3 aspects to interpret Douyin’s city brand marketing activities

1. Analysis of Douyin’s urban regional activity background

Douyin was launched in September 2016, and its products are deeply rooted in the field of short videos. According to the data released by Douyin on January 5, 2020, the number of daily active users of Douyin exceeded 400 million, making it the most popular short video production and distribution platform in China.

1.1 Deeply cultivate the short video field and empower urban culture

The symbolic carriers of the city image in Douyin short videos can be summarized as BEST, namely BGM-city music, Eating-local food, Scenery-landscape, Technology-technological facilities. These four types of symbols that have penetrated into the capillaries of urban life combine to form a three-dimensional image of the city on Douyin.

BEST is a concentrated reflection of the fun and beauty of urban life and has been widely recognized in the short video era. On Douyin, most cities that have successfully built and disseminated their image have presented multiple symbolic carriers of BEST in their videos, and their city images are three-dimensional and full.

Chongqing, Xi'an, Chengdu, Nanning and Zhengding have successfully initialised or optimized their city image by embedding multiple BEST symbolic carriers that can showcase the city's image in their videos. By leveraging the form and channel advantages of mobile short videos, they have become new "Internet celebrity cities".

1.23 Summary of Douyin’s urban area data in 2019

Top 5 provinces with the highest average video playback volume for Tik Tok creators in 2019:

• TOP1: Beijing
• TOP2: Liaoning
• TOP3: Shanghai
• TOP4: Jilin
• TOP5: Heilongjiang

Top 10 Chinese cities with the most likes on Douyin in 2019:

1. Beijing (200 million)
2. Chengdu (4.03 billion)
3. Shanghai (3.66 billion)
4. Shenzhen (2.95 billion)
5. Guangzhou (2.83 billion)
6. Hangzhou (2.73 billion)
7. Chongqing (2.61 billion)
8. Xi'an (1.96 billion)
9. Zhengzhou (1.55 billion)
10. Wuhan (1.44 billion)

Top 10 attractions with the highest number of views on Douyin in 2019:

1. Xi'an Tang Dynasty City That Never Sleeps
2. Shanghai Disney Resort
3. Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding
4. Beijing Palace Museum
5. Chongqing Wansheng Fantasy Ordovician Theme Park
6. Xi'an Bell Tower
7. The Bund, Shanghai
8. Guangzhou Chimelong Paradise
9. Luoyang Laojun Mountain Scenic Area
10. Chengdu Chunxi Road

Judging from the amount of video creation, cities in the three northeastern provinces account for a very high proportion of short video creation.

Judging from the number of video likes, Beijing ranks first, and cities in the central and western regions account for a prominent proportion, mainly concentrated in first-tier and new first-tier cities.

Judging from the number of video playbacks at tourist attractions, the commercial tourism industry accounts for 60% and the cultural tourism industry accounts for 40%.

2. Douyin City Innovation Brand IP: #抖incity城市美好生活节#

The "Douyincity Urban Better Life Festival" launched in 2019 has been held in more than 30 cities across the country. The cumulative number of views of the online series of topics has exceeded 10 billion , and the total number of people checking in at the offline city carnival has exceeded 500,000 . The official Douyin account of Douyincity has gained more than 260,000 followers , and it has become a sustainable major event connecting major cities across the country.

2.1 Analysis of Douyin’s innovative city brand IP: DouyinCity Better Life Festival

Carry out regional marketing by linking up main IP + city + top brand + influencer + users.

Official interpretation :

Cities are containers for a better life, and each city has its own characteristics - food, landmark buildings, landscapes, and even the unique sounds of the city are all symbols of the city.

"DouyinCity Urban Better Life Festival" connects major cities across the country to record city characteristics and discover the beauty of life. Capture every bit of beauty and touching moments of city life, come to "DouyinCity" to cheer for the city and record your wonderful life.

#抖incity城市美好生活节# is Douyin's most representative urban regional brand event. From the official publicity, it can be seen that this is an online and offline joint marketing. The difference between this type of marketing and previous large-scale marketing activities is that while Douyin is carrying out national online topic activities, it also has touring relays in major cities.

"Douyin+City" divides the venues in each city into distinctive city brand activity stations based on the characteristics of different cities.

2.2 Analysis of the implementation model of #抖inCity城市美好生活节#

Model 1: Taking the city’s characteristic business card as the main line and spreading the city’s symbols through the trend of Douyin

The most representative city features are selected and integrated with the Tik Tok trend to form a unique city window with urban culture as the story line.

Case: #抖inJinling

The event fully explores the characteristics of the historical ancient city of Nanjing, deeply combines DouinCity with the city's intangible cultural heritage, and invites 8 national intangible cultural heritage masters to the scene to inherit the unique charm of the ancient capital of Nanjing and create a "Intangible Cultural Heritage Shake Up" carnival event.

Model 2: Deeply explore and magnify the city’s characteristics and interpret the city’s new highlights

Combining the main story line of the city, we explore the city’s deep heritage and trendy culture from many aspects, making the city’s cultural business card more concrete.

Case: The IDOU Festival held in Chengdu Tianfu Park was a carnival for fans to interact in a similar way to Weibo's #SuperRedFestival#. Incorporate various internet celebrity elements of Chengdu into the event, give a concrete interpretation of Chengdu in Douyin, and deepen the understanding of the city.

Mode 3: Linking local events in the city to create a famous scene in the city

In this model, Douyincity began to try to deeply integrate with local major events, and started to combine the two brands to integrate the main IP with major urban events in the form of 1+1>2.

