Make use of content calendars to make your marketing activities more grounded
The author of this article まろ (opens in a new tab) is the author of the light novel “Southern Cross” (opens in a new tab). In the spirit of “taking from the Internet and giving back to the Internet”, we share personal experiences, covering entrepreneurship, business strategy, business management, marketing planning, psychology, etc. Thank you for authorizing the “Content Hacker” website to reprint it. Thank you hereby.
How to make the brand close to the audience
Congratulations on the new year, and wish all readers of “Content Hacker” a happy old age. If you are a marketer, you must understand the importance of festivals to marketing. So, this Spring Festival, have you seen any marketing promotions that are refreshing, can leave an impression on you, and are connected with the brand?
On this site, there is a unit called “Plan your monthly content calendar”. Teacher Qin Zhenjia will list in detail the festivals and solar terms of the month, and even the birthdays of celebrities born in the month, which is of great reference value. However, it would be a shame to just post a picture with “Happy ○○ Day” written on it. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, generally speaking, it is not too difficult for publicity to make an impression on people (including being interesting but incomprehensible), but it also needs to be connected to the brand at the same time, which requires more thought.
How to create role identity in festival marketing
Each brand has different resources. This article does not provide suggestions for brands in various industries. Brands with mascots or characters have some advantages in marketing links. Even if there are no roles or spokespersons, sometimes team members can make guest appearances, such as Domino’s Pizza commercial (opens in a new tab) The protagonist is Chairman Ouyang Xinnuo (his performance can be regarded as professional).
My original work fan group “Daily Life in Maple Town (opens in a new tab)” was founded before Christmas in 2015. When the characters had no reputation at all, in the early days of the website, festive pictures were used to bring out the characters’ personalities. After about half a year of promoting the festival pictures, fans gradually know the names and personalities of the characters.
In terms of the handling of festival themes, I think the Western New Year is a rather embarrassing theme. This is of course a big festival, but there is a lack of a more useful festival image in Taiwan. For example, you can see many Christmas trees during Christmas, Spring Festival couplets during the Lunar New Year, and so on. But the biggest impression of the Western New Year in Taiwan is probably the fireworks. And the impression of fireworks is not equivalent to the Western New Year, so it seems troublesome.
Because my target fans are usually more exposed to Japanese culture, I use Japanese New Year symbols in the Western New Year section.
The imagery of Western Valentine’s Day is very obvious, directly referring to one of the love triangle protagonists in the original story.
However, the response to the Girl’s Day greetings is very interesting. For most Taiwanese people, Daughter’s Day is probably a holiday with unknown meaning, but I still try to recommend this congratulatory picture. However, the response to this congratulatory picture is far greater than that of all other congratulatory pictures. Perhaps it is because the cute heroine wears a gorgeous twelve-piece suit that is very attractive (laughs).
Through this congratulatory picture, I connected the heroine’s “princess-like character setting” with the meaning of the Girl’s Day festival.
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Then comes White Day, and through this congratulatory picture, the ambiguous relationship between the male and female protagonists of this group is highlighted.
Boys’ Day (Japanese Dragon Boat Festival) is also a festival unfamiliar to Taiwanese, but everyone should know about carp streamers (maybe they saw it from Doraemon or Chibi Maruko-chan?), so I also released the corresponding greeting picture and let one of the heroines dressed as crazy appear.
When it comes to the Dragon Boat Festival greeting pictures, it can already be said to be a prank. You must also know the allusion to the Dragon Boat Festival. When designing this greeting picture, I thought, “It would be interesting to have a showdown between humans and fish for delicious rice dumplings.” Therefore, this greeting picture was born. Fans also say that the congratulatory pictures from our fan club are always interesting, which is really the best compliment.
Adjust the size to suit the vehicle
As of 2018, since fans are obviously mobile phone users, the greeting pictures designed in computer desktop size must also be adjusted. Therefore, the designs of the greeting cards for Christmas in 2018 and the Western New Year in 2019 are completely different from before.
First, there is the square version designed specifically for social networking sites.
Then there is the vertical version that can be used as a mobile phone wallpaper or printed as a postcard using ibon.
The last one to appear is the computer wallpaper version.
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Let customers participate hands-on
At the end of this article, I would like to share with you the best way to penetrate into the lives of customers, which is to let customers actually DIY.
You read that right, this is really a red envelope bag mold, just simplified into a shape that is easy to cut with scissors, and controlled to a size that a general printer can print out completely. If you don’t want to pre-print before sending, it is also a workaround to let customers download the print file and then cut and produce it.
Conceptually, it’s the same as the paper lanterns distributed by various counties and municipalities, but I don’t have physical access to request them. Therefore, it is necessary to provide file downloads instead, and let fans know that they can easily go to convenience stores to print. Also, the production process must be shown on the fan club to make fans “feel” that the production process is really simple.
First, please use your own printer or go to a convenience store to print it to A4 size.
Then cut off all the white edges. In fact, to make the red envelope bag look good, you need to be very careful in this step.
Fold the front and back sides in half.
Glue up the sides, and the prototype of the red envelope bag appears.
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Finally, fold up the adhesive part at the bottom and stick it to the back of the red envelope bag.
In this way, the cute red envelope bag is completed.
I made more than a dozen of these red envelope bags and distributed them to relatives, friends, and colleagues. It was really a huge handicraft burden (laughs). Of course, there are many details worth mentioning in the visual design of this red envelope bag. For example, the font of “Welcome the Spring Festival and receive blessings” is specially made, and it is also deliberately made into the shape of playing cards, etc., which I won’t mention in this article.
I hope that sharing this article will enable you to make more use of the marketing value of festivals. I have designed a relatively simple “Festivals for Marketing and Promotion (opens in a new tab)” for your reference. If you want to design a refreshing and brand-connected marketing campaign for your brand, you can also refer to the [Customer Needs Discovery Coaching] service I provide on the “Hourmasters (opens in a new tab)” website!
Finally, congratulations on your marketing campaign being down-to-earth, getting people in, and making a fortune in the New Year!
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Vista Cheng speaks and runs workshops on AI workflows, writing and content systems for companies, schools and public agencies.
