What else is there in Children's Day marketing besides nostalgia?

Whenever holidays come, brands often have to rack their brains to take advantage of the marketing opportunities. In the Internet age, there is a self-deprecating voice in the media circle that holidays are disaster days for media people, and leveraging marketing has become a key marketing method for brand marketing.

In the era of information explosion, the Internet's routines are "too deep" and have trained the Chinese people to have a keen sense of brand marketing. They are no longer "interested" in ordinary marketing by leveraging momentum. The nostalgic marketing that is common on Children's Day has also become common. How brands can leverage marketing differentiation to stand out, attract consumers' attention, and trigger users' emotional resonance has become a new direction for brand marketing in the new era.

When brands do marketing for Children's Day , besides taking advantage of consumers' nostalgia, what other entry points can they use?

First of all, we must make it clear that the marketing selling point of Children's Day is innocence, childlike fun, and things related to children. Does that mean that brands that have nothing to do with children or mothers and babies do not need to take advantage of the Children's Day? In fact, as long as any brand finds the right marketing entry point, leveraging marketing is a feasible thing.

Seizing the voice of young users is the top priority for brand marketing. The users of Children's Day marketing are not just children and parents. People of all ages are potential consumers. How can brands use marketing points to stimulate users and leverage Children's Day to sell their products? For example, it is easy to understand that stationery brands are related to Children's Day, but how recruitment brands are related to Children's Day is an issue that brands and creative parties need to think carefully about.

The methods of piggyback marketing are generally relatively simple. In this era when attention is increasingly scarce, it is difficult for a brand to stand out in the dazzling festival piggyback marketing by releasing a single piggyback poster or fun and interesting piggyback copy.

In the attention economy, attention has become an extremely scarce resource. As a country with the largest Generation Z (those born after 1995 and 2000) in the world, China’s young consumer group is a group that cannot be ignored and has become the main consumer force of the new generation. Young consumer groups generally have the characteristics of strong curiosity, lack of patience, strong acceptance of new things, and stronger desire to try. In view of the consumption characteristics of young consumer groups, if brands only "scratch the itch" by taking advantage of the festival to market, simply for the voice of young people, just to follow the trend for the sake of following the trend, without their own creative characteristics, and unable to spread information from top to bottom, then the marketing by taking advantage of the festival will ultimately be drowned in the wave of Internet marketing.

In response to this phenomenon, brands will add other marketing methods to the festival marketing, such as public welfare marketing, movie marketing, and gimmick marketing. By combining these marketing methods and leveraging the differentiation of marketing, the brand will also be able to "stand out".

1. Use marketing differentiation to stand out

1. Interact with the future. You recall the past, and I look to the future.

Nostalgia marketing is actually about reminiscing about the past, but what about looking to the future?

Interacting with the future sounds like a good idea. You can test your future child's appearance and plan the life for your future child. It is presented in the form of H5. There are often many choices about small details in life that require users to think carefully. For example, a question like this: "Your child has just started elementary school and is bullied by classmates at school. He goes home with a sad face. What will you do at this time?" Users are faced with three choices: school handling, education, brave fightback, or staying away from trash people. The choices can show the user's future parental thinking.

2. Charity marketing to endorse the brand

The brand supports public welfare projects and is committed to improving the level of education in poor areas. By organizing performances or events for children in the mountains, all proceeds from the events are used for public welfare, or directly raised as donations. Such opportunities are great marketing opportunities for brands. It not only helps children in need and spreads new power of public welfare marketing, but also leverages the opportunity to promote and endorse the brand, killing two birds with one stone.

Ant Financial’s “Good Night! The Children's Day theme event "Dear Child" was held with the theme of "Today, spend more time with you". The participation of celebrities and Internet celebrities such as He Jiong, Lang Yongchun, Zhang Quanling, Tong Dawei, etc. undoubtedly added enough star effect to this event. Click on the celebrity avatar to listen to the famous works of the celebrities as goodnight stories. Of course, there will be a lot of user participation in the event promotion. In the "Baby also wants to say a few words to you" session, users can record their own voice and tell goodnight stories to children in mountainous areas. The user participation is very high.

