1155081003 YU, Yun
(Candice)
Wechat is a free
communication application that Tencent launched in Janarury 21, 2011. It not
only provides users the function of instant messaging, but also allows users to
share their moments, to read articales, to buy everything from cinema tickets
to taxi rides and so on.
For mainland
students, Wechat is so common that we can hardly think of our first impression
of it. And it seems that we seldom see advertisings about Wechat nowadays in
Mainland China because almost everyone already think of it as a basic social
tool. So what is Wechat’s strategy in affecting consumers’ information
searching? What image it would like to show to a new user? Maybe we can try to
find answers through its ads in other markets, to see how they utilize the three
models in the information search process.
Here are Wechat’s advertisements in
Taiwan and Hong Kong.
- Wechat Taiwan——Focusing on introducing functions
- Withdraw function
This video is about a
young man sending inappropriate picture to his grandmother and didtn’t cause
any embarrasement because he withdrawn it immediately.
- Translation function
This video directly introduces the
translation function of Wechat, with which users can make friends without
boundries.
①Attitude: cognitive component
Through
these ads, Wechat Taiwan is trying to impact consumers’ understanding about Wechat
by introducing its unique functions in a funny way, then develop consumers’ emotions
for the APP, which may result in downloading the APP.
②Value: Secuity & Freedom & Personal accomplishment
By
promoting consumers’ knowledge about Wechat, the ads are trying to show the
consumers that Wechat can fulfill their needs in different aspects. Ability of
withdrawing means security to some degree; ability of making cross-culture
friends means freedom; and these two elements contribute to personal
accomplishment. And these to be fulfilled needs are the value that consumers
can get from using wechat.
③Cognitive map
The
cognitive map users may construct in mind after watching the advertisements of Wechat
Taiwan:
- Family, love
This video is a microfilm about how a
local family, with one mother and three daughters, use Wechat to keep in touch
and take care of each other. By reviewing her mother’s messages on Wechat, the
actress realized her ignorance of families and tried to improve the
relationship. Wechat, as a bond between family members, played an important
role in the progress.
- Friendship
This video shows how
four famous stars of Hong Kong used Wechat to communicate with each other and
solve problems for friends in wechat group. Wechat is a bridge that connects
friends.
①Attitude: affective component
Through
these ads, Wechat Hong Kong is trying to evoke consumers’ emotions and feelings
about family and friends, and then further convince consumers to believe that
they can use Wechat to maintain or improve the relationship with people they
care, which may lead to download finally.
②Value: love & sense of belonging
Similar
to Wechat Taiwan, Wechat HK also tries to let the consumers know that Wechat
can fulfill their needs, but in a different way. By telling stories, the ads
want to evoke consumers’ sympathy to the roles, that they also have families to
be loved and friends to be accompanied. And Wechat is a tool that can help them
manage their social relations.
③Cognitive map
The
cognitive map users may construct in mind after watching the advertisements of Wechat
Hong Kong:
I also find some ads of Wechat India, and
it emphasizes a lot on music and sounds. Because I don’t understand Indian
language, I can’t analyze it in details. Just to show you these two interesting
videos.
Thank you for sharing the consumer attitude of WeChat. Though WeChat has large users in mainland, it's not easy to get the same monopoly position outside the firewall. In the market where the existing SNS like Facebook, Whatsapp and Line are racing to control, WeChat should conduct strategies to stand out from the competition. I think the two paths of cognitive and affective are good strategies. The first one informs the users of the unique functions which other SNS Apps don’t have, while the second one is trying to build emotional connections with users. The videos you post are funny and localized, but some of them have low quality and not so appealing, maybe that's one of the reasons WeChat can't be as successful as it in China.
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