Mid-year review | A collection of marketing cases in the first half of 2018!

New media will emerge in an endless stream as technology develops, but brand promotion does not necessarily require all attention to be focused on new media . The transformation of old media and traditional media may also be a marketing trend, and if used well, it can also bring unexpected good results. There have been many wonderful brand promotion cases in the first half of this year, but compared with those advertising promotions that win with high-quality content, those marketing events that have played new tricks in traditional media may be more inspiring to us.

Case 1: Get APP - Vegetable Market Economics

Holding exhibitions and pop-up events are actually common promotional methods for brands, but what is eye-catching this time is that the exhibition was moved to a vegetable market, which can be said to have broadened marketers' understanding of communication media.

In fact, there have been cases with similar ideas in the past, such as brand promotion by renovating the packaging of old shops on a street, but the impact does not seem to be as great as this time.

The purpose of this vegetable market economics themed exhibition is to promote a paid economics patent in its APP and the book of its columnist. The economics of life can be reflected in a very down-to-earth way in the vegetable market. The theme and form are highly consistent, and people will not have the marketing pain point of "only remembering the exhibition but not the brand".

This wave of operations has made us realize that there are many traditional scenes around our lives that can actually be explored , such as urban villages, wishing trees, scenic spots, large supermarkets, industrial areas, pedestrian streets, etc. As long as the promotional theme is matched with the scene, they can all be used as media channels for cooperation or placement.

Brand promotion does not necessarily require shooting short videos on Douyin . Packaging a vegetable market offline as a theme exhibition can also have a good publicity effect. I believe that the vegetable market economics exhibition held by the GetAPP will have a much larger scale of dissemination than various theme exhibitions held in the atrium of shopping malls.

Case 2: Alipay -self-directed performance on bus billboards

Not long ago, Alipay launched a wave of public transportation advertisements. The advertisements took the form of a chat dialogue interface (which looked very similar to WeChat ’s UI), and concisely demonstrated the various convenient uses of Alipay, such as hospital registration and taking the bus.

There isn't much to say about the content and design of the screen. After all, this type of dialog box format is very common, and the content of this advertisement can only be considered neat, with no problems and nothing particularly amazing.

But it seemed that Alipay had planned it in advance. Passers-by wrote some graffiti in the dialog box of the bus stop. The specific content was similar to "earthy love words", which made things interesting and attracted many people to watch and actively spread it.

The form of graffiti is quite novel, although it seems uncivilized and is not the first of its kind. If it is really an official plan by Alipay, then this form is rarely used by big brands.

Through the form of passers-by's graffiti "jokes", these bus stops have become interactive, and the cost is very low. The brand benefits brought by the attention are far greater than just writing a few words on them. Just a few words give traditional media a new charm.

In fact, it is not uncommon to create interactions on advertising spaces such as bus stops and subway platforms. Some of them interact with passers-by by using electronic displays and sensors, some place devices in the advertising spaces instead of flat posters, and some add special materials such as mirrors or funhouse mirrors to the advertising images for interaction... but the cost of these techniques far exceeds Alipay's graffiti messages this time.

Alipay achieves the effect of spreading the brand with small investment but great returns through innovation in media forms. The key point is that in this type of marketing promotion , traditional media is no longer static or ineffective. Giving it more expansive gameplay may make traditional media more effective than new media.

Case 3: Tmall - 618 Weibo lucky draw event

In order to create momentum during the 618 period, Tmall launched a lucky draw event on Weibo. It stands to reason that giving away prizes through raffles on Weibo has become a daily operation that all brands are familiar with, but this time Tmall has taken this routine operation to a new level.

This Weibo lucky draw event is actually jointly launched by Tmall and other brands. Unlike in the past where they directly @ each other on Weibo content, this time the exposure of the cooperating merchants and the setting of gifts are all in the comment area . The advantage of this setting is that some non-cooperative merchant brands can also participate in this lucky draw carnival by leaving comments.

As the number of merchants continued to increase, the "bonus pool" accumulated in the message and comment area became larger and larger, eventually exceeding 100,000 yuan. This is equivalent to Tmall completing a crowdfunding campaign through a lottery on Weibo, and the brand gained exposure by offering prizes.

The rare thing about this case is not only that it has brought new ideas to the form of Weibo lottery, allowing a large number of brands to interact with users ; it also makes the threshold for merchants to participate in the event very low . If brands are willing to participate, they only need to leave a message under the event Weibo; in addition, all the traffic brought by this event is under the Tmall Weibo post, grasping the overall traffic value.

I don’t know if this form of Weibo lottery is the first of its kind, but it is indeed refreshing. When we thought that Weibo lottery could no longer come up with anything new, Tmall taught us a lesson. With almost no channel placement costs, the final total exposure exceeded 600 million. Moreover, after the winners were announced, there were many follow-up media reports and other public relations operations.

Two marketing inspirations

The above cases all use innovation in the form of traditional media (yes, Weibo is already a traditional media) to achieve a multiplier effect in brand communication.

1. Hard delivery has failed, soft delivery is the way out

It is true that the value of media lies in its coverage, but "hard delivery" that only looks at the coverage has not made any waves in the Internet era. The fragmentation of user attention has actually greatly reduced the effectiveness of all media, and the effect of rigid delivery will inevitably not be good.

We should find a path of "soft delivery" to transform the media from a hard exposure channel to an interactive content form that can cause active dissemination.

Therefore, when doing marketing promotion, we should pay more attention to innovation in the use of media. We should not only look at media purchasing with the idea of ​​buying channels and volume, but find ways to create influence in the use of media. Whether it is finding traditional scenarios that are ignored in daily life and utilizing them like the Duoduo APP, or making some interactive innovations in media content like Alipay and Tmall, you can achieve great results with small efforts.

2. The goal of communication is to create events

In fact, in the above cases, the population coverage of the activities and the campaigns themselves is not large. No matter how large the coverage of the vegetable market economics exhibition of the Get APP is, it is only the surrounding residents and loyal users; no matter how large the coverage of the Alipay bus stop advertising is, it is only the people near the delivery area; Tmall Weibo activities are relatively special online, but the coverage of the activity itself is only on the Weibo of various brand merchants, but 618 can be said to be a carnival for the whole nation.

These placements all have obvious channel platform barriers, but the way to break through the channel barriers is to create events . Only when influential events are formed will the level of information dissemination be opened up, leading to large-scale cross-platform dissemination.

So in fact, whether it is the Get APP, Alipay or Tmall, they may not care too much about the channel coverage, but more about making it a marketing event, guiding the media and self-media to actively report and disseminate it. This is the communication effect that this round of promotion wants to achieve.

What’s most important is that users want to share the picture of the Alipay bus stop graffiti, and users don’t care whether the bus stop is in the CBD or in a remote corner.

Conclusion

When everyone was shouting that traditional media was dead, companies like Duoduo and Alipay let us know that “it turns out that traditional media can still be played this way.” In fact, the media can no longer be simply understood as a communication channel. It is more embedded in the closed loop of communication events and has become an integral part of influential events. From this perspective, we should not complain that the media has failed, but rather that we have not made good use of it.

Author: Zheng Zhuoran, authorized to be published by Qinggua Media .

Source: Spread Gymnastics (ID:chuanboticao)