In public welfare marketing, the public pays particular attention to the effectiveness of public welfare activities. "Good Night! The first batch of stories of "Dear Child" will be broadcast in more than 10,000 rural Taobao service stations across the country. The public has always been convinced by the data explanation. In this marketing campaign leveraging Children's Day, Ant Financial used the public welfare effect to increase both brand awareness and credibility, thus killing two birds with one stone.

3. Use gimmicks to leverage marketing momentum

E-commerce platforms are the main venue for gimmick marketing. In the attention economy, creating gimmicks is the best way to attract consumers' attention in the "complex and complicated" online world.

However, gimmick marketing can attract users' attention in a short period of time, but if the promotional discounts and product practicality cannot satisfy picky consumers, it will backfire and cause consumers to be disgusted.

For example, Taobao’s “1 cent to grab Children’s Day gifts” campaign uses gimmicks to attract users with children to buy at a very low cost, creating a hot topic among consumers, which usually occurs in daily conversations. In fact, the gimmick of the event is greater than the event itself.

The methods of marketing through leverage are generally single. Smart capitalists have come up with the idea of ​​combining gimmick marketing with movie marketing through leverage. By leveraging the release of the Doraemon movie, Taobao took advantage of Doraemon's momentum and rode on the popularity of the movie.

However, consumers are often only dazzled by short-term marketing stimuli. The gimmick of explosive effects and the special significance of Children's Day can easily lead to spontaneous secondary dissemination by users, thus creating heated discussions on the Internet, and the brand has achieved its marketing goals.

Whether it is nostalgia marketing or other marketing strategies, the purpose is to promote the brand. The methods and activities may be different, but the strategies are almost the same.

2. Arouse the emotional resonance of users

Only by adhering to the principle of user-first insight and starting from user preferences can we carry out a marketing campaign that truly influences user minds. Only when the event settings and marketing copy resonate emotionally with users can they attract the attention of potential users and then convert them into consumer behavior.

Emotional resonance is the emotional resonance caused by the stimulation of emotional expression or emotional change. To put it simply, it means "it turns out we have the same idea." As long as this feeling is triggered, users will feel that the brand understands them. For similar products, most consumers will definitely choose a brand that understands them.

For many young people, Children's Day is the best opportunity to post their childhood photos on social media platforms. If you observe this kind of social behavior carefully, you will find that many people are "complaining", asking why they were so ugly when they were children, and why there was no photo-editing software when they were children that could help them "change their appearance" into big-eyed cute girls or boys.

Carnegie said that each of us needs the support and affirmation of others. Tiantian Ptu undoubtedly supports and affirms the user's idea that "childhood photos could look better".

Such voices on a social platform inspired the brand marketing strategy of photo-editing software. The H5 mini-game jointly created by Tiantianptu and QQ Space launched the activity with the slogan "Black technology takes you through your childhood", which is in line with the marketing selling point of Children's Day. With one click, you can "travel back to your childhood" and generate your own unique elementary school ID photo. If you observe carefully, the generated childhood photos seem to be much better looking than the original ones, with enlarged eyes and smoothed skin. Netizens are happy to share them. As a result, such a picture resource worthy of "showing off" began to spread on social networks, and the brand's marketing purpose was achieved.

Under the influence of celebrity marketing, companies can achieve their goal of maximizing promotion in a very short time. "Black technology takes you back to your childhood" not only won the love of young netizens, but also was forwarded by celebrities.

