“Subject Three” has gone viral, why is Haidilao always able to take advantage of the traffic?

Recently, Haidilao has become popular again with its employees skipping the "Subject 3" test. Why can Haidilao always seize the traffic trend? Let's see what the author says.

Recently, Haidilao has been on the hot search list on Weibo many times because of its staff dancing the "Subject Three" dance, and related topics and video content continue to ferment on major social platforms.

In the video, Haidilao's waiters are either shy or excited. Some even take out their own sunglasses and put them on. Then they perform a series of "silky little combos" such as twisting their hips and flipping their hands. Some Haidilao waiters also shake hands and make heart shapes with the cameraman to interact with him. The scene is very joyful.

Related videos were on the Douyin hot list, and Haidilao employees in many places competed to perform "Subject Three". Celebrity Zhu Zixiao also joined the challenge. The dance challenge "Subject Three" allowed Haidilao to once again gain popularity.

Why is “Subject 3” so popular in Haidilao? Why is Haidilao always able to take the lead in traffic?

1. "Subject 3" at Haidilao

First of all, what is “Subject Three”?

The "subject three" that has become popular in Haidilao does not refer to the "subject three" in the driving test, but a kind of dance. "Subject three" is a popular name on Douyin. It is said that the source of the saying is that every Guangxi person must pass three tests in his life. Subject one is singing folk songs, subject two is eating noodles, and subject three is dancing.

The "Subject 3" that is popular in Haidilao is a version that has been iterated several times. In May this year, a blogger named "Shen Bu Lu Handan" improved the movements of "Subject 3" and added the background music of "Yi Xiao Jiang Hu (DJ drum version)".

The dynamic music and smooth dance steps made the improved version of "Subject Three" popular on the Internet again, and many dance bloggers and celebrities began to imitate and challenge it.

In October, the "Subject Three" challenge video of the Buqi Dance Troupe went viral. The mature male attire, meticulous and serious expressions, and professional and smooth dance moves of the dancers in the video formed a strong contrast. The video has received 3.83 million likes so far, once again setting off a wave of "Subject Three" challenge.

On November 19, dance bloggers "Eat Eight Meals in One Meal" and "It's Your Turn to Tomato" became popular after wearing waiter uniforms and dancing "Subject Three" at Haidilao, which triggered spontaneous challenges from Haidilao waiters across the country.

After the 19th, the popularity of the Haidilao staff + "Subject Three" dance challenge video continued to ferment. Haidilao staff in Jiangyin, Hangzhou, Hebi, Dalian and other places successively challenged the "Subject Three". The video was uploaded to the Internet, and the likes, comments and reposts were all good. Many videos had more than 100,000 likes.

Topics related to "Haidilao Subject Three" were on the hot lists of social platforms such as Douyin, Weibo, and Baidu, with the topic being played more than 1.6 billion times.

From the timeline of this marketing event, we can see that the "Subject Three" dance itself has a certain traffic base. It was originally just a dance challenge that was popular at Haidilao, but it quickly became a marketing event for the brand.

Haidilao store employees across the country quickly sensed the hot topic, and their service quality took on the heat of the online hot topic. Haidilao officials not only gave certain incentives to the store employees, but also consciously linked the "Subject Three" dance with the Haidilao scene in depth, successfully directing the focus of the topic to the brand itself.

The large number of "Haidilao Subject 3 Challenge" videos on the Internet is the result of the active participation of most of Haidilao's customer base. "Eating Haidilao and watching the handsome waiters dancing" undoubtedly provides consumers with an entertaining emotional value.

Entertainment or emotional value is not actually scarce in this era. What is scarce is entertainment as "added value".

Emotional value often requires investment of money or time. Whether it is short videos, games, consumption, or participating in offline activities and socializing with others, it requires special investment. Going to "Haidilao to watch Subject 3" as a pure "added value" can bring people simple happiness, without the need for extra "money", and is worth sharing on social networks.

After feeling happy and having fun, consumers spontaneously spread the message, which created a scale effect on the Internet and set off a craze on social networks. Under the official guidance of Haidilao and the support of offline store waiters, Haidilao successfully converted the traffic of online topics into the brand's social marketing voice.

In fact, this is one of the few positive cases in the past two years where Haidilao has once again become popular due to its "service". Not long ago, Haidilao was caught in a public opinion storm because of "canceling half-portion dishes". In the past two years, Haidilao has been caught in negative public opinion many times due to price, employee treatment, hygiene issues, etc.

