6 ways to ignite Spring Festival marketing!

New Year’s Day begins and the Spring Festival is approaching! For Chinese people, the "Spring Festival" is the most important festival of the year. Therefore, the Spring Festival traffic that explodes at this point has become the focus of competition among major brands. Many brands and products want to seize this golden opportunity for annual marketing, "win" sales and get a "good start" in the New Year marketing.

But it is not easy to successfully capture the spotlight in a situation where a hundred schools of thought contend. How to stand out during the Spring Festival marketing is a challenge that every brand must face. Next, I will recommend several marketing/operation methods that were once very popular, hoping to provide some inspiration for this Spring Festival marketing.

1. "Collecting Five Blessings" every year will be popular this year

When I hear “Have you swept the blessings?”, “Have you collected all five blessings?”, it means that my annual “collecting five blessings” game has begun again.

In 2016, once the “Collect Five Blessings” campaign was launched on Alipay, it immediately set off the Internet and sparked a wave of people kneeling down to pray for the five blessings! After the National Blessings Gathering in 2017, the Five Blessings Carnival in 2018, and the "Five Blessings Come and It's the New Year" in 2019,

After several years of marketing, the meaning of users' participation in "Collecting Five Blessings" has shifted from obtaining cash and gathering good luck to believing that the act of collecting blessings itself is gathering blessings.

According to official data from Alipay, in the 11 days from January 25 to New Year's Eve, 2019, more than 450 million people across the country participated in collecting the five blessings on Alipay, which means that one in every three Chinese people participated in collecting and sending blessings. Compared to 2018, the number of participants increased by 40% year-on-year. As can be seen on the product page, the number of people who ultimately collected all five blessings exceeded 320 million.

It can be seen that today's "Collecting Five Blessings" is not only a game, but also means a new cultural phenomenon. It has become a new custom of the Spring Festival, just like eating dumplings, setting off firecrackers, watching the Spring Festival Gala, and paying New Year's greetings, and it has become an indispensable New Year element.

Although every year "Collecting Five Blessings" is ridiculed as "a fierce operation, but only two dollars and fifty cents in the end", as the Spring Festival approaches, many friends are still looking forward to the arrival of this event. Moreover, with the foundation of Alipay's blessing-collecting activities over the years, users no longer care about how much money they get. What is important is that collecting all five blessings is a good omen, so it will definitely be a good idea for major brands/products to take advantage of this momentum to carry out blessing-collecting activities.

2. Send out red envelopes in various ways to attract users from social circles

Giving out red envelopes is one of the most traditional customs during the Spring Festival. It is also one of the customs that is most popular among children and most likely to connect people of different age groups.

In 2014, WeChat red envelopes became popular overnight. Since then, Tencent has continued to innovate and incorporated many new ways of playing into the red envelope form, from the initial point-to-point red envelopes, to red envelope rain, spelling red envelopes, command red envelopes, voice red envelopes, tongue twister red envelopes, and red envelopes for answering questions, etc. The diverse gameplay has successfully ignited the red envelope war.

In recent years, the red envelope war has been continuously updated and optimized, and the way of playing Spring Festival red envelopes has gradually transformed from giving out money to socializing, officially opening the era of red envelope marketing 2.0. People are no longer satisfied with the single method of sending text red envelopes, and innovation is the way out for Spring Festival red envelope marketing.

In other words, whoever can introduce more new ways to play with red envelopes may determine the outcome of the game.

So, in this context, what innovative ways of playing with red envelopes have been inspired?

1. Social fission red envelope

During the 2019 Spring Festival, QQ red envelopes no longer require hand speed, and cash/easter eggs have become "lucky bags". We have teamed up with brands such as NIKE and Lengshenling to create the "Send a Lucky Bag Home" event, combining traditional New Year customs with online interactions.

During the Spring Festival, you can open QQ to experience the Spring Festival Garden Party online, challenge interactive games inspired by traditional Chinese New Year activities such as lion dances and lanterns, and participate in the "Send Home a Bag of Fortune" event. After getting the lucky bag, users can share it with relatives and friends, and they can unlock the cash red envelope by forwarding the lucky bag.

QQ has created a new social method of sharing lucky bags, allowing young users who are willing to share to pass on blessings to each other and celebrate the New Year on QQ! This format successfully activated circle users during the Spring Festival, opened up the New Year’s social chain, and helped brands and users connect effectively. In the end, the brand’s total exposure reached 2.9 billion, covering 74% of the post-90s and post-00s population.