After the game "Black Technology Takes You Through Childhood" was upgraded to a high-end version, the brand, which has a deep insight into the social networking environment, customized several hairstyles of popular stars for this game. After all, the influence of "fan culture" is everywhere. Even if negative news about star chasing emerges in an endless stream, the brand industry cannot withstand the dissemination effect of traffic stars. Netizens had a lot of fun playing with the hairstyles of celebrities like Kris Wu, Wang Junkai, etc. Due to the high level of dissemination, "national husband" Song Joong-ki also participated in this game, and automatically generated elementary school ID photos of himself and his wife, "Korean national goddess" Song Hye-kyo.

The marketing leveraged by the celebrity effect can be said to be "like a fish in water". Not only was it well received on social platforms, it even ranked first in downloads on the App Store.

Brands that like to "make trouble" will not miss any holiday marketing, and will appear to be more "active" than other brands. Alipay had a sudden idea and during Children's Day, it added the suffix "baby" to the end of every Alipay user's nickname. After the implementation of this bizarre idea, the reactions of Alipay users were extremely polarized. Some people agreed, saying that "Internet expert" Alipay was cute, while others said that the behavior was not rigorous enough and did not buy into Alipay's marketing strategy of leveraging the Children's Day.

Whether it was praise or criticism, Alipay gained enough attention in this marketing campaign, and the Weibo topic #Alipay nickname changes to baby# unsurprisingly topped the Weibo hot search topic list.

The word "baby" can easily evoke users' childhood memories. Alipay took the lead, and WeChat is not far behind. As long as you send "I'm still a baby" in the chat, "baby bottle rain" will fall on the WeChat chat interface, and if you send "add a chicken leg", "chicken leg rain" will fall. This kind of marketing campaign, which seems to have no substantial connection with the core of the product, has achieved a good product communication effect in a short period of time, making users feel that WeChat is interesting and fun.

Rationalizing consumer behavior and product narration are the conventional logic of advertising, and triggering emotional resonance is the deep expression of advertising. Such a shift in advertising thinking occurred in Apple’s classic advertisements. "The reason why we are so crazy is to change the world." Such copywriting immediately rationalizes the "crazy" behavior and finds a good excuse for "madness". Children's Day is a special day in Japan where people express their emotions. Alipay and WeChat have rationalized users' idea of ​​"wanting to be a baby".

Alipay is good at capturing users' reminiscence of their childhood. Modern life is stressful, and everyone wants to go back to being a person who doesn't have to worry about anything and has everything provided for him or her. However, time cannot be reversed, and everyone can only express their depressed mood on social platforms. After understanding the user psychology, Alipay decided to be "naughty" on Children's Day, but it did not take into account that not every user likes this forced "baby" posting behavior, resulting in polarized user reactions. In holiday marketing, brands need to take into account the feelings of the majority of people. If mandatory brand behaviors are done well, they will increase users’ favorability towards the brand. If the mandatory requirements are too heavy, it will bring a bad user experience to consumers, which will not be worth the cost.

Standing on the opposite side of the user and using reverse thinking copywriting is more likely to attract user attention.

Brands that use reverse thinking copywriting can more easily attract users' attention. For example, copywriting such as "I don't think you are interested in watching our Children's Day activities" and "Don't call me baby" use irony to point out the theme of the Children's Day activities, making users ask questions such as "Why am I not interested?" and "What are your Children's Day activities like?", arousing curiosity and helping them to learn about the activity and stand out from the massive Children's Day marketing.

As a dating website, Jiayuan.com’s normal marketing efforts will not be able to attract users’ attention, so the brand is “uniquely talented” and stands on the “opposite side” of the majority of “babies”. The copy reads, "Alas, you are already this old, without a partner, and yet you are still clamoring to celebrate Children's Day." This creative idea received unanimous praise from netizens.

Based on the above, the following points are suggested for Children's Day marketing:

• Leverage marketing combined with other marketing strategies is more likely to stand out;

•Children's Day marketing is not only about nostalgia marketing, but also about future marketing, charity marketing, movie marketing, etc.;

•Arouse users’ emotional resonance and rationalize consumer behavior;

•Reverse thinking copywriting can resonate more with users.

Author: Majiang

Source: PR Home