Spring Festival Outdoor Advertising Marketing Guide!

In an era where we have to "create festivals for marketing" even when there are no festivals, the Spring Festival, which carries the complex of almost all Chinese people, is a battleground for all companies and brands, even the leading brands that have already occupied absolute market advantages are no exception. Spring Festival marketing is a "breakthrough battle" centered around the brand value concept, starting from the brand, scene, content, and crowd.

The competition in this "war" is not small at all. All brands want to seize the Spring Festival marketing opportunities, which means that brands need to stand out from the large number of new Spring Festival advertisements . This is the biggest issue currently facing brands in Spring Festival marketing.

There are many difficulties in Spring Festival marketing, and it is difficult for brands to stand out

For brands, Spring Festival marketing is equivalent to the year-end exam, and it is a compulsory exam. Brands will seize this time node to capture more new users and deepen the loyalty of old users. However, it is not easy for brands to achieve impressive results in this test, because there are indeed many difficulties in Spring Festival marketing. New consumer brands are emerging in large numbers and marketing is highly homogenized, making it more difficult to gain consumers' attention and impress them.

In 2021, the new consumption sector will remain the darling of capital. As of November, there were 682 new consumption financing events in the eight major industries of catering, food, wine and beverages, personal care and beauty, pet consumption, home furnishings, digital appliances, and clothing and apparel. During the same period, there were 6,790 financing events in the entire industry. The new consumption sector accounted for 10.04%, the highest proportion in recent years. According to Ruishou analysis data, as of Q3 2021, the amount of financing obtained by the new consumer industry has far exceeded the whole year of 2020, creating a new high in financing amount since 2017.

Taking the food industry as an example, new consumption will still be the main driving force for its brand growth in 2021. According to statistics, the number of financing cases for consumer enterprises in the first three quarters of 2021 reached 520, which has exceeded the number of financing cases for the whole year of 2020. Among them, the food track received a total of 18 financing events in November, with a financing amount of 1.635 billion yuan, of which 8 events had financing amounts exceeding 100 million yuan, making it the track with the largest number of large-scale financing events exceeding 100 million yuan.

New brands continue to emerge, the iteration speed of new consumer brands is accelerating, and the industry’s internal competition is forced to intensify. Judging from the surface data, capital still favors new consumer brands, but the capital carnival is no longer there, and the crazy consumer goods investment boom has become rational in the second half of 2021. At the same time, with the decline and diversion of online traffic dividends, pseudo-rigid demand has gradually been exposed. Compared with previous years, the overall traffic on Tmall platform on Double 11 in 2021 fell by more than 30%. New consumer brands such as Wang Baobao, Ramen Says, Super Zero, and Wonderlab performed poorly and sales fell sharply.

In this context, it seems easy for new consumer brands to rise from “0 to 1”, but it is difficult to achieve from “1 to 10”. Many new consumer brands have also chosen to move offline. For example, Santonban, Perfect Diary, Bananain and Bosie have all opened offline stores. In addition to building their brands and enhancing exposure, they also want to break through online traffic restrictions and acquire new customers.

New consumer brands continue to emerge, and their reshuffle cycle is gradually accelerating. Consumers' attention is being frantically attacked, and brand marketing is also very inward-looking. In order to quickly gain voice and traffic, brands have emerged with new ways of playing, such as signing popular stars, cross-border joint events, and online and offline omni-channel marketing... According to incomplete statistics, there were 72 popular marketing events during the Spring Festival in 2021, not including marketing events that were not popular enough or did not make it to the hot searches. The Spring Festival time is limited, but the induced enthusiasm is unlimited, and every brand wants to make the final sprint at this time.

Whether in daily life or during holidays such as the Spring Festival, everyone is surrounded by various information. The intensive information bombardment and crazy marketing activities make consumers at a loss. Consumers' attitudes towards this information have changed from paying attention to being numb and then to not caring, which has invisibly increased the acceptance and threshold of Spring Festival marketing.

