Buydeem: A domestic high-end kitchen appliance brand ——discussing its social media and mobile strategy

Zhang Xuanting(1155082066)

Buydeem（北鼎） is a domestic kitchen appliance brand which targets on the high-end market, especially on the young white-collar women who pay attention to the quality of life. Using‘美食有爱，生活有光’as their slogan, Buydeem not only sells kitchen appliance, but also provides corresponding ingredients as well as recipes. Different from the commonly low price of its competitors in domestic market, Buydeem seems to focus more on the quality of products and the online marketing, and the price of its products are always three times higher than other similar brands. In fact, apart from the factor of high quality, I think it’s Buydeem’s good social media and mobile strategy that makes it become the top-seller of the 养生壶 nationwide, which is also its star product.There are mainly three platforms that help Buydeem to contact with its customers, WeChat, Weibo and App. And each platform is used in different ways to have a specific target on its current users and potential users.

Undoubtedly, WeChat and Weibo are the main social media platforms which are used most frequently among people in mainland China. Buydeem has its WeChat official account to provide useful recipes and instructions of its 养生壶, which is beneficial to its current users who already purchased the 养生壶. This also match one of the PARC principles for successful social media strategies that it present useful and relevant content as well as helpful information as customer service. Meanwhile, they convey their brand attitude through those useful recipes and set up a positive brand image that emphasizes the life aesthetics in the kitchen, which is also helpful to build its reputation.

However, the main platform that connects Buydeem tightly with its customers is Weibo, and it is used to the fullest. First of all, it invites some KOLs in cooking area to speak for them, sharing their using experiences or taking beautiful photos of its products and publish on their Weibo accounts to help to attract new customers. Using the hashtag of #小北与她的朋友们#，it has raised wide discussions, then it retweets the relevant contents to its own official account. I think using KOL correctly in Weibo is a smart way to precisely target on the niche market, on one hand, it ensures the advertisement published by the KOL in cooking area exactly reach to the food-lovers, which is also Buydeem’s target customers. On the other hand, turning the action of advertising into sharing is more acceptable by people. Also, the process that many people retweet the useful recipes from those KOLs is helping the diffusion of Buydeem’s advertisement unconsciously. Secondly, it often launches some activities using the hashtag topic on Weibo to encourage user generate content including videos, pictures and words. For example, the topic #另一个我在厨房#, those who post their own stories of kitchen and food using this hashtag will have chances to receive a gift worthy of 998 RMB. Up to now, 325 discussions have been raised and over 1 million people have read the content. Buydeem has launched many topics on Weibo like this to keep the communication with its users, and it also pays attention to interact with the people who comment in its Weibo and thanks those who respond. In this way, it efficiently keeps its fans community alive, letting people actively participate in the activities it organized, which matches the Participatory principle for successful social media strategies.

Besides the social media platform, it also creates an App called“焙忘录”to coordinate its new product, oven. On the App, users can get the baking recipes which exactly matches the Buydeem oven and its baking tools, and the ingredients packages for the new learners are available in Buydeem. It’s the first baking App that is created as the customer service and product promotion I’ve ever seen, I think it’s an interesting mobile strategy too. By the way, 焙忘录 also has its own Weibo official account, and it has become a popular food blogger with more than 40 thousand followers. So Buydeem is turning itself into the KOL step by step to maintain the relationship with its customers.

Generally speaking, I appreciate Buydeem’s social media strategy that it is using the user-generated contents to share different experiences about food to replace the traditional official advertisements, and meanwhile inserting the life aesthetics as its brand attitude in its different platforms. I think it’s vital for the company to really make good of the social media and mobile platforms.