Co-branding interactions on social media.
If you are a brand executive of a company, what will you do on Thanksgiving day? Post a “thank you” poster for your customers on social media? Perhaps this will be the most common choice of many companies. However, last year (2017) Durex China gave us an unexpected but interesting answer of what brands can do on social media for Thanksgiving day.
On November 23rd Durex started a co-brand interaction on Weibo. From 10 a.m. (UTC+8) to 11 p.m. Durex China’s Weibo account published “thank you” posts to 13 brands in seemingly unrelated fields. The first brand Durex China chose to say thank you was Double Mint and by using a play on words Durex was able to successfully make a connection between the two brands. Following this Durex China published one thank you post to a different brand every hour. And at the end of the day, they published a total of 13 thank you posts and got 12 replies from the various brands.
This co-brand interaction marketing on social media became a great success of Durex China. From the Baidu Index and Weibo Index, we can see that the search traffic of Durex China experienced a sharp increase on Thanksgiving day.
In the book titled Groundswell (2011) the authors, Li and Bernorff, mentioned that in the age of digital media traffic equals money. Thus, if a brand via social media marketing can attract enough traffic online it will be a successful one. Let’s go back to the Durex China’s co-brand interaction marketing. The main reason why Durex can successfully attract so much attention is that they know how to take advantage of what the Weibo platform can offer. After Durex posted the first thank you note to Double Mint people were curious to find out how they would respond. Then after publishing several thank you posts netizens were attempting to guess which brands Durex will interact with next. Also, because the various brands did not prepare for this interaction netizens were also looking forward to the reaction from the various brands.On Thanksgiving day Durex China turned Weibo into a large show stage. Durex China was the leading actor and the netizens were the audience. Together with the various brands that Durex China chose they showed us great improvisation on marketing.
Another reason for Durex China’s success is that they took advantage of social media in an unexpected way. For many people marketing on social media is only about communicating with customers. However, Durex China shows us that by interacting with other brands you can also get attention from your clients. Essentially, Durex China is still communicating with their customers when interacting with other brands. By interacting with other brands Durex China gave their official Weibo account more of a personal feel. It is as if one of your friends decided to say thank you to some of your other friends on Thanksgiving Day. Official Weibo accounts usually make the brands feel distant from the customers. Then suddenly, these accounts interact with each other. For customers, this may feel exciting that they are able to witness this interaction between brands.
Congratulations Durex China! You did a great job with your marketing on Thanksgiving Day.
On November 23rd Durex started a co-brand interaction on Weibo. From 10 a.m. (UTC+8) to 11 p.m. Durex China’s Weibo account published “thank you” posts to 13 brands in seemingly unrelated fields. The first brand Durex China chose to say thank you was Double Mint and by using a play on words Durex was able to successfully make a connection between the two brands. Following this Durex China published one thank you post to a different brand every hour. And at the end of the day, they published a total of 13 thank you posts and got 12 replies from the various brands.
This co-brand interaction marketing on social media became a great success of Durex China. From the Baidu Index and Weibo Index, we can see that the search traffic of Durex China experienced a sharp increase on Thanksgiving day.
In the book titled Groundswell (2011) the authors, Li and Bernorff, mentioned that in the age of digital media traffic equals money. Thus, if a brand via social media marketing can attract enough traffic online it will be a successful one. Let’s go back to the Durex China’s co-brand interaction marketing. The main reason why Durex can successfully attract so much attention is that they know how to take advantage of what the Weibo platform can offer. After Durex posted the first thank you note to Double Mint people were curious to find out how they would respond. Then after publishing several thank you posts netizens were attempting to guess which brands Durex will interact with next. Also, because the various brands did not prepare for this interaction netizens were also looking forward to the reaction from the various brands.On Thanksgiving day Durex China turned Weibo into a large show stage. Durex China was the leading actor and the netizens were the audience. Together with the various brands that Durex China chose they showed us great improvisation on marketing.
Another reason for Durex China’s success is that they took advantage of social media in an unexpected way. For many people marketing on social media is only about communicating with customers. However, Durex China shows us that by interacting with other brands you can also get attention from your clients. Essentially, Durex China is still communicating with their customers when interacting with other brands. By interacting with other brands Durex China gave their official Weibo account more of a personal feel. It is as if one of your friends decided to say thank you to some of your other friends on Thanksgiving Day. Official Weibo accounts usually make the brands feel distant from the customers. Then suddenly, these accounts interact with each other. For customers, this may feel exciting that they are able to witness this interaction between brands.
Congratulations Durex China! You did a great job with your marketing on Thanksgiving Day.
I'm really curious about the co-brand interaction in Weibo since I have never heard of that until you's writing. I gained more new knowledge from what you said. You have a good job on analysis of marketing and findings of some useful charts. The interesting thing is the traffic equals money, I can feel what means that from your writing. Durex' china success is on advantages the social media taken and link with others friends to improve the brands' popularity. Great job. This is the core of word of mouth.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment! Co-branding is always a new phrase to me, and it's really interesting to see that they did something like that and provide a good example for us.
DeleteI just wanna say Durex China is super naughty, lol. They actually tried everything and @ everyone to stay at the top of search bar. It was a successful marketing strategy!
ReplyDeleteYep. Durex China is famous for their marketing. Especially when there are big events happened on internet, they can always quickly catch up with the trends.
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