Inventory of brand Spring Festival marketing promotion in 2020!

The 2020 Lunar New Year is approaching. This is a major event for all Chinese people and an important part of brand marketing leveraging festival momentum. During the Spring Festival, competition for traffic is very fierce. If a brand wants to carry out a successful Spring Festival marketing campaign, it must stand out from the competition among major rivals and gain public recognition. As the saying goes, "After Laba Festival, it's the New Year." The Spring Festival marketing war has actually begun long ago. At the end of the year when demand and attention are rising across the board, launching seasonal activities is a golden period to further enhance brand awareness and product sales. Many well-known brands have already shown us their clever promotional methods.

Case 1: Apple short film "Daughter" moved people to tears

Apple launched "Three Minutes" in 2018, and shot the short film "A Bucket" last year. This year, it continued the model of using "famous directors + iPhone" to shoot Chinese stories and created an 8-minute Spring Festival short film "Daughter". Like the previous two times, the short film attracted netizens to watch and discuss it as soon as it was released. This story based on a true story touched many viewers and of course caused some controversy. Overall, Apple's short film still achieved good brand promotion effects, and also demonstrated its efforts and exploration in exploring Chinese stories and traditional cultural elements for localized dissemination.

"Three Minutes" invited Chen Kexin, and "A Bucket" was directed by Jia Zhangke. Both are well-known directors in the Chinese film and television industry. For "Daughter" this time, Apple has "stepped up its efforts" and not only invited Zhou Xun, a film queen-level actress in the Chinese film industry, but also Theodore Melfi, director of the 2017 Oscar-nominated film "Hidden Figures", and Lawrence Sher, the director of photography of the 2020 Oscar-nominated film "Joker". Such a luxurious team is enough to bring a wave of popularity with its strength and fame.

"Daughter" tells the story of a single mother who drives a taxi. In order to make money to support her family while not neglecting to take care of her daughter, she resolutely decided to drive a taxi with her daughter, which caused a conflict with her mother. As a taxi driver, she will go to various places and meet various passengers during her work. Because she brings her daughter with her, this female taxi driver is more special, and the presence of her daughter also provides a perspective to see the world. At the same time, the relationship and characteristics between her, her daughter and her mother are also very typical, vividly reflecting the generation gap and differences in emotional expression between the two generations, and also reflecting the traditional and universal desire of family reunion during the Spring Festival. The story ends successfully, which is touching and gratifying. This story also depicts many details about the environment and plot. For example, the filming location is in Chongqing, where many representative buildings appear. The world presented from the daughter's perspective is also very real and conveyed to the audience.

The real prototype of the story did not actually gain the forgiveness of the family and everyone was happy. "Daughter" gave a happy ending which is actually in line with the Chinese people's preference for a happy ending, not to mention during such a festive holiday as the Spring Festival. The shooting technique and quality are very commendable. Although there are some controversies in the plot, it has generally resonated with many people.

Although there is no obvious promotion of iPhone products in the short film, it was shot with iPhone 11 Pro. That is to say, in the hands of this luxury team, they were able to shoot a short film with the texture of a movie lens using only a mobile phone. This also indirectly reflects the powerful shooting function of the product. In short, whether it is brand promotion or product promotion, the short film "Daughter" has brought attention and popularity to Apple and achieved marketing effects.

Case 2: Kuaishou’s exclusive interactive Spring Festival Gala and video creation activities

Last year, Douyin, as the exclusive social interaction platform for the CCTV Spring Festival Gala, gained national brand awareness and soaring playback data thanks to this stage for national audiences. On New Year's Eve, the Spring Festival theme special effects on Douyin were shot and used more than 20 million times, and the total number of views of the Spring Festival Gala challenge videos exceeded 24.7 billion times. It can be seen that the Spring Festival Gala is indeed a "hot commodity".

With the amazing marketing effect achieved by Douyin in the past, Kuaishou was not to be outdone and seized the opportunity to cooperate with the Spring Festival Gala, becoming the exclusive social interaction platform for the 2020 Spring Festival Gala. It can be expected that on New Year’s Eve, Kuaishou is very likely to be "exploded".

Due to the rise of short videos in recent years, they have also received great attention during the Spring Festival. Therefore, the combination of short video platforms and the Spring Festival Gala can not only add more new ideas to the traditional Spring Festival Gala and keep pace with the times, but also allow short videos to catch the express train of the Spring Festival, gain more festive atmosphere, and carry out Spring Festival marketing.

