BA celebrates Chinese New Year with golden ticket giveaway

Sina Weibo is still the dominant social network in China, but WeChat (launched by Tencent in 2011) is gaining on it fast. While Sina Weibo, like Twitter, lets users share information with strangers, WeChat (or Weixin) is a mobile app that focuses more on existing friendship groups.

Using WeChat, people can not only call and text for free, but communicate with friends in private group chats limited to a maximum of forty participants. Official brand accounts can only publish one message a day.

WeChat has managed to accumulate 300 million users since 2011. It’s growing fast, and brands with established presences on other popular Chinese social networks, are exploring how they can use WeChat’s platform to market their products.

British Airways

BA used its first WeChat campaign to market its new social presence to existing fans of the brand. The campaign, developed by Social@Ogilvy Beijing, targeted the airlines 350,000 Sina Weibo followers.

The airline used a Chinese tradition, the exchange of Lai See (red and gold envelopes containing money as a New Year gift) to encourage its Sina Weibo followers to, well, follow them over to WeChat.

The first 2014 followers of its WeChat account would receive an envelope containing 300RMB (around £30). Three randomly selected followers would also win round-trip tickets to London.

 

BA designed the envelopes to celebrate the Chinese Year of the Horse, and reflect the heritage of the brand. The campaign ran from 10th to 22nd January.

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Source: campaignbriefasia.com

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