The core marketing value of the Spring Festival is the offline scene

As a cultural ritual and emotional root of the Chinese people, the Spring Festival embodies the simplest emotions of the Chinese people and carries the most beautiful meanings of the Chinese people. Chinese New Year is the biggest festival consensus among Chinese people, and “celebrating the New Year” is the biggest consensus ritual among Chinese people.

Under this kind of consensus and atmosphere, it is easy for people to generate social collaboration and form communication between people. From a marketing perspective, during the Spring Festival, people's activities are highly concentrated, their attention is focused, their behavioral habits are similar, and their emotional, social and consumption needs are huge. This is an excellent opportunity for brands to communicate with their audiences. It is precisely because of this that major brands have spared no effort in their marketing investments.

During the Spring Festival, people's behavioral and social scenarios are relatively concentrated and fixed, which are more differentiated from usual times. Therefore, Spring Festival marketing is to efficiently reach specific scenarios. It is necessary not only to layout online marketing channels and form discussions online, but also to strengthen the layout of offline core scenarios, so that marketing can penetrate multiple points and improve conversions.

Offline is still the core marketing scenario. Whether celebrating the New Year locally or returning home for the New Year, offline travel scenarios such as subways and high-speed railways will focus on a certain passenger flow. The 2022 Spring Festival train tickets went on sale on January 3. The railway Spring Festival travel season will start on January 17 and end on February 25, a total of 40 days. The national railway is expected to transport 280 million passengers, a year-on-year increase of 28.5%. Common behaviors such as buying New Year's goods and hanging out with friends and family will also make supermarkets and business districts high-value areas for users' attention. During the 2021 Spring Festival marketing period, SENGOGA's brand promotion covered landmark buildings such as high-speed railways, highways, urban transportation, outdoor square LED screens, bus stops, and other landmark buildings, achieving all-round contact with consumers and expanding its communication influence.

The 2022 Spring Festival period is also gathering momentum, providing a fertile ground for the recovery and growth of cinema advertising. According to statistics from the National Film Special Fund Office, during the three-day New Year's Day holiday in 2022, the box office of the mainland film market reached 1.019 billion yuan, just exceeding the 1.002 billion yuan box office of the 2019 New Year's Day period, ranking third highest in the same period in film history. After the New Year's Day period, the Spring Festival period (January 31st - February 6th) will "take over". From past experience, the box office of the Spring Festival period generally accounts for nearly 10% of the annual box office. CICC believes that the 2022 Spring Festival period is expected to continue the good performance of 2021 (7.842 billion yuan), and movies may once again become an important entertainment and leisure choice for the public during the Spring Festival holiday.

The brand owner Blispring toothpaste reaped the "benefits" of the high box office and huge traffic during the 2021 Spring Festival. Around February of the Spring Festival, Bingquan cooperated with three cinema organizations, Focus Media, Wanda Cinema and Bobotang, and pre-screening advertisements covered 500 1st-5th tier cities, a total of more than 3,500 cinemas, achieving a high growth of more than 60% in online and offline sales compared to the same period in 2020.

Photo: Chinese beauty

How can brands use outdoor advertising to carry out Spring Festival marketing?

Therefore, as the public's travel and consumption demands gradually increase during the Spring Festival, the marketing cycle continues to lengthen, and offline scenarios are still an indispensable marketing channel. So, if brands want to do Spring Festival marketing, how should they use outdoor media to create "out-of-circle" marketing cases?

First, link the brand’s value concept with the user’s emotional culture.

The Spring Festival is a very emotionally rich and unique time of the year for Chinese people. Brands need to find some connection between their own values ​​and people’s emotions, and amplify and narrate through marketing to find the emotional connection with specific groups of people. Especially as all kinds of emotions have been exhausted, brands need to try to tap into the dividends of people’s hearts and think about the possibility of occupying unique emotional units. Think from the perspective of consumers, let marketing actions touch the hearts of consumers and arouse emotional resonance.

