Volvo Wo
Ben Condit
Background:
This
Valentine’s Day, love and coffee joined together on WeChat as Starbucks
launched “Say It With Starbucks” in China - the first branded social gifting
experience on China’s most popular app.
Details and implications:
For
the very first time, WeChat enabled a fully branded experience with its Wallet
functionality, giving users the ability to send their friends a cup of coffee
through the app.
After
clicking the Starbucks icon on the Wallet page of WeChat, users are taken to a
Starbucks designed HTML5 site where they can select a preferred virtual gift
card to go along with a coupon for free cup of coffee, then instantly send it
to a WeChat friend. Upon receipt of the message on WeChat, the friend simply
visits their local Starbucks and displays the QR code coupon for scanning. The
entire process is completely seamless within the WeChat application and takes a
matter of seconds.
While
the Starbucks branded icon in the Wallet will only last for a limited time, the
functionality will remain on Starbucks’ official WeChat account. So far there’s
no specific data on the total number of coffees sold, but given WeChat’s 846
million monthly active users and the Valentine’s Day launch, it’s a fair bet
that the sales impact will be significant.
The Essential Emotional Component
It
is often difficult for marketers to take advantage of WeChat’s incredible
stickiness with users – but Starbucks has tapped into the emotional key that
drove the successful launch of WeChat Pay in recent years across the country.
Three
years ago, WeChat launched its mobile payment solution by digitizing one of
China’s longest running traditions – the giving of red packets filled with
money during Lunar New Year. Since then social gifting with WeChat Pay has
become mainstream, including Valentine’s Day – with users sending red packets
in numerical amounts that have significance in Chinese. Example amounts include
520 RMB, or 1,314 RMB, each number sounding like ‘I love you’ and ‘Forever’
when spoken aloud in Chinese.
Starbucks
has taken the new custom to a new level by including actual gift cards with multiple
themes – a concept that should resonate with attention hungry netizens. These
themes range from standard messages like ‘Happy Valentine’s Day’ and ‘Thank
You’ to a rainbow colored ‘Have The Courage To Love’.
Summary:
WeChat
has selected the perfect partner to launch a branded execution of its Wallet
functionality. The combination of Starbucks’ immense distribution and
attainable luxury status in China has created a partnership certain to generate
both social buzz and sales. We can expect this to be just the first in a long
line of co-operative brand partnerships that finally deliver strong impact for
both the social platform and brands. However, whether other instant messaging
apps such WhatsApp and Kik will also include this functionality in the future
remains to be seen.
