Since its birth four years ago, the operation strategy and model of Weibo has become increasingly mature. From the initial exploratory state of trial and error, it has now advanced towards a rational and mature direction, establishing a relatively complete marketing system. However, this also led to the problem of homogenization in official Weibo account operations.
Yet there are still some excellent individual cases that have broken through the common operational models, achieving breakthroughs in marketing strategies during the dual-V (Weibo, WeChat) era. The Spicy Beef Noodles under the Master Kong brand is an excellent case representative. It was the first to attempt a cartoonified anthropomorphic positioning, while simultaneously establishing a cartoon account matrix for auxiliary dissemination: a matrix including accounts like preserved egg and sausage, creating a full-bodied official V character image in a completely new Weibo matrix form. Within just a few months of its establishment on Weibo, it quickly attracted the attention, admiration, and "teasing" from consumers. For this reason, I interviewed the operation team of Beijing Ruiyi Hengdong @Master Kong Spicy Beef Noodles to learn more stories and details behind "Xiaobao Xiangla".
Is this a bucket of instant noodles from the second dimension?
The personality positioning of the Master Kong homepage administrator stems from the understanding of the product and consumer insight. Due to its spicy flavor, the brand has been endowed with characteristics of passion and vitality. Meanwhile, the main motivations for purchasing instant noodles can be divided into two categories: either extremely busy or extremely lazy. Thus, we positioned the personality of the Master Kong homepage administrator as a slightly split Gemini cartoon image - Xiaobao Xiangla. Simply put, it's a sunny, energetic, and nonsensical character who is usually very busy and occasionally very idle, just like you or your good friend, a cartoon character representing the second-dimension mirror image of consumers, thereby bridging the gap with consumers and providing a reason for consumers to follow a bucket of instant noodles on Weibo!
Where did his little buddies come from?
Instant noodles are a product with low attention, and simply setting a cartoonish anthropomorphic positioning is difficult to stand out among similar products or even in the entire Weibo marketing environment. Therefore, we had to conceptually break the limitation that an official Weibo account only has one account. We started by looking into the eating habits of consumers and discovered that many people like to add side dishes when eating instant noodles, such as preserved eggs, sausages, vegetables, and pickled mustard greens. Thus, we boldly imagined that Xiaobao Xiangla could form a group effect similar to the [Avengers] with these side dishes. Four sub-accounts together with the main account "Xiaobao Xiangla" formed the "Spicy Good Partners," collectively achieving the maximization of marketing effects. At the same time, combined with the different characteristics of the sub-accounts, we also endowed them with vivid personal traits and styles, maintaining consistency with "Xiaobao Xiangla" in visual effects. Various accounts work together interactively on the Weibo platform, greatly enriching the single-account transmission effect. Moreover, multi-perspective layout and line setting significantly improved the monitoring scope and intensity, playing a certain promoting role in the operation of the enterprise's official account.
Is the execution pressure large for multi-account operations?
No matter what kind of positioning is adopted, content remains king in WeChat marketing. However, the operation management of multiple accounts indeed added a certain amount of execution pressure to our team. But from another angle, due to the different role positioning of various accounts, it gave us more creative space in selecting content materials. Especially at appropriate times, seizing appropriate opportunities, and matching appropriate copywriting often brings more unexpected surprises to our content.
In order to better capture the fragmented time of consumers, @Master Kong Spicy Beef Noodles established an official account on the Weibo platform after opening it, and also stationed on the WeChat public platform. This idea originated from our discovery of the uniqueness of instant noodle cooking methods, which provided us with a good opportunity for communication with consumers, namely, waiting for the five minutes it takes to prepare the noodles. If we can use fun and interesting interactive forms to capture the interest points and curiosity of consumers during this boring, waiting, short, and fragmented 5 minutes, it can also play a significant value! Thus, we first established a keyword guidance + humanized customer interaction management mode, always accepting consumers' "bubbles" and teasing, of course, including consultations, suggestions, and complaints.
Besides daily interactions and services, do you have more interactive ways to share on WeChat?
The arrival of the WeChat era has provided more diversified forms of interaction for enterprises on social media. It is not limited to the single forms of text and images; voice and other forms of gameplay have produced more creative and valuable UGC for dissemination.
Secondly, WeChat interaction requires efficient guidance, so the custom menu bar pushed must provide consumers with more choice space while being entertaining, allowing each level of keywords to trigger more interactive links.
Under the allowance of customer budget, we would also try to combine third-party data interfaces to explore more forms of creativity, further perfecting the user experience of consumers in the WeChat environment. We once developed a simple mobile game in the WeChat of Master Kong Spicy Beef Noodles as a simple test of creativity, but the interactive effect we received in the end exceeded our expectations.
As of now, within six months from its birth to operation, the number of followers increased from 0 to 450,000, with an activity rate maintained above the 85% level line, winning the love of a large number of loyal "bubble friends." If you also like Xiaobao Xiangla, why not try teasing it a bit.