Is Occasion Marketing Really That Important in Brand Promotion?

Nowadays we are living in an era of chasing hot spots. Brands always promote their products with occasion marketing strategy and People are enthusiastically enjoying it as well. However, I was wondering: Is occasion marketing really so important when it comes to brand marketing? Let me ask you one question: how many hot spots can you recall that happened last month?

I will share some of my insights with you today. Let’s start from one survey made online and offline lately.

The survey has four interesting questions:

Question 1. How many social hot spots in your Wechat Moment can you still remember since last month?
A,1  B, 3  C, 5  D, 10

Question 2. How many great ideas of occasion marketing still stay in your mind since last month?
A, 1  B, 3  C, 5  D, 10

3. How many of them can you retell exactly?
A, 1  B, 3  C, 5  

4. For those great ideas of occasion marketing that you can recall, are they coming from relatively familiar existing brands or new brands?
A, Existing Brand  B, New Brand

There are more than 50 people present with feedbacks. Most of them can remember 1 - 3 social hot spots and none of them can make it more than 5 and approximately 4, 5 people have impression of 1 great idea, no one remember more. It is really interesting that they have no idea which brand does the idea belong to.

Then I put it online whose result is: 60% of respondents had impression of 1-2 social hot spots and occasion marketing activities. About 80% think remembering great ideas of existing brand is more easily than new brands. 

Basically we can have some conclusions accordingly.

1. Chasing hot spots has little effects on a new brand. On one hand, most creative ideas cannot be remembered by users. On the other hand, for the users who can retell the whole creative idea doesn’t mean they can perceive and remember the brand itself. It’s different. 

2. Chasing hot spots might be tricky for new brand and start-ups because they are lack of basic cognitive information. Existing brands have advantage in this field.

3. People will be tired about the same thing showed on their WeChat Moment over and over again. 

Just one quick mathematical question: communicating with 1,000 loyal fans or spreading to 100,000 users? The larger number is obviously more seductive. But actually it is not unless we can continuously provide contents with good quality, share similar experiences as fans’, make their voices heard and feedback them instantly with possible efficiency.

I will give you an example. Most contents that Smartisan’s official WeChat account posted are about design and designers, art and artists, such as photo of Iceland – Aurora, tip of a pencil, high-rise block and plane etc. Do they have anything to do with mobile phone or sales? No. But it is helpful to observe fans’ needs and preference. Now we can see that chasing hot spots is easier and effective in a short time. However, from a long term perspective, enhancing fans’ appreciation of the brand and cultivating the quality of their demand or desire would be a much better choice.