Baidu's style has changed this year.

In the past, Baidu always gave people a more "positive" impression when doing marketing, but this year, from Children's Day, Father's Day to Chinese Valentine's Day and Teacher's Day, Baidu has taken the "anti-routine" approach to the end!

Many netizens said, what's the matter? It's quite interesting and I kind of like it.

Let’s take a look together.

1. Children's Day

Anti-routine marketing is beginning to take shape

Children's Day is an excellent marketing opportunity to attract children and win over parents. Other brands are actively increasing their efforts, but Baidu APP is going against the routine and does not want to do business. It also righteously battles with parents on behalf of children and takes the children with it to not want to do business.

The words “Let the children go on June 1st!” are powerful, and behind them is a profound insight into the enormous pressure children face during their growth. Children nowadays don’t have the freedom we had when we were young. Not to mention Children’s Day, even ordinary weekends are fully scheduled.

Baidu APP uses anti-routine operations to speak to parents from the perspective of children, calling on parents to pay attention to their children's hard power while not forgetting to pay attention to their children's soft and innocent childlike hearts.

At the same time, through their own "not wanting to do business" operation, they also expose a fact that seems to have been forgotten by parents: the ones who should least "work hard" on Children's Day are actually children. Childhood is precious and should not be deprived of it easily.

2. Father's Day

Playing hard to get, continuously strengthening anti-routine marketing

On Father's Day, Baidu APP continued its anti-routine special marketing, "Don't ask Baidu, go home and ask your dad." This copy with maximal rejection power has a "playing hard to get" flavor.

If you think about it carefully, it seems that most people are like this - when they are young, they know little and are used to asking their parents when they have questions. When they grow up, they know more, and the relationship between parents and children becomes silent. In fact, parents’ ideas may be different from ours, but the answers they give will always have irreplaceable significance.

It is worth noting that Baidu APP particularly emphasized the behavior of "going home" in its copy, and the intention is obvious: on Father's Day, it is better to go home and see your father than to call or send WeChat messages. In fact, it is intended to awaken consumers' emotional companionship. If you feel awkward communicating with your dad, Baidu APP also provides a chat guide with various lively questions - if you don’t know what to talk about, just ask your dad these questions. (I don’t know if it will be more embarrassing after asking this question, hahaha)

When users accept Baidu APP’s anti-routine suggestions and “abandon” Baidu APP and go home to see and chat with their father, they are actually voting with their feet and identifying with Baidu APP’s brand concept and values ​​through actions. What a good trick of “playing hard to get”!

3. Chinese Valentine's Day

Practice makes perfect in anti-routine marketing, and the core is more thoughtful

On Chinese Valentine's Day, Baidu APP seemed to continue to break the routine, but in fact its sincere core became more and more obvious. After discussing the father-son and father-daughter relationships in Chinese families on Father's Day, we tried to use the emotional festival atmosphere of Chinese Valentine's Day to exchange views on marriage and love among contemporary Chinese youth.

From the two big words "Don't ask!" on the poster, one can intuitively feel Baidu's strong attitude of refusing to answer questions, but when one sees the last line "There are no standard answers to emotional questions", one can feel that it turns out that Baidu refuses to answer careless technical questions about the Chinese Valentine's Day, but has prepared many meaningful and heartfelt answers - thereby guiding users to think seriously about the concept of love, rather than just perfunctorily answering them for the sake of convenience.

Baidu APP should have insight into the contradictory reality of love and marriage among contemporary people: "On the one hand, they cry out that true love is hard to find, while on the other hand, they are impatient and want to take shortcuts." But such a deep topic that cannot be explained even by a thesis, how can it be explained by more than just a few posters? What’s clever is that Baidu APP uses the popular internet meme “Don’t ask, just ask XXX” to start the app, stimulating users’ attention and discussion on the phenomenon of contradictory marriages and loves, and encouraging them to bravely face more marriage and love problems.

Moreover, Baidu APP also conveys a positive and heartfelt emotional value through the anti-routine of "don't ask": in today's world where everything may be priced clearly, feelings are still something that needs to be answered and treated with care. "Baidu" can give you the answer, but the emotional life you want can only be achieved through your own efforts.

4. Teachers' Day

Upgrade again to fight against marketing scams

I've never seen this before. Baidu APP, which has been absent during holidays, is suddenly open on Teacher's Day! Originally when everyone thought that it would continue to "stop business to fight against routine", it actually took the initiative to take on jobs and "operate seriously". This is simply anti-anti-routine, and it directly pushed anti-routine marketing to a higher level.

