The Brief

In China, few domestic APP download centers have dared to compete with APP Center giants like iStore and Android APP Center. In 2010 Huawei launched the Huawei APP Download Center which was tailor made for Chinese, easy to use and had been imbedded in millions of Huawei phones throughout China, but counterproductively, the Huawei APP Download Center received a low brand awareness and the market continued to be dominated by the iStore and Android. As a result, Huawei was eager to increase brand awareness significantly and boost downloads of the Huawei APP Download Center and APP downloads from the platform.

Describe how the promotion developed from concept to implementation

The “12.21 On the Verge” campaign started with a post dubbed “A Sad Conversation about Bonuses” and announced Huawei’s “year-end bonus” give-away plan. To increase WOM and ensure consumers' participation, we created lots of interesting content and games: 5 online ads including hidden codes with prizes for the first 6 lucky enough to decode the puzzle; a series of hilarious comics fans adored demonstrating the APP Center’s strengths, followed by a call for fans to post pictures of themselves waiting for 12.21 on their Weibos or WeChats, with prizes for popular posts. On 12.21, it was a race for “bonuses”.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

Brand Awareness and Downloads: 1) More than 5 million APP downloads in one day 2) APP Center downloads were up more than 50% 3) Baidu Index grew by more than 2300% Campaign Results: 1) More than 1 