Viral communication case analysis: Why did “Watermelon Footprints” go viral on WeChat Moments?

On May 31, the Moments were suddenly flooded with shares of a map called “Watermelon Footprints.” This is a typical case of self-propagation. Since I have been studying self-propagation for the past six months, I will analyze this case.

1. Event Review

Xigua Footprints is a small program . After users scan the QR code and fill in the domestic cities they have visited, the small program will automatically generate a footprint map and show how many netizens you have surpassed. You can share it to your circle of friends with one click.

After Watermelon Footprints was launched on May 31, it quickly reached a PV of over 10 million. At 00:06 on June 2, founder Dai Hongmin posted a message on his WeChat Moments: "2018.6.1, milestone, 10 million." Real-time statistics from the backend of the mini program showed that the number of visits to the Xigua Footprint page was 10,189,747. Later, it began to monetize by directing traffic to the mini program’s homepage (mainly games and advertisements).

Because of suspected plagiarism of "Footstep Map", the service was suspended on June 7 due to "suspected infringement of the legitimate rights and interests of others."

2. Why is it so popular?

Every popular marketing event actually requires the right time, place and people, and even an element of luck, but there are rules to follow. Let's analyze this case below.

1. Audience and participation threshold

The target group of Xigua Footprint is all people who travel across cities, including people traveling for things and traveling, covering almost 90% of the "melon-eating crowd". The audience group is universal, that is, it is a national activity.

From the perspective of participation threshold, the product's interactive design is simple and clear. Users only need to manually select the cities they have visited. As long as they travel across cities, they can participate. There are no rules or restrictions, and the participation threshold is low.

The wide coverage of communication targets and the low participation threshold are the basis for triggering this viral self-propagation.

2. Sharing psychological motivation-user needs

In my previous article "Applying Sharing Psychology to Make Products Spread Quickly", I studied the users' online sharing psychology and proposed a three-dimensional theory of sharing psychological motivation, which was later iterated into a pendulum model of sharing motivation.

From the perspective of psychological motivation for sharing, this mini program mainly captures the users’ needs for “self-recording” and “self-promotion”, while providing topics of conversation ( social currency) to facilitate interaction between friends, that is, “cultivating and maintaining interpersonal relationships”.

Let’s take a look at the user’s voice:

(1) Self-recording

"To mark the cities where I have been on business trips and see the roads I have traveled." - User X

"This kind of record is very ritualistic. I hope I can complete it or revisit the places where the stories happened." - x user

(2) Self-promotion

"Xigua Footprints has set a "number of users surpassed", which will also inspire some people to show off and share how many places they have been to." - x user

"For the C-end, manually uploaded data can be falsified, satisfying vanity and showing off to friends." - x user

(3) Cultivate and maintain interpersonal relationships

"Also check out my friends' itineraries. Many of the forwarded messages are full of emotion, memories and stories." - x user

"My friend just reminded me that my movement path is obviously the Hu Huanyong Line, and I move along the population density dividing line, which means I am always on business trips and it is very tiring." - x user

3. Use of strategies and techniques

Viral self-propagation activities all have some common points or application techniques, which are introduced in detail in books such as "Viral" and "Self-propagation", so I will not go into details here. This marketing event clearly applied public visibility and participation.

• Public visibility : The mini program finally generates a picture map, which is shared on WeChat Moments in the form of a picture. With the map and colors, it is easy to see/observe, which can better promote public discussion, imitation , and sharing, thereby achieving a viral self-propagation effect.
• Sense of participation : There is actually a routine to create a sense of participation, which is to provide a template paradigm and encourage users to participate in re-creation, so as to achieve a self-propagation effect. For example, the typical Hammer phone brand marketing campaign of "too beautiful to be powerful"; QQ Music's "Generate your 520 lyrics confession love letter" and so on.

Back to the case of Watermelon Footprints, this mini program actually provides a set of standard templates. Users can re-create the final shared picture content by checking the city, which stimulates comparison and competition (interaction) and achieves a viral self-propagation effect.

4. Communication environment

The three elements of virus transmission are pathogens, patients, and the transmission environment. If the marketing event being transmitted is itself a pathogen, then the transmission environment refers to the time and space in which the marketing event is transmitted.

The main feature of Xigua Footprints is "recording", which refers to the user's footprints and life trajectories. The choice of a nostalgic holiday such as Children's Day to launch the app was the final fuse that ignited the app. Coincidentally, in June 2017, NetEase News + DaDa launched an H5 titled "This is the childhood that adults dare not open" which quickly became popular, also taking advantage of the connection between Children's Day and nostalgia.

The author of this article @刘佩龙 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

Product promotion services: APP promotion services, advertising platform, Longyou Games