News on April 25th: On the Sina Weibo trending topics list, the real-time topic "Should I go to Brazil for the World Cup?" ranked among the top ten, surpassing 100,000 posts, making it the hottest travel-related topic of the season.
It is reported that the "Should I go to Brazil for the World Cup?" topic was only launched three days ago, but the grand prize of a luxurious World Cup trip worth 100,000 RMB has excited numerous netizens. The initiator, the official Weibo account of Yizhouyou, emerged as a dark horse and became the big winner of this Brazil World Cup campaign.
As one Sina user put it, this global football feast is a war for men and a revolution for women. With the 2014 Brazil World Cup approaching, football fans around the world are actively counting down. The marketing campaigns of numerous brands for the World Cup have also entered a phase of concentrated effort. At this time, the emergence of HNA Tourism's Yizhouyou has sparked new industry thinking about the models and effects of leveraging the World Cup for marketing.
Yizhouyou is a brand-new travel app meticulously developed by HNA Tourism Group. In the fiercely competitive OTA market, it directly targets the high-growth consumer market of local travel, providing users with a one-stop experience service covering attractions, hotels, food, shopping, and more along the entire chain. It offers users the possibility of "traveling on a whim." Notably, the Yizhouyou app features voice-guided tours and 720-degree panoramic maps. Users can even use the app to find restrooms and parking lots within scenic areas, instantly eliminating the sense of unfamiliarity in new environments. Its one-stop mobile booking and payment platform maximizes user convenience.
In just over ten days, HNA Tourism Group achieved a flawless launch promotion for the Yizhouyou app through a low-cost, high-efficiency World Cup campaign. It completed a remarkable transformation from a new app to a popular one, and remarkably gained a strong sense of closeness from a large number of users. This success is attributed to the innovative marketing model employed by HNA Yizhouyou for the World Cup.
It is understood that the grand prize for the World Cup trip is worth 100,000 RMB. In today's world where football has become the most popular sport globally, the influence of the World Cup rivals even the Olympics—it is a global celebration. With the tournament returning to the football kingdom of Brazil, it has attracted participation from celebrities and figures from all walks of life worldwide. Yizhouyou truly captured attention by being the first to shout the slogan "Make Your World Cup Dream Come True."
At the same time, HNA Tourism Yizhouyou integrated an "Activity Square" into the app client. Throughout April, all users who downloaded the Yizhouyou app could participate in the "2014 Football Feast, Yizhouyou Takes You to Brazil" themed activity via the "Activity Square." In addition to free World Cup viewing opportunities, Yizhouyou also introduced equally enticing prizes: one domestic flight ticket awarded to one user per day, two cruise tickets worth 5,000 RMB for the Henna Cruise awarded to one lucky user per week, and irregular draws for exciting prizes such as iPhone 5S. Through these attractive prizes, Yizhouyou has successfully engaged many users, and how to retain them has become the primary challenge. Behind this outstanding sports marketing campaign, glimpses of the product’s future can also be seen.
Judging from the current activity marketing and product design of the Yizhouyou app, it also follows a user-driven approach—using substantial prizes to attract users to register and participate, and employing a virtual currency system to encourage secondary sharing. As the activities expand, it is believed that Yizhouyou will introduce high-quality travel products to stimulate user purchases.
In terms of future travel products, in addition to its vast offline resources under its control, HNA Tourism Group also easily gains internal support from entities like HNA Airlines, giving it stronger bargaining power compared to purely internet-based OTA companies. Within this entire business logic, HNA Tourism is in the early exploration stage of user accumulation. The clever use of the World Cup momentum to promote the app has laid a solid foundation for subsequent user growth.
The success of HNA Tourism Yizhouyou’s leveraged marketing also stems from its emphasis on social media in the mobile internet era. In addition to launching the "Activity Square" within the app, the HNA Yizhouyou World Cup campaign encourages users to share event information across various social channels, such as Weibo and WeChat Moments. Amid this nationwide excitement hoping to win the grand 100,000 RMB World Cup prize, it’s not hard to see that numerous grassroots influencers and well-known Sina bloggers are actively spreading the word. This has led to increased curiosity, recognition, and voluntary promotion of the app itself among more netizens and mobile users.
Leveraging social media, the Yizhouyou World Cup campaign achieved astonishing brand exposure and unexpectedly became one of the most cost-effective cases of World Cup leveraged marketing in a short period. Industry insiders say that the innovative product model of HNA Tourism Group’s Yizhouyou—the "dark horse"—was key to winning the World Cup leveraged marketing battle. At the same time, it also provides valuable insights for the promotion of more new products.