Meituan Group Buying x Hu Ge: How to create a spokesperson advertisement for the whole nation?

This article mainly introduces how Meituan Group Buying successfully attracted the public's attention and established a deep emotional connection with them, while highlighting its core advantages through cooperation with spokesperson Hu Ge, the use of innovative advertising strategies and extensive communication channels.

"Advertising is a special business. Its challenge is to overcome huge obstacles such as apathy, competition and time constraints to achieve effective communication."

This is the definition of advertising given by Theodore Levitt, former editor-in-chief of Harvard Business Review, 30 years ago. Compared with the mass media era dominated by television media at that time, this challenge has become more and more serious in today's fragmented screen era. Short videos have made attention a scarce commodity, and people's thresholds for excitement and exploration are getting higher and higher. This also poses a problem for brands - how to attract and efficiently convey brand value to users?

Last weekend, a short video was forwarded in the knife friends group. It was a TVC that Meituan Group Buying had just released. The TVC started with spokesperson Hu Ge admitting to using a "body double" as a gimmick, and then unfolded 6 stand-ins experiencing different scenes of Meituan Group Buying's business, thus introducing Meituan Group Buying.

Meituan Group Buying is a brand that Meituan established last year by separating its in-store business. At that time, it proposed the slogan "Meituan Group Buying allows you to save enough", and this year it updated the slogan to "Many stores, save a lot". This time the official announcement of the spokesperson and the release of the TVC are combined with this.

Judging from the results, this event has attracted a lot of attention on social media and in the industry. On the day of the official announcement, the circle of friends was flooded with messages, and there were also many discussions on Weibo and Xiaohongshu. As a brand marketing media, Daofa is more concerned about what is the thinking behind Meituan Group Buying's promotion?

1. Compared with traffic, the more important value of spokespersons lies in brand expression

Generally speaking, there are two ways for brands to choose spokespersons: using traffic to drive sales or using quality to represent the brand. Most consumer products that are in their early stages and need to be sold quickly will choose the first one. But for mature brands, they often balance and make trade-offs between the two.

Judging from the official announcement of Meituan Group Buying, the reason for choosing Hu Ge should be the tone rather than traffic. As a national platform that has been deeply involved in the industry for more than ten years, Meituan Group Buying needs a spokesperson, not for traffic, but to build a communication bridge with the new generation of users.

To put it another way, although Hu Ge had a wave of popularity last year due to "Fang Hua", he is not a traffic star. If traffic is the only consideration, there should be more choices. So why did Meituan Group Buying choose Hu Ge this time?

First, Hu Ge has been in the industry for nearly 20 years and is a veteran in the industry who has been tempered by time. By choosing him, Meituan Group Buying wants to emphasize its position as a senior national group buying platform to a certain extent; second, Hu Ge covers a wide audience. The earliest "Legend of Sword and Fairy" he starred in became popular in 2005, and "Flower" became a hit in 2023. It can be said that he basically covers all people with purchasing power today; third, as a large platform, Meituan needs low-risk artists with high security.

In short, Hu Ge has no obvious shortcomings, and his popularity and reach meet the needs of a national platform. However, being a spokesperson is not the goal, but delivering brand value is. Following this idea, let's look at the expression of this TVC.

The overall idea of ​​this TVC is to introduce the spokesperson Hu Ge's admission of using a "stand-in", and use 6 stand-ins to experience group buying related scenes to show that Meituan Group Buying covers all kinds of stores, thus reflecting Meituan Group Buying's SLOGAN "Many stores, a lot of savings". There are three levels that can be discussed: form, content, and value expression.

The form serves the content. A good TVC must first make people watch it, which is directly related to the presentation form. The narrative form of Meituan Group Buying's TVC this time is to create a sense of contrast to stimulate everyone's curiosity, that is, by comparing the industry-recognized mistake of "using a stand-in" with Hu Ge's usual image of a model worker, the contrast is used to arouse everyone's curiosity and desire to watch.

Compared with the novelty of form, the content, that is, the scene selection and character selection in the TVC, is more noteworthy. In order, the first scene shown in the TVC is "a shop that grandpa says is delicious", that is, a local word-of-mouth shop, the second is "a shop that you can go downstairs to in the middle of the night", similar to a night snack stall, followed by a barber shop that "makes you walk out with a smile", a beauty shop that "makes you more face", a coffee shop that "is better to chat than a meeting room", a bath shop that "makes your worries evaporate", a massage shop that "instantly grasps your pain points", a nail salon that "can't help but show off", a KTV where "you can sing nonsense", and an amusement park that "let happiness circulate and make you happy to the point of lifting the ceiling".

