KOL competition is an effective way of generating buzz on social media. Its essence is to invite several KOLs to participate in a competition. Brands can ask bloggers to create videos, comics or other material to enter the contest. KOLs may need their followers to vote for them in the competition and it’s a great way for brands to connect with their existing followers while attracting new ones. This summer, OPPO demonstrated to us a great example of Weibo KOL competition.
Celebrity Engagement × Voting Contest
OPPO is a Chinese consumer electronics firm, known for their camera phone specially designed for young people. Recently, OPPO released their new camera phone, the OPPO R11, and launched a series of online and offline campaigns to promote it. The campaign was called #Who is OPPO’s Photo King# (#谁是OPPO拍照King#). It featured celebrity competition, KOL participation, and a UGC (User Generated Content) collection campaign.
Engaging celebrities in marketing campaigns is nothing new. What differentiates OPPO’s campaign from the others is that they held an online voting competition between the two idols, who needed their own followers to vote for them respectively.
It was a great way to encourage interactions and get attention.
At the beginning of the campaign, William Chan posted a selfie taken with an OPPO R11’s front camera with the hashtag #Who is OPPO’s Photo King#. The next day, Li Yifeng took a selfie with the back camera and also posted it on Weibo. Their posts caught people’s attention, together receiving over 187,000 comments and more than 1,000,000 likes.
Soon after, OPPO posted their promo video in which Willian Chan claims that the front camera works better for taking selfies while Li Yifeng claims the back camera is the best. To maximize exposure, the two celebrities also posted the video themselves.
Under the video was a banner linked to an H5 page that allowed Weibo users to vote for either Willian Chan (who represents the front camera) or Li Yifeng (who represents the back camera). OPPO also promised to give away one OPPO R11 to a user among those who reposted the video.
Participation of other KOLs
Weibo KOLs with millions of followers, such as The Most Interesting Videos (@最神奇的视频) and Happy Zhang Jiang (@Happy张江), were also paid to post the promo video with the hashtag #Who is OPPO’s Photo King#. The reposts made by the two celebrities, KOLs and other users earned the video over 50,000,000 views.
UGC Collection Campaign
During the contest, OPPO also encouraged users to post photos taken with OPPO’s front or back camera. Many users participated in the UGC collection campaign because doing so allowed them to contribute more votes for their idol.
Users could also like other users’ images and the ones with the most likes were prominently displayed on the H5 page helping to spotlight the best photos.
Conclusion
The campaign lasted for about two weeks. Combining interactive online and offline campaigns, OPPO successfully drew public attention to their celebrity competition. In total, the hashtag #Who is OPPO’s Photo King# has been viewed over 460,000,000 times and been discussed more than 22,200,000 times.
To wind up the campaign, OPPO published another promo video, showing “the happy ending”. In the video, Li Yifeng and William Chan highly complimented both the front and the back cameras and said, “Whether to use OPPO R11’s front or back camera, everyone can be a photo king”. The video took the focus from the KOL competition back to the product.
What’s special about this campaign?
KOL competition is a great way for brands to connect with their existing followers while attracting new ones. At the same time, with the huge influence of KOLs on social media, brands are able to generate buzz to increase exposure to a large extent.
However, before launching a KOL competition, brands should be aware that it’s usually held in a larger scale and requires bigger budgets. The OPPO campaign demonstrates to us a great example of this kind of KOL promotion.
Weibo KOL engagement contributes greatly to credibility, media exposure and enables a wider reach to potential customers. KOL competition, as an additional way to work with celebrities or KOLs, is rather less adopted by brands as it requires larger budgets to pay for several influential KOLs at the same time. However, it brings back widespread influence on social media.
What do you think of this kind of Weibo KOL promotion? Given enough budgets, would you consider launching such a Weibo KOL competition campaign? Also, what do you think of our case studies? Are you interested in reading more interesting cases on Chinese social media?
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