2. Short video interactive red envelope

During the Spring Festival of 2019, Tencent Weishi broke the convention and launched a variety of video red envelope gameplay with the help of short videos, a content form that is popular among people. In this way, it launched a series of new video red envelope New Year greetings gameplay with a lot of variety.

Not only can you send red envelopes, you can also ask for red envelopes! In addition, video interactive gameplay such as gesture red envelope rain, burying red envelopes with multiple endings, and collecting likes to get red envelopes have been added. By adding different video red envelope templates to shoot red envelope videos, filling in the red envelope amount, quantity, etc., you can directly share it with friends on social platforms such as WeChat and QQ.

Compared with text blessing red envelopes, short video red envelopes are a higher-dimensional innovation based on the carrier level. They allow users to appear in front of the recipient in the form of a video, conveying New Year's blessings in a richer way, and even fun pranks can add a few more surprises.

Currently, short videos are very popular. If we combine short videos with the traditional custom of red envelopes, it will be very interesting. But what needs to be paid attention to is how to design the rules so that the action of "grabbing" red envelopes can become more diverse while not bringing too high a threshold to users.

3. Leverage AR to enhance interactive experience

With the continuous development and popularization of AR technology, more and more brands are using AR as a new marketing tool. AR technology itself has unique advantages such as strong interactivity, strong entertainment, and strong sense of scene, helping brands break through the limitations of objective factors such as space and time, and changing the previous passive situation - consumers, especially the younger generation of consumers, are not only not disgusted, but are quite interested in scanning AR icons and enjoy participating in the interaction.

The 2020 Lunar New Year is coming soon! Do you still remember the AR grand occasion during the Spring Festival in previous years?

Compared with traditional New Year activities, AR technology brings everyone a different New Year experience in an interesting way. for example:

(1) During the Chinese New Year of 2019, a massive AR interaction swept across the country. During the “Collect Five Blessings” campaign last year, Coca-Cola teamed up with Alipay to launch the “Scan the Fuwa” campaign.

Not only are the Fuwa "Ah Jiao" and "Ah Fu" printed on the Coca-Cola bottle, but AR technology has also been innovatively added to create a New Year event where you can scan the Fuwa to win a surprise. The Fuwa will transform and appear in front of you, wish you a happy new year, and also send out loving New Year red envelopes to participants, further upgrading the interactive experience.

(2) It is said that people gain three pounds every Chinese New Year. Last year, AR eliminated Chinese New Year calories and broke this curse. QQ Browser uses AR object recognition technology to identify the calorie index of food around us during the Spring Festival, attracting widespread participation from consumers and creating a marketing event that is both reunion and healthy during the Spring Festival.

Judging from the above cases, these New Year AR activities are making the New Year more festive with innovative and interesting interactive methods. By using the Internet and AR technology, everyone can experience the creative New Year atmosphere.

Of course, based on the novel New Year experience, the brand has also received more diverse exposure, using better creativity to establish a strong bond with users.

As the Spring Festival approaches, major brands will also come up with surprising strategies. As a currently popular form of interaction, AR technology is not to be missed. Moreover, with the advent of 5G, the playability of this scenario in New Year marketing has greater room for expansion.

4. Make use of face fusion technology to interact with users

I don’t know if you still remember that in 2017, in order to welcome the Army Day and celebrate the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, the People’s Daily cooperated deeply with Tencent Tiantian Ptu and launched the "Put on Military Uniform" marketing campaign, using face fusion technology to customize "military uniform photos" for users participating in the event.

This H5 received over 200 million visits in just two days after it went online. With the sharing and forwarding of several popular IPs such as Tong Liya, Yang Yang, and Lei Jun, the cumulative number of views of the military uniform photo H5 has far exceeded 800 million, and the People's Daily even applied for the Guinness World Record for the "Military Uniform Photo" H5.

In addition, there is the “Please give me a Christmas hat @WeChat Official” that went viral last Christmas and the “Give me a national flag @WeChat Official” that was extremely popular during this year’s National Day, which are also typical examples of face fusion.

Face fusion will make you feel that "the facial features are still yours, but the outline is no longer yours, creating a brand new face that is familiar yet unfamiliar." It greatly satisfies people's curiosity, making them want to try and see the effects of changing their costumes and faces.

