GTMC Toyota is a joint venture between GAC Group and Toyota Motor Company. It is one of the leading automobile manufacturing companies operating in China. GTMC Toyota’s goal for the marketing campaign was to promote their newly launched product, the New Toyota Corolla. The campaign was B2C focused with the goal of driving sales and awareness of the new Toyota Corolla.
However, since the Corolla was primarily sold to end users through distributors, the company recognized it needed a campaign that could help each of its distribution partners throughout the country. In order to accomplish this effectively it wanted mass exposure and powerful content detailing the benefits of the new model vs. its competitors.
As GTMC Toyota sold its vehicles through distributors throughout China, it wanted to generate buzz nationwide to support its distributor network. Toyota had identified Zhihu (知乎) as a platform that they had had success on previously. Given our expertise with the platform and their positive history with the platform we chose Zhihu to drive awareness of the new product.
We created several discussions regarding the new Corolla and brought KOLs into the discussion to ensure that it reached millions of users on the platform. The focus of the topics were concerns that the typical middle-class person would consider when in the market for a car. Through these multiple popular discussions we brought up the features/benefits of the Corolla and the value for money that it was able to provide. This in-depth analysis led to Toyota’s highest ranking on the Zhihu index of that year, as can be seen in the picture above.
Zhihu: Zhihu is an incredible platform for awareness campaigns where users appreciate extremely detailed long-form content. It can be incredibly powerful for soft-selling, which we felt could certainly help drive sales of the new Toyota Corolla. Users come to the platform for in-depth reveiws and analysis for times when they need to make a decision. This makes it the perfect place for users to check when considering purchasing a car.
As you can see from the stats above Zhihu users also tend to be more highly educated and slightly older than users on other platforms. These demographics were well suited to our awareness campaign. The campaign was a huge success with a reach of over 200M in a manner that appeared organic to users on the Zhihu platform. The discussions also spilled over to other platforms where we were able identify users talking about similar topics shortly after the campaign.
December 17, 2018
Automobile, B2C