Such an unexpected move, however, hides Baidu APP's effective insight: it is well known that teachers do not have a holiday on Teacher's Day, and going against the norm to provide business for teachers highlights the respect and care for the teacher group. What's even better is that the "take a photo and search for questions" function is used to share the teaching tasks with teachers, which is a natural way to promote this educational function.

What’s a bit funny and heartwarming is that Baidu APP also lists a series of very down-to-earth teachers’ names, as if it were really talking to these teachers one by one, and it also accidentally hits on many real teachers’ names, evoking the majority of users’ fond memories of their own teachers.

In this upgraded version of anti-routine marketing, Baidu APP is like a silent, invisible but indispensable glue, connecting the emotional connection between users and teachers, and also completing its own communication goal of conveying brand ideas and consolidating product selling points.

From a marketing perspective, there are five ingenious ideas behind Baidu APP's series of anti-routine marketing:

1. A changeable anti-routine, with sustainable freshness

From the above four operations, we can feel that Baidu APP follows the long-term anti-routine marketing strategy and creates continuous marketing actions, but at the same time pays attention to changes and progression, and each gameplay is different. From a series of "refusals to do business" to "actively turning over to do business", a variety of ways are used to create a sense of freshness to stimulate users who are accustomed to anti-routines. At the same time, each round of communication switches to focus on different social issues and groups, striving to maximize the potential of communication and make it sustainable.

2. Anti-routine matching with festivals to continuously strengthen search awareness

All major festivals are marketing opportunities that cannot be missed. Different festivals correspond to different target groups. On Children's Day, Father's Day, Chinese Valentine's Day, and Teacher's Day, Baidu APP cleverly combines the concept of "questioning" with anti-routine thinking, directly targeting different groups such as parents and children, families and children, couples, teachers and students, and continuously strengthening search cognition - if you can use Baidu APP to search for answers, don't bother your father and teacher, and don't torture your partner and children.

3. Anti-routine creates contrast, and playful style empowers brand personality

As a national-level application, Baidu APP is an old friend that users see almost every day, but sometimes it becomes too familiar and loses its characteristics. Baidu APP has changed its previous style and made users feel an unexpected contrast through a series of anti-routine operations. It has given the brand an interesting personality with a playful and humorous communication tone, shaping Baidu APP into a more three-dimensional and full-bodied personalized brand.

5. Anti-routine effectively attracts attention, stimulates curiosity and resonates

The instinct of curiosity and rebellious psychology determine that humans often behave in a way that "the more you are not allowed to do something, the more you want to do it." Baidu APP's series of anti-routine operations such as "Don't ask" and "Not open for business" effectively attract attention through differentiation, and users can easily become curious under the drive of rebellious spirit and insist on "asking Baidu" and "Baidu is open for business."

At the same time, the anti-routine questions in Baidu APP accurately hit the pain points of people in different circles, triggering discussions and thinking in brief and powerful communication, thereby stimulating emotional resonance among the corresponding groups of people. It can be said that the essence of Baidu APP's anti-routine marketing is "playing hard to get", and the result is indeed "easy to catch".

5. Behind the anti-routine, there is positive energy

It is gratifying that Baidu APP's anti-routine marketing hides its sincere inner voice - it hopes that parents can give their children a certain amount of childhood freedom and growth space, even though growth itself is not an easy thing; it hopes that the way children convey their love to their parents is face-to-face communication, rather than just a shallow greeting across the screen; it hopes that people can treat a relationship with their heart, rather than applying fixed patterns or looking for standard answers...

In the process of delivering product selling points and brand attitudes, Baidu APP has not forgotten to guide users to explore themselves and carefully discover the answers to each question. Perhaps what it wants to do is to make every communication as meaningful and responsible as possible.

From a holistic perspective, the series of anti-routine marketing campaigns of Baidu APP will form a long-lasting communication mechanism. Not only is the anti-routine content itself worth pondering, but this anti-routine operation can also be replicated and continued, continuously creating exposure compounding for the brand and providing a continuous source of energy for brand communication.

In this way, Baidu APP's anti-routine operation has also become a "routine" with a unique style, but this "routine" is brand-exclusive and is deeply branded with the exclusive name of Baidu APP.

Painter and calligrapher Zhu Jingyi once wrote this:

"Deep affection is always betrayed, but routines win people's hearts."

Baidu APP speaks for itself - in fact, no matter whether it is a routine or not, positive or negative, as long as you understand the strategy and have deep feelings, use your brain and your heart, you can really achieve your goals and win people's hearts.

Author: Advertising Headline

Source: Toupaiad