In order to build momentum and form a system with this linkage, Kuaishou teamed up with Alipay to launch the "Looking for China's Fuwa" short video creation activity with a Chinese New Year flavor. As long as you participate in the activity, shoot and upload it, you will have the opportunity to become a lucky user and become a "Chinese Fuwa". Moreover, one winner will benefit the whole village and share 6.66 tons of New Year's goods equally. This kind of reward of fame and fortune is indeed a great temptation for users, which has led to a surge in the amount of video creation for this activity in a short period of time, and also caused a rapid increase in the number of fans of Alipay's official account on Kuaishou.

In order to carry out this event well, Kuaishou cooperated with Alipay, which has a large number of users. This event can be seen while collecting the five blessings, which brings more popularity to both parties. At the same time, it attracted nearly 50 certified merchant brand accounts on the Kuaishou platform to participate in the event and interact, which can also achieve a win-win effect in marketing. From the perspective of the event format, the threshold for participating in it by filming life experiences during the Spring Festival is very low, and basically everyone can participate. The lottery rewards are in the form of New Year's goods, which is very down-to-earth and has a festive atmosphere. The theme of "Chinese Fuwa" is very appropriate, and the format of "One person's blessing, the whole village's blessing" is also very popular. In short, whether in terms of publicity, cross-border, or event form, this activity can quickly increase video creation rate, click-through rate, user volume, and activity during the Spring Festival, and is a marketing activity worthy of recognition.

Case 3: Alipay launches new gameplay for the "Five Blessings" app

Collecting the five blessings during the Spring Festival and drawing prizes on New Year’s Eve have always been a fine tradition of Alipay. For many people, scanning the five blessings has gradually become one of the signals that the Spring Festival is approaching. The gameplay of collecting five blessings on Alipay has remained basically unchanged in the past five years. That is, by scanning the word "Fu" (blessing) you can collect five blessing cards, namely dedication, patriotism, prosperity, harmony and friendliness. After collecting all five blessing cards, you will be eligible to share 500 million yuan.

No matter which year it is, collecting the five blessings is an activity that Alipay users participate in enthusiastically, not only because it takes advantage of the Spring Festival and is very appropriate, but also because of the amazing rewards, hundreds of millions of red envelopes. Although the number of participants is very large, the huge number is indeed very attractive. In addition to the basic game play of scanning the lucky character to collect the five blessings, this activity is also constantly adding more ways to collect cards to further promote social interaction and environmental protection, such as exchanging cards with friends and getting blessing cards by watering the Ant Forest. In previous years, flower cards and stain cards were launched. This year, there are two new ways to play, one is "Family Portrait" and the other is "Blessings All Over the World".

"Family Portrait" is a blessing card other than the Five Blessings Card. The way to obtain it is the same as the Five Blessings Card, but it has a higher value. It is equivalent to an upgraded version of the "Flower Card". There are only 888 winning places, and the prize is "helping the whole family pay off Huabei". Both the rarity and the prize value are exciting. "Blessings Around the World" is an activity that uses blessing cards to light up nine landmarks around the world. The more you collect, the more you can light up the landmarks, unlock blessing videos, and have the chance to get blessing cards.

Although the routine of collecting five blessings has been played for five consecutive years, and many users have complained that it takes too much time, the rewards are too little, and the format is too simple, but overall, the number of participants is still very considerable, and it can occupy a place on the hot search every time. Judging from some of Alipay's tendencies in introducing new gameplay in recent years, it can be clearly concluded that its activity goals have shifted, that is, from expanding social interaction to multi-dimensional development. While retaining the basic gameplay, more card collection methods have been added, making collecting the five blessings more and more like an Internet Spring Festival custom. Doing so can indeed develop a holiday habit, and based on the huge number of users, each event will have sufficient participation, and continue to build more user stickiness and sense of identity.

In addition to the above three cases, there are many well-known brand Spring Festival activities, such as JD.com’s "National Explosion of the Nian Beast", Burberry’s "Bobo Mouse" animated interactive short film, Pepsi’s micro-film "Pili Parents", Liangpin Shop’s AR New Year Customs Street, and so on. These exciting activities not only let the public feel the arrival of the Lunar New Year, but also make the brands themselves full of the festive atmosphere. The dazzling promotional forms also reflect the fierce competition among Spring Festival marketing brands. We will have to wait and see which one will be better.

Author: Li Shan

Source: PR Home