It is not every time that a brand can gain public support in public opinion, but Haidilao has grasped the essence of traffic in the past two years. How did Haidilao do it?

2. Why is Haidilao so popular on social media?

While embracing a young customer base in recent years, Haidilao has found a way to establish long-term positive interactions with that customer base, using interactions to ignite social media, thus achieving a virtuous cycle.

Haidilao officials attach great importance to guidance. Haidilao will first actively "throw memes" to users on social media, invite pan-entertainment bloggers to the store to shoot and record content that can be spread, and then invite vertical bloggers such as local life to the store to produce a large number of short video content to form topics, and quickly follow up and lay out related services and scenes in the store to create a social atmosphere.

When users shop in stores due to social media popularity or other reasons, they consciously share their novel shopping experiences on social media, further spreading social topics until social fission occurs.

On social media, topics related to Haidilao are always hot, from the social phobia marketing of the "Haidilao Birthday Party", to the late-night snack marketing during the World Cup, concert marketing, and then to Haidilao's homemade dishes... Behind these marketing campaigns, Haidilao's official guidance cannot be ignored.

For example, in order to promote its birthday month event, Haidilao invited many celebrities to play the roles of "social bulls" or "social phobics" at Haidilao, or just to experience the store and have a different birthday at Haidilao.

For example, the husband and wife blogger @丫丫日记's Haidilao birthday prank, the wife personally stretched noodles for her husband's birthday, and the husband arranged for the waiter to send roses, joyful and romantic; the beauty blogger @再吃一碗 experienced a princess-like birthday at Haidilao; @是秋秋金呀 specially put on a doll costume to express his love for his beloved. On Douyin, the topic #海estilao快乐生日 has been played 1.36 billion times.

There is also the popular "hidden way to eat" of Haidilao this year. Food blogger @真功傅 made a series of videos on "Hidden Way to Eat" of Haidilao, ranging from Chinese food porridge hot pot, hot dry noodles, etc. to foreign food tomato meat sauce noodles. Food blogger @陈笑笑 recorded seven dishes made by her husband at Haidilao. Blogger @倪大宝啊! made small seafood with sauce, tomato and egg beef rice, etc. at Haidilao, and attached recipes. The related topic "Hidden Way to Eat" of Haidilao has accumulated 720 million views on Xiaohongshu.

Topics like Haidilao’s “Hidden Eating Methods” have UGC content space and a “long-tail effect”. After the topic exploded, there was still a steady stream of new videos and an increase in views, laying the groundwork for Haidilao’s offline social marketing.

3. Recruit people online and retain customers offline

In addition to creating interesting content online to attract users, Haidilao also builds offline scenes and follows up service training to create a unique social scene and atmosphere, and uses refined services to create emotional value to retain consumers, strive to satisfy new customers, and constantly create freshness for returning customers.

In addition to outdoor camping dining and decorating stores for celebrities after concerts, in this year when MBTI marketing is booming, Haidilao also promptly launched the "I-person and E-person waiting areas" and a "service preference" selection page, allowing customers to choose the services they want, such as "assisting with serving dishes", "eating with dolls" and "do not disturb", as well as detailed demand columns such as "special needs" and "long-term dining companion needs".

At a time when the "Subject Three" dance is popular, a Haidilao employee in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, was hailed as the "Subject Three Ceiling", which caused heated discussions on social platforms. Haidilao promptly gave this employee a cash reward of 3,000 yuan and followed up with "Subject Three" dance training across the country. At present, some netizens have witnessed the "Subject Three" employee training in Hong Kong, and one netizen left a message: I have to go for a meal just for this.

Song Qing, executive director of Haidilao and director of the product committee, once said: "Haidilao has always been building a user ecosystem through multiple channels online and offline, based on the dining experience scenario, through product co-creation, various DIY activities, community sharing, topic sharing and other methods, to form a benign and sustainable interactive mechanism. In the future, we will continue to explore more consumption scenarios that meet user needs."

Finally, understanding your customer base, having positive interactions with them over a long period of time, and providing emotional value are all good ideas for brands to conduct social marketing. This kind of interaction is still based on the social voice created on the basis of price, quality, service, etc., which can "add icing on the cake" for the brand.

However, sometimes some customers may dislike this marketing method. There have been some opposing voices against "Subject Three" on social media, so brands should also pay attention to methods and approaches when conducting social marketing and interacting with customers to avoid counterproductive results.

Author: Laisheng WeChat public account: Marketing Kanke (ID: yingxiaokanke)