The milk tea charging joke has become a reality, and Ele.me has made Beijing subway popular

What are your ideas for post-holiday marketing? Ele.me's offline marketing campaign themed "Recharging Milk Tea for Workers" in Beijing and Qingdao provides a new reference for everyone. Come and learn!

If you have passed by Beijing Subway Guomao Station recently, you may have noticed that many workers stopped on both sides of the passage to take photos and check in.

Because Ele.me has put some creative interactive devices for "charging" here. You can use milk tea to "charge" and "infuse"... to wake up your soul that is still sleeping during the holiday.

If you are lucky, you will also encounter the real-life version of the workers' exclusive emojis. Some prominent workers COS as emojis and check in. For example, An Lingrong, the "emotional muse" of workers, Ms. Luo Wenxi, who is silly and cute, Jack Ma...

OK, OK, OK. I never thought you were this kind of Beijing workers. The world has finally become something I don’t recognize.

Today, let’s talk about how Ele.me’s “This drink is on me” localized marketing was launched from the perspective of an advertiser. What are the highlights?

01 Creative interpretation of daily workplace life and how to handle the "anxiety" during the return to work season

With the end of the "longest Spring Festival holiday" in history, we return to the long working days. The next holiday is still a long way off, which makes people feel tired.

Based on the workers' tiredness after the holidays, Ele.me launched the "A cup to recharge, this one is on me" theme event. With various creative interactive devices of "fancy refueling" and "second cup for free" order discount, workers are encouraged to recharge themselves in time by ordering a cup of milk tea or coffee before returning to work after the holidays.

It’s also a meme and is also aimed at the working population, but compared to last year’s cold and humorous Internet jargon, this “It’s on me” marketing event seems more straightforward, relaxed and fun.

These imaginative 3D installation designs highly reproduce the daily life of workers:

In the morning, I drink a cup of coffee to force myself to turn on my computer. A cup of milk tea makes me happy all day long. Milk tea is the life-saving water for people in the workplace. Drinking milk tea at work is the smallest unit of vacation...

This series of precise emotion capture and realistic content is more likely to resonate with and be shared by workers.

Some people even spontaneously COSed classic emojis to check in at the scene, pushing this major event to a "climax". Some used An Lingrong from "The Legend of Zhen Huan" to lament the "humbleness of working", used Jack Ma from "Annual Meetings Can't Stop" to ridicule the "daily workplace life of being calm on the surface but broken inside", and some borrowed from Sun Wukong from "Journey to the West" to express that "work is like an invisible tight hoop"... It's true that it's impossible not to go crazy at work, and every mental state is just like me.

In summary, Ele.me uses emotional pain points as the main line of communication, and stimulates user UGC with creative interactions, promoting the fission and dissemination of the "A Cup of Soul Return, This One's on Me" event.

02 Daily interactive communication allows users to become communication media

The key to marketing success lies in the choice of communication media. The success of Ele.me’s “I’ll pay for this drink” marketing campaign is also due to the two key points in communication.

On the one hand, choosing the subways where workers with greater mobility and higher contact rates commute as advertising placement points makes it easier to achieve accurate communication.

On the other hand, the use of special-shaped device design has a stronger visual effect, instantly turning subway advertisements into internet celebrity check-in spots.

Each three-dimensional installation is a unique "charging station" for workers. Here you can drink milk tea for infusion, drink Americano for charging, drink coffee for oxygen, order a flat white to clear your mind, or even drink milk tea while counting pearls and touching fish.

Compared with conventional print advertisements, this interesting three-dimensional installation is more likely to attract the attention of passers-by and add a bit of fun to the boring commute of workers.

When these creative interactive devices are laid out throughout the closed subway passage, it is equivalent to building an immersive scene experience of "the spiritual habitat of workers", creating a stage for users to "release their social nature". You can quietly take a photo and send it to your milk tea partner, or you can make funny gestures to perfectly blend into the picture...

Many people are working physically, but still sleepy on the inside. The interactive subway installation by Ele.me in Beijing is like a "start button", officially allowing people to enter the chapter of 2024. Sometimes, marketing during the start of work season does not require brainwashing hard advertising effects, but only gentle care. Why not try searching "This cup is on me" on Ele.me to enter the event venue, order yourself a discounted cup of milk tea, and recharge yourself.

From this perspective, Ele.me actually returns communication to people themselves. When every passerby becomes a communication medium, marketing will naturally be easier to go viral.

Not only in Beijing, Ele.me has also brought this start-of-work care to people in Qingdao. The start-of-work season is also a concentrated period for people to worship Buddha and pray for good luck. When facing a new year and a new job, countless workers choose to burn incense between self-improvement and work, praying for a smooth year ahead.

Ele.me has collaborated with Qingdao Culture and Tourism Bureau to jointly create the "Lucky Sign Milk Tea", a hit product for Qingdao's opening ceremony. With the theme of "Pray for blessings at the opening ceremony, this cup is on me", it consists of a glittering consecration cup set + lucky signs for the opening ceremony + cultural and tourism opening ceremony blessings. It combines milk tea culture with fortune-telling and blessing, creating a closed marketing loop, delivering opening ceremony benefits to Qingdao workers, and providing Qingdao residents with a reason to place an order in terms of both the mood and practicality of the opening ceremony.

In addition, Ele.me also chose Haiyun Temple, a cultural landmark in Qingdao, to implement the creative event marketing of "Milk Tea Brings Blessings", which created a strong atmosphere of blessing, created an online hot topic event, and at the same time conveyed Ele.me's warm blessings to the workers to more corners.

It can also be seen from here that every time Ele.me launches an event, it starts with the most distinctive label of each city, combines it with insights into the lives of workers, and then integrates the brand into the city, extending its warm tentacles to more corners of the city.

03 City-limited localized marketing consolidates the IP value of "This drink is on me"

In the era of fragmented communication, marketing needs to emphasize precision. Looking at the previous marketing of Ele.me's "This cup is on me" IP, it is also the same. It targets the precise group of Beijing workers and carries out marketing around them, focusing on detonating traffic and voice, thereby achieving a wider range of cross-circle communication.

For example, at the time of New Year's Eve, the company understood the workers' desire for "wealth" and "good luck" and cleverly met users' New Year expectations with the "2024 Vision Cup" with the flavor of a big company.

As for the return to work after the holidays, the brand understands the anxiety of workers about "returning to work after the holidays" and uses creative three-dimensional installations such as "milk tea infusion tube" and "coffee charging station" to encourage workers to use the ritual of "ordering a cup of coffee/milk tea" to temporarily relieve work pressure and anxiety about starting work, cleverly conveying the brand's care and warmth.

It can be seen that Ele.me has been able to come up with new ideas every time in the long-term development of the "This Drink Is My Treat" IP. For example, it combines "Internet jargon" and "working people's emoticons" and other hot topics to interpret daily workplace life, and tries to use different media carriers to let creativity fall back to physical touchpoints, gradually deepening the "This Drink Is My Treat" IP user mind.

But one thing that remains unchanged is that Ele.me can always capture the emotions of workers in time and warm and heal the emotions of workers in every city in a light-hearted way of conversation. Understanding the "inner feelings" of users and identifying the "emotional pain points" are the core of Ele.me's ability to arouse empathy among target users.

Finally, I want to say that getting a good rest is as important as working hard, and we must also learn to use a sense of ritual to decorate every ordinary long day.

Today is Monday, why not order yourself a cup of milk tea to start a week full of energy.

Author: Aye; WeChat public account: Shock Copywriter