the public, with under-frame ads, barrage ads, and pop-up ads, and a variety of display types to choose from, directly realizing jump guidance and effect conversion.

Compared with its booming content delivery, Bilibili is still in its early stages when it comes to brand official account marketing.

According to the Marketing Lab's "Bilibili Brand Marketing Guide", there are still not many brands currently stationed on Bilibili, and the number of fans of these brand accounts is mostly below 500,000. It can be seen that the entire brand enthusiasm and user pool have not been mobilized.

The active brand accounts mentioned above, led by @招商银行官方账号, have obviously not yet found their own content style. After all, does a video that gets good reviews on Bilibili mean that the brand has completed its transformation to be younger? Does the fact that Bilibili’s fans increase by over 10,000 every day mean that it has captured the minds of Generation Z users? This is far from enough.

Now all major brand accounts have a common problem, that is, the content is disorganized. They just piggyback on whatever content is popular. Each company tries its best to be creative in combining entertaining content with its own business, doing its own thing and making seamless product placement.

However, what ultimately leaves an impression on users are jokes and hot dances, while business-related content often remains superficial or becomes a joke in comment sections and barrage comments, without actually increasing brand voice or achieving actual conversion effects.

Between these entertainment contents, the account also contains official product promotional content released regularly by the brand. Overall, it looks like a hodgepodge. It is neither the serious content that symbolizes the brand’s external window, nor the relaxed and comfortable face-to-face atmosphere for dialogue with consumers. This makes it difficult for the account to form a memory of the brand symbol in the minds of users through content, and users just laugh it off without improving brand awareness. In addition, the operation of this kind of account without a main content line is difficult to maintain in the long term. It may look glamorous in the short term, but it is actually full of hidden dangers.

This shows that if brands want to truly unlock the context of young people through content, they still have a long way to go. But it is also a newborn calf. The operation of B station’s official brand account is a real content blue ocean at this stage, and there are still unlimited possibilities in the future.

Author: Kas Data

Source: caasdata (ID: caasdata6)