Continental Tires “Conti Cities”
Background
At present, one third of the world's tire production is in China. Continental, founded in 1871, has entered the Chinese market since 1996. Because of its professional technology and industry influence, Continental has won the recognition of the majority of consumers.
During its initial promotion, Continental spread its brand value in traditional advertising forms such as TVC, outdoor display advertising and vertical. However, since the whole market has become saturated and the marketing promotion strategies of competitors are almost the same, consumers lack value recognition and emotional resonance for the brand, resulting in slow sales growth.
In 2018,“When everything counts”is chosen as the Chinese brand slogan. Continental accompanies everyone that moves forward.
Challenge:
1. Chinese social media is blooming these years. Former advertising, propagating selling points, did not work. How can Continental find the right strategy to seize the opportunity and establish emotional resonance with its audience?
2. As an industrial brand, its profile in consumer retail is relatively low. How to tell the story and integrated tires and technology with the audience’s daily situation?
Platform:
WeChat, the largest Chinese social media platform claims 1.08 billion active users with 45 billion messages daily in 2018.Chinese people spend average 5 hours on mobiles. WeChat has been the most popular common lifestyle and interest sharing social platform in China.
We select WeChat as the main social media battleground. On WeChat, we attract and retain customers by creating and curating relevant and valuable content, and develop lasting relationships, authority and credibility with audience.
Planning & Execution
Strategy:
In China, Continental customers are those who mostly live in cities or run around in different cities. They enjoy lives, work actively, and spend holidays to enjoy self-driving tours to the surrounding cities and reunite with their families from distance.
Starting from them, we build a Conti City to:
explore cities in extraordinary ways;
use sharp tongue comics to tell driver stories with a sly humor and punch lives;
counterattack to be car masters from novices;
begin the war of words with product managers…
We hope to deepen the relationship between Continental, city, and car owners, combine Continental’s products with urban elements, and pass on the concept that the image of Continental can be everywhere in the city.
Execution
We make the following steps:
Firstly, we collected and selected 12 Conti Citizens through the recruitment campaign of "Seeking for Conti Citizens” launched with a Html5 pages. They are invited to share their unique local life stories in different cities. All other fans enjoy their vivid city diver cultures and absolute recommended routes.
Getting rid of the dull traditional technical literary education, we combine visual creativity with urban elements boldly, and pass on technical knowledge to consumers simply and intelligibly.
Then, combining with the traditional Chinese 24 solar terms, we integrate the products into the real urban life scene, and make our customers experience how tires make their travel life more comfortable and safe easily.
In order to deepen the car owners' attention to tires and brand preferences, we established a unique media IP program that “Continental x Comics” series, using humorous tone to connect the urban life stories of Continental and car brand fans.
“Conti City” is a virtual city that we build for the Continental tires owners. We hope that everyone who is fighting for their ideal life can go further and see more sceneries with their initial intention. Continental will always accompany them and achieve their journey.
Effectiveness / Results
Conti City has successfully attracted the attention of the majority of car owners, many of whom leave messages on the WeChat platform spontaneously to recommend their own stories as one of Conti Citizens.
- During one year, the content exposure of the WeChat reached 22,093,979, and fan growth exceeded 250,000 followers;
- On “11.11” 2018, biggest online shopping festival, sales of Continental tires historically exceeded 10 million yuan. The sales increased 533%, breaking through the best record in history.
- Continental was awarded the "Best Retail Growth Brand Award on JD in 2019", on JD 618 Global Brand Summit in 2019. JD.com is one of the biggest B2C retail site in China.
- Another one of China's largest automotive maintenance e-commerce vertical platform, Tuhu.cn, published the data report of tire e-commerce in 2019. Continental won the sales championship five times in the past six months, becoming the first place in sales, while Michelin ranked third.