Therefore, during this year's Spring Festival, brands can consider using facial fusion technology to develop advertisements that fit the Spring Festival marketing theme, such as combining red envelopes, couplets, the God of Wealth and other New Year elements to help users quickly generate avatars.

5. Create hot topics and ignite user UGC enthusiasm

If marketing is just for users to receive information, then the moment the advertisement ends, it means the interruption of communication. In order to gain additional exposure, brand advertising promotion needs to mobilize user enthusiasm for participation.

How to encourage users to spread the word actively? The most common method is through UGC, which stands for user-generated creativity. The reason why this creative idea can go viral is mainly because its core scenario is very close to users' lives.

During the 2018 Spring Festival, FAW Mazda seized the headaches that young people face when they go home for the New Year every year: parents urging them to get married, relatives besieging them, classmates showing off their wealth, and having to endure the bombardment from aunts and uncles and naughty children... In response to these pain points, FAW Mazda established the core marketing theme of the "Save the Spring Festival Plan", cleverly borrowed the story of the Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea, took #Where to Celebrate the New Year# as the main battlefield, and joined forces with multiple media platforms to make the Spring Festival hot marketing unique.

In terms of material selection, FAW Mazda chose the popular legend of the Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea, which is related to the fact that the New Year celebrations are as difficult as crossing the sea. It directly hits the pain points of young people and easily won the love of netizens. Netizens have contributed to the topic #Where to Celebrate the New Year# with their own stories of how they coped with the constant bombardment from their families during the New Year, as well as the interesting things they encountered during the New Year, which has stimulated netizens' enthusiasm for participation and greatly boosted their motivation for secondary dissemination.

It is reported that the topic #Where to spend the New Year# not only topped the automobile list for several consecutive days, but also surpassed popular topics such as #Spring Festival 2018# and #Pyeongchang Winter Olympics# on the overall topic list, ranking fifth.

The New Year is just around the corner, and scenes such as the Spring Festival travel rush, returning home, New Year’s Eve dinner, sending red envelopes, watching the Spring Festival Gala, setting off fireworks, and visiting relatives are attracting more and more attention from users. If we create a hot topic at this time that allows users to generate creative ideas based on scenarios, it will stimulate users' desire to spread the word.

6. Vertical screen advertising, a new trend in short video marketing

As short videos become the new dominant force in user time consumption, vertical screen short video ads have entered a bonus period. Brands have to rethink how to take advantage of the momentum of vertical screen short video ads to enhance the interactivity of their works, stimulate secondary dissemination, and tap into traffic dividends.

Snapchat advertising data shows that the completion rate of full-screen vertical video ads is 9 times higher than that of horizontal video ads, and the visual attention is 2 times higher.

Last year, the well-known herbal tea brand Wanglaoji teamed up with Douyin to launch a vertical screen co-creation competition, taking the lead in starting the "New Year's Eve" craze. In this event, Wanglaoji focused on the Spring Festival scene with the theme of "Good luck is the beginning of all good things", trying to interpret the "good luck culture" from different dimensions, guiding user groups to participate in the brand vertical screen co-creation competition, and using the vertical screen to convey the brand activity appeal of "Celebrate an auspicious year, drink red can Wanglaoji".

In just 20 days of submissions, a total of 2,914 entries were collected on the Douyin #吉是一切美好开始contest submission page. Among them, a total of 81 MCNs and creative agencies participated, and the collection page received more than 260 million exposures.

In addition, according to Kas Data, during the challenge from January 10 to January 16, the total number of video views under the topic of Wanglaoji #Start a Beautiful and Auspicious Year exceeded 3.5 billion, and the number of participants exceeded 335,000. After just 6 days of long-tail traffic diffusion, the total number of video views has exceeded 4.19 billion, with more than 407,000 participants.

Ultimately, in the era of vertical screens, advertising needs to keep pace with user usage habits, and marketing is returning to its user-centric essence. Therefore, if this Spring Festival marketing is combined with vertical screen short videos, the popularity rate will be greatly improved.

Conclusion

Countdown to the 2020 Lunar New Year, Spring Festival marketing is imminent! There is not much time left for operators/marketers, and it is still not too late to start preparing ideas and plans for the above 6 marketing methods.

Author: Box Fungus

Source: Activity Box Operation Society (huodongheziyys)