The first two restaurants are not standard chain brand stores, while the following nine scenarios basically cover all offline consumption scenarios except for hotels and travel. The specific description also combines the spokesperson "Hu Ge" with "Hu Ge's random singing", which is humorous.

At the same time, the consumer groups of various stores are also different, covering almost all categories, from young people to the elderly, from students to workers, from children to older children. This also ensures the breadth of TVC dissemination.

This not only responds to "there are so many stores", but also emphasizes "what's more compared to other platforms", reflecting Meituan Group Buying's main advantages on the merchant supply side.

In addition, the knife method also paid attention to a small clever idea, that is, some people feel embarrassed and lose face for group buying. The TVC integrates Hu Ge with the "fireworks" scene, to a certain extent, it also expresses that "high-end stars use group buying to consume" to eliminate the shame of saving money through group buying.

By capturing topics that the spokesperson may attract attention to, and combining the brand's core competitive advantages to present scenes, Meituan Group Buying's TVC not only meets the user's demand for fun, but also expresses the brand's value proposition. The emphasis on stores in the content also shows that Meituan Group Buying has a clearer understanding of its current competitive position.

2. Content determines the depth of communication, and channels determine the effectiveness of communication

The content determines the effectiveness of information dissemination, but the channel determines the audience and the ultimate effect that can be achieved.

Most spokesperson announcements are accompanied by a series of brand marketing actions, which are often used to leverage the spokesperson's popularity to launch co-branded customized products and peripherals, attend brand city tours, etc. to boost sales. In comparison, Meituan Group Buying's promotional actions were not tied too much to Hu Ge, which once again confirmed that the purpose of Meituan Group Buying's spokesperson this time was to express the brand rather than use Hu Ge to attract traffic.

Currently on the mainstream social media platforms, in addition to the official TVC released by the spokesperson, you can also see many related topic posts discussed spontaneously by netizens.

On the day of the official announcement, some Weibo users posted the banners of Hu Ge endorsing Meituan group buying at high-speed rail stations and on the backs of high-speed rail seats. Some netizens on Xiaohongshu even said, "That's great. As a worker, I'm willing to be paired with Hu Ge."

The placement of online social media, offline high-traffic business districts, transportation hubs, high-speed railways, etc., has effectively helped Meituan Group Buying reach various user groups.

In addition to platform-wide publicity, Meituan Group Buying has also stepped up its efforts to attract merchants. At present, Hu Ge's human-shaped standees, table stickers and other atmosphere decorations can be seen in some merchants, causing many netizens to say "just take it away."

Image source: Internet, Xiaohongshu

This is not the first time that Meituan Group Buying has collaborated with merchants to promote its brand.

In large IP and holiday events, Meituan Group Buying will cooperate with brand merchants to make customized product groups for node scenarios and provide support with official social media communication resources. For example, it uses the advantages of expert integration to help merchants create grass-planting content and customize hot topics on the site.

As a platform, its essence is to connect user demand and merchant supply. Consumers' final consumption on the platform still depends on high-quality merchant products. If this cannot be implemented, it will still be a castle in the air. Efforts in improving organizational efficiency and expanding supply will also help Meituan Group Buying to further expand its long board of "many stores".

At the beginning of this year, Meituan integrated the two major businesses of home delivery and store delivery into the local core business sector. After the integration of these two businesses with high overlap in merchant supply and user demand, the cooperation efficiency between merchants and Meituan will be further improved, and consumers' needs will be met in a coordinated manner. According to 36Kr, the "God Membership" that originally only covered the takeaway business will gradually expand to cover the entire local core business. At this stage, merchants have begun to be recruited for activities.

As the new slogan of Meituan Group Buying, "Many stores, much savings", conveys, high-quality supply and extreme cost-effectiveness are the core competitiveness of Meituan Group Buying. Merchants and the platform are win-win roles. This is true in marketing and in business.

3. Analyst Comments

In today's fast-paced and fragmented world, people's memory is like a goldfish. If consumers want to keep their memories, they must be "reminded from time to time." In the increasingly crowded local life track, although Meituan Group Buying is a veteran player, it also needs to maintain communication with users and continue to deliver brand value.

With spokespersons as brand loudspeakers, Meituan Group Buying showcased its core advantages of having many stores and saving money in a fun and humorous way, achieving effective communication with consumers. At the same time, the linkage communication with merchants made consumers feel the efficient collaboration between the platform and merchants more directly, and once again deepened the mindset of "Meituan Group Buying = abundant high-quality merchant group buying".

Hu Ge, who debuted 20 years ago, still maintains a high national popularity with his professionalism, and the same is true for Meituan, which was established 14 years ago.

Author: Yixiu