This article explains the marketing inspiration that “City walk” brings to brands!

There is no standard answer in life, and every habit is worth recording and paying attention to. As a new type of cultural consumption, City Walk is becoming a new way for young people to explore the world and gain emotional value. This article deeply analyzes the reasons why young people choose City Walk and how brands can use this phenomenon for marketing. Let us follow the footsteps of City Walk and feel the charm and warmth of the city.

There are no standard answers in life, and every habit is worth recording and paying attention to.

In various fast-paced situations, involution and lying down have become the mantras of many young people, so some people want to find a new balance in a somewhat depressing atmosphere. However, casual walks that are free to do as one pleases and can go deep into the streets and alleys of the city, with less utilitarianism and purpose, and are less guided by public opinion and comments, have become the favorites of many young people. This is the City Walk that is active on social platforms.

Since City Walk, a light travel method, became popular, it has become a new way for more young people to explore the world and gain emotional value. It is also a new type of cultural consumption that is popular among young people in today's era.

According to the data from the "2023 Lifestyle Trend Observation Report" just released by Xiaohongshu, topics related to City Walk have been viewed more than 2.1 billion times on the platform. Among them, young people aged 24-33 are the main force of City Walk, and 80% of Walkers are women. The main reason they choose City Walk is that they want to take as many beautiful photos as possible in the city. Therefore, this group of people want City Walk, but don't want the same old City Walk when traveling .

According to the data from the "2023 Tourism Research Report", 82% of people want to try City Walk. Among several new types of travel, such as commando travel and backpacker travel, City Walk ranks first. On TikTok, videos related to City Walk have been played more than 4.5 billion times.

1. Why do young people choose City Walk?

The emergence of any phenomenon is closely related to the deepest desire of consumers or the desire to change their own situation. Young people choose City Walk, which is largely due to the imbalance between their current situation and psychological needs.

1. Enjoy the city's aesthetics in the most relaxing way

Compared with the fast-paced and highly purposeful special forces tours, City Walk is more like a leisurely poem, with no predetermined ending and every step full of unknown adventures. It emphasizes spontaneity and allows us to measure the city with our feet and appreciate the unique local life and urban aesthetics with our eyes, allowing our body and soul to travel freely at the same time, truly achieving the most relaxing and enjoyable experience.

2. It is a low-carbon, environmentally friendly and cost-saving way to travel

City Walk is also known as budget travel, which combines many elements. Walking, short travel distance, almost no travel cost; no complicated route planning, the main feature is to go wherever you want; at the same time, you can explore the city culture without asking for the result, which is also known as a low-carbon, environmentally friendly and cost-saving way of traveling.

More often than not, people who participate in CityWalk only need to pay for a cup of coffee or milk tea to enjoy some alone time during the city walk and have the opportunity to meet like-minded "friends". This makes City Walk not only environmentally friendly, but also provides leisure and social fun, while also satisfying the reverse consumption that young people like.

3. Measure the city with your footsteps and capture the fireworks of life

A light trip without any psychological burden is a way to measure every corner of the city with your feet.

City Walk can just bring young people to streets and alleys with more life atmosphere, allowing them to check in at nearby vegetable markets, urban villages, university towns, etc., with their homes as the center and their walking physical fitness as the travel radius. It also allows young people who work hard in reinforced concrete to feel the fireworks of the city, return to their original intention of enjoying life, explore the true meaning of life, and let young people who have left their busy jobs find spiritual sustenance.

4. Avoid going to bed early and going to bed late to relax your mood

At the same time, sometimes strong pressure and busy work may leave young people with less time to pursue poetry and distant places, and occasionally lose the desire and ability to perceive a better life, resulting in the phenomenon of early F and late E.

City Walk is eco-friendly, saves money, and provides physical exercise. It can effectively divert young people's attention and turn the emo evening into an urban "adventure," invisibly creating an unexpected urban hiking adventure.

It can be said that behind almost every user behavior, there are hidden business codes, which are hard to come by and point out the direction for brand marketing.

2. How can brands use City Walk for marketing?

How can brands effectively use City Walk to bring in traffic? Perhaps we can find some ideas worth learning from these cases.

1. Use popular cities and routes to bring traffic to your brand

Undoubtedly, every City Walk route is home to a group of young consumers, which is the result of consumers' active choice and a reflection of young people's hobbies. Brands can make full use of the characteristics of Internet celebrity cities or City Walk Internet celebrity routes for marketing, effectively connect with the brand's target audience, and bring more traffic to the brand.

Originally, the cultural and social value of City Walk far outweighed its commercial value, but for a city, it is more meaningful to discuss its cultural and social value after it has gained popularity. City marketing can consider how to establish a city tourism brand, so that City Walk is no longer a label or an internet celebrity element, but a cultural and historical experience that young people can feel and understand across time and space.

For brands, routes and cities that already have their own traffic are a natural traffic pool. To achieve a closer connection with the brand, the brand needs to work hard on the integration of marketing. The "Zibo Barbecue Concert" initiated by De Rucci, Tencent Music, and Kuwo Music combines multiple elements such as City Walk, concerts, and performance-style tourism to create a marketing that integrates multiple values.

2. Create offline activities and build new social spaces

The habit of socializing and the normalization of socializing are the characteristics of the lives of contemporary young people.

To some extent, the popularity of CityWalk is due to the fact that young people have strengthened the social genes in "CityWalk", which has led to a surge in the popularity of City Walk on social media, formed a collective behavior, and provided new ideas for brand marketing.

For example, Starbucks, which created the concept of the third space, called on more consumers to go to CityWalk together when facing the CityWalk hotspot, and take photos and post them on social networks, which amplified the social effect of City Walk and made it possible to drink Starbucks not only in the third space, but also in every corner of the city, giving consumers a more casual and comfortable emotional value and broadening the product experience scenarios.

3. Create new consumption scenarios and promote business transformation

City Walk is a social topic with its own traffic, which can attract young people who are "closed" at home to every corner of the city. It is a natural consumption scene. From a business perspective, City Walk is an effective element to help brands create new consumption scenes and achieve commercial transformation.

For example, the Keep sports APP took Keepland as the starting point this year and launched a "Calorie Conservation Citywalk" event using popular routes in Beijing. It proposed the slogan "Exercise is for better eating" and effectively linked multiple stores such as catering, sports shoes and clothing, and linked the emotions and sports of young people's needs, offline stores and brands represented by Keep and other elements together, allowing the target audience to come into contact with the products at zero distance during the City Walk, achieving smooth communication between the brand and the audience, and helping the brand achieve effective marketing conversion.

3. Write to the end

Obviously, "City Walk" is popular among young people because it brings both physical and mental relaxation to young people and stimulates emotional value. For cities, a travel method that connects users with many factors such as urban commerce and humanities can effectively activate the city's leisure resources and drive economic development. For brands, the addition of new elements can refresh marketing methods and bring more surprises to young people. At the same time, when offline stores are difficult to operate, "City Walk" can just attract audiences to check in offline and activate offline resources.

Author: Mr. Bingfa WeChat public account: Marketing Bingfa