Apple's Xiaonei campaign actually started around last May; according to the record in the group, the peak time is May08 to Nov.08. The group has a very interesting name - Apple College, means Apple want to "teach" their product knowledge to Chinese students on Xiaonei.
Personally speaking, Apple College is the best designed Xiaonei group page I've seen so far. The entire group page design is so "Apple" (I think you get what I mean), from the font/color usage to the overall layout; very detailed and impressive.
The group has 344,515 members so far. The first thing you will see on the group homepage is a huge (taking up half screen size) video tutorial with some basic knowledge on "switch from PC to Mac". Although it isn't so direct as those "Get a Mac" videos on Apple's English site, still, from the headline, the message is pretty clear.
Let's take a look at different activities Apple created on its group page.
Lucky Draw
From May2008 to Nov. 2008, each month there was a lucky draw to give away 4 iPod shuffles to 4 Apple College members. Since the event has already finished by now, Apple displays each month's winner pictures on this page.
Make friends with Apple products
All the Apple products are members of this Apple College too. For each of those product member, Apple created an detailed profile page introduce its functions and benefits. Apple also encourages members to make friends with those product members by giving out points as an intensive - make friends with one product will gain 1 point, those who win 30 points can redeem for coupons, and top 6 members with the most points can win Apple products. If look at the idea only, it is a very smart way to promote Apple's products. Since in order to make friends, members not only need to go to each product's detail page which means they will more or less see these detailed description, but also need to tell Apple if they like or own the products. By rough calculation, there are around 81,000 members made friends with those products.
However, it seems there is a very obvious problem here. There are total 18 products in the group page, so by making friends with all of them, members can gain 18 points; add the 3 points upon joining the group, then the most points members can gain are 21 points. Then how come they will have 30 points to redeem coupons? The "most points members" page proved my thought, all the top ones are with 21 points... Ok, I don't think Apple is tricking those innocent members, maybe it's just not so good at math; or, those guys just have to wait for some new products coming out. But, 9 new products, it doesn't seem to be a short waiting time, does it?
Become an iPod Spotter
In this section, Apple encourages members to take pictures with their iPod and upload these pictures online. Each month, there will be 2-5 members chosen by Apple to be featured at the top of the section page.
Introduce wifi spots in Shanghai and Beijing
Apple also created a section introduces those venues have wifi available in Beijing and Shanghai, seems like a good information source for those who want to access internet outside (say, with an ibook). However, since last August, there are only 5 venues collected. But in the comment area, a lot of members are sharing wifi venue information to each other.
Images & Blog & Forum
Those are three elements we've seen on almost all the brand groups. Below is a brief introduction of each one on Apple Xiaonei group.
Image: all are advertising and event images. But those commercial images surprisingly attracted lots of comment - 55 images got 580 comment. Regarding the reason, I think Apple's attractive product design helped a lot, most of those commenters are expressing how impressed they are on the pretty design.
Blog: articles are mostly Apple product news. It seems Apple just simply copy-paste these articles from their new release, each article links back to the official site certain product page. Only 18 articles from last May.
Forum: a "hot" spot in the group. Altogether there are around 6500 topics from May 2008, people are discussing Apple products, sharing user experience, etc. There are many new updates everyday and most of them are posted by members, not like most brand groups where the admin are playing an important role on getting the conversation going.
Other than this group, we also found two Xiaonei accounts Apple created:
Apple retail store: introduces Apple new store information as well as some event announcement. [17,178 visits; 1,996 friends]
Apple college: an extra account Apple created. I think Apple realized it is unnecessary to have this account since all the activities are already on the group page, so almost nothing going on here. [281,154visits; 1 friend (Apple retail store)]
Thoughts:
Apple's Xiaonei campaign engaged around 500,000 people [group: 344,515 members, individual accounts: 298,000 visits]. I think the reason why it got this relatively high number of engagement is mostly due to Apple's worldwide reputation. Regarding the strategy, I'm sure they did some brain storming on those different activities, but, doesn't seems to contribute a lot to the overall result.
Here is some comment from Rand on this campaign:
Apple's campaign is an interesting one; there really seems to be no effort to engage the audience except for an "afterthought" lucky draw. It's almost akin to a celebrity signing up on Xiaonei and posting his/her personal pics. From what we can see the success of this campaign did not come from understanding the market, but came from Apple's world renown iconic brand image and aura of sophistication, trendiness, and high technology.
Apple's Xiaonei campaign is pretty much Apple's website on Xiaonei - except on this Xiaonei/Apple site users can comment on images and products. This is a special case - I can't name another brand that would pull so much interests directly solely for its products. Kudos goes then not so much to the campaign, but to Apple's overall brand as a cultural icon.
Related posts:
- Foundertech; Xiaonei Social Media Campaign.
- Olay's Social Media Campaign, success at a cost?
- China Social Media; Xiaonei: China's Facebook Replica.
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