Case: Douin Qilu and Erli Music Festival, an independent brand music festival project in Shandong Province, have joined forces. The win-win cooperation is achieved by combining local major events that bring their own traffic, integrating Douyin's unique elements to form a unique cultural event scene, greatly increasing the volume of the two events.

3. DouyinCity regional interactive marketing

3.1 Tik Tok leads the urban trend and becomes an incubator of hot content

Hot topics in Douyin city areas build city topics:

(1) Cities and attractions: Discover and explore the content of cities and attractions by combining PGC and UGC.

Successfully spread #Chengdu, #Chongqing, #Huashan Changkong Inn, #Xi'an Breaking Bowl Wine and other cities and tourist attractions

(2) Culture and art: Use new forms such as videos and topic activities to spread culture and art.

Successfully spread cultural and artistic content such as #Peking Opera, #Kunqu Opera, #Suona, #Famous Paintings Shaking, #Theatre of Opera Cultural Relics, etc.

(3) Internet celebrity food and good stuff: highly commercial hotspot incubation, focusing on urban food, shopping and travel.

Successfully spread #Haidilao beef rice, #MINISO, #Turkish ice cream, #COCO milk tea and other delicious foods and products

(4) Popular songs and dances: Songs and dances are the most important elements of short videos, and the spread of popular songs and dances cannot be underestimated.

Successfully spread #Xi'anPeople'sSong, #C哩C哩Dance, #TarzanDance, #SeaweedDance, #LearnCatMeow

Based on the city’s culture and the content of business travel and cultural tourism incubation hotspots, unique topics for the city are constructed, which can bring extremely high and lasting influence to the local city through publicity and self-fermentation.

3.2 Douyin regional interaction: precise topic marketing to enhance brand influence

• Douyin’s basic model of urban area precision marketing: Douyin Challenge
• Challenge topic: Hot promotion on the site + creation by experts + public participation = brand influence
• Douyin regional targeted resources: local opening screen, local information flow, local discovery page banner, local topic recommendation; highly accurate targeted resources greatly promote the influence of urban regional activities and brand marketing effects

3.3 Multi-industry scenario applications to create classic brand cases

Douyin, which has 400 million daily active users, is itself a huge traffic pool that can provide an entry point for cities and brands and bring extremely high exposure to brands and cities. Through urban regional topics and local precise recommendations, we can realize regional marketing demands for cities and brands and continuously shape the city and brand image.

(1) Application scenarios in the government travel industry: city tourism promotion, tourism festival promotion, city publicity, etc.

Case: Quzhou Municipal Party Committee Propaganda Department Douyin helps Quzhou promote Nan Kong culture

Marketing background: As the birthplace of Nankong culture, the Publicity Department of Quzhou Municipal Party Committee and Douyin jointly launched the "Come and Dance Politely with Me" campaign, using the image of Grandpa Nankong as the starting point to launch an online magical dance to output the unique cultural image of Quzhou.

Interaction rules: #Come and dance politely with me - invite your friends and family to learn polite dance from Grandpa Nan Kong. Allow users to freely use their creative ideas to make polite dance more fun and interesting, and reflect polite elements.

(2) Application scenarios in the tourism industry: tourism experience, tourism brand and scenic spot promotion, etc.

Case: Shandong Provincial Tourism Development Commission's "Discover Shandong", a new model of multi-platform linkage + experiential marketing promotes rural tourism

Taking advantage of the trend of tourists using Douyin to record their "good life", with the theme of "Discover Shandong", Douyin influencers will conduct offline experience + produce content online, and cooperate with platforms such as Weitou, Huoshan Video, Xigua Video and Wukong Q&A to guide users to discover the beauty around them, convey the image of the hospitable Shandong, and strengthen the brand association of tourism.

#村落颜值大战-Photograph and upload the beautiful scenery of the village, the people and things, participate in the village beauty PK, and award prizes based on the number of likes. It has a low threshold and is easy to operate, which attracts users to participate in the dissemination.

(3) Cultural and tourism industry Application scenarios: node marketing, national linkage, brand voice, etc.

Case: OCT Lantern City, Douyin influencers help build the influence of OCT Zigong Lantern Festival

During the 2018 Spring Festival, OCT joined hands with the Zigong Municipal People's Government to carry out lantern tours with local characteristics in Xi'an as the main venue, linking up with 12 cities including Beijing, Shenzhen, and Chengdu. 12 talents with different styles were selected to create videos with their own style at the lantern festivals in the 12 cities.

#Zigong Lantern Festival is so fun - OCT Zigong Lantern Festival leads the "drama masters" of 12 cities across the country to interpret the legend of lanterns in various ways. Use your imagination and check in with the same lanterns as the masters

(4) Application scenarios in the fast-moving consumer goods industry: new product launches, product promotions, node marketing, etc.

Case: Zihaiguo, Douyin created a hit new product and quickly seized the blue ocean market

As a new form of fast-moving consumer goods product, Zihaiguo has limited market recognition and brand awareness. As a new marketing campaign to promote a new product category, it is urgently needed to create unique product awareness. The brand has created multiple creative videos on Douyin to communicate with users from multiple angles and incubate Douyin hits.

• There are clearly Tik Tok-style editing videos explaining new ways of eating;
  • Invite Tik Tok influencers who match the target audience to shoot product placement videos;
  • Create the interactive topic #No hotpot, no brothers to establish an emotional connection between the brand and consumers.

4.0 Summary

Douyincity is a highly innovative city brand IP marketing. The analysis and disassembly of such marketing cases will help us explore new city and brand marketing models based on city characteristics.

The urban area activities are for newcomers to try. If you don’t like it, please don’t criticize. If you choose, please indicate the source.

Author: Huang Yu

Source: Huang Yu