Recently, the domestic brand PROYA launched a special project at the "Fan Shen Station" of Shenzhen Line 5, using a subway poetry exhibition to send a poetic and romantic New Year's blessing to passers-by - "In 2022, I wish you a turnaround at the next stop", and invited 27 poets including Yu Xiuhua, Chen Nianxi, Han Shimei, Xie Chunhua, etc. to write the first poem of the New Year with the theme of "Hope"; at the same time, PROYA also asked more friends about the various images of the New Year in their hearts, and wrote a long poem "What is the New Year" in the form of co-creation, and made the keywords of the New Year's imagery in this long poem into magnetic stickers, inviting passengers to interact and create a New Year collage poem together.

Image: Advertising copy

At the time of the New Year, poetry is everyone's common language, and these poems about the New Year are also about hope. Literary and hopeful poems fill the "Fan Shen" subway station, bringing poetry, longing, expectation and courage to people's daily lives. PROYA continued its communication strategy for the past year and built its own brand power from different dimensions.

Secondly, create a multi-terminal communication matrix and cover core marketing scenarios through multiple channels.

Emotion is the core of marketing, and scene is the extension of marketing. Marketing must go straight to the heart and be within reach so that people can remember it. However, if there is a lack of appropriate marketing scenarios, it is possible that emotions cannot be fully conveyed and effective communication cannot be achieved. The scenes of the Spring Festival are relatively fixed and have huge customer traffic. Brands strive to cover various core scenes of the Spring Festival in their marketing strategies, including reaching consumers through multiple channels online and offline.

The seasoning brand "Haorenjia" launched a strong brand communication campaign during the 2021 Spring Festival, with high-end hot pot base as the core communication appeal, and multi-party linkage of television, Internet and offline outdoor media terminals, from living communities to commercial centers, and then to supermarkets. Through refined layout, accompanying coverage of consumers' travel trajectories, it formed an effective closure from media to channels, and fully occupied the minds of consumers from online to offline, making it stand out among many brands' Spring Festival marketing campaigns.

Picture: Chief Marketing Officer

Finally, focus on Spring Festival elements or create the brand’s own Spring Festival IP.

When it comes to Spring Festival marketing, it is actually difficult to create touching content by simply talking about family and reunion in a vague way, and it is also impossible to create any distinctive features or memorable points. The brand must focus on a certain Spring Festival element, image and carrier to complete the brand's expression of the entire Spring Festival.

During last year's Spring Festival marketing campaign, Mengniu launched a promotional campaign centered around the element of the Chinese zodiac sign - "ox". As the Spring Festival was approaching, it selected 15 cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Wuhan, and Changsha, and contracted 15 large outdoor screens for advertising. Combining the urban spirit and regional language of each city, it extracted copywriting suitable for each city for advertising, in order to support the "bullish spirit" in each city.

We are both oxen.

The highest good is like water, the sea embraces all rivers, Shanghai is the ox

Dare to be the first to taste the soup, Guangzhou is the ox

The heroic city will never fall, Wuhan is the ox

Can endure hardships, be patient, and be domineering. Changsha is the ox.

…

Image: Advertising copy

Or you can manage the Spring Festival activities as an IP, and establish your own unique IP activities every year by launching a fixed name and logo, fixed time nodes and sense of participation rituals, fixed themes and connotations. For example, Pepsi's "Bring the Joy Home" started in 2012, and it will be 11 years by 2022. Every year when the Spring Festival comes, Pepsi begins to create and disseminate content around the theme of "Bring the Joy Home".

Summary: Up to now, the ideas and forms of brands' Spring Festival marketing have undergone significant upgrades and changes. From broadcasting to dissemination, and then to integrated marketing, the scale of Spring Festival marketing is constantly expanding, and the marketing ideas have also evolved from the original single-point dissemination or single-line dissemination to a complete and three-dimensional integrated model. But no matter how it changes, offline scenarios are still one of the indispensable channels for brands to launch their campaigns, and grasping the emotions and needs of "users" is still one of the magic weapons for marketing to stand out.

This article was written by Mad Men: Outdoor Media Insider