Lipton Milk Tea created a viral campaign earlier this year to celebrate Chinese New Year by launching it on China’s biggest IM and social networking site QQ.
There is a website where people get to send a customisable Chinese New Year greeting (made of Lipton milk tea steam) by selecting one of 3 videos (school girl dance, rock band or a mime act) that was shot in first person to reach out to recipients on a more personal level. Senders can even upload their own faces onto the lead character’s heads to hike up the entertainment value!
A research done by Vitrue found that a page with ONE million fans = at least $3.6 million worth of media value.
“That means a marketer posting twice a day can expect about 60 million impressions per month through the news feed,” Brandweek reports.
It was also revealed that brands that made an effort to connect and engage with friends perform best; highlighting the key element that differentiates social from traditional media. Brands that genuinely connect with its fans attract 3.6 impressions per fan, compared to a “corporate style” fanpage, which generates only 0.44 impressions.
Moral of the story – engage because you want to engage. Do not simply humanize your brand for the sake of wanting to ride on the social media wave. It will only backfire. I have done a tad too many campaigns like that in the past when the agency itself is not even capable in this aspect but yet, succumb to business pressure by promising the client the moon, stars and meteor, only to realise the lack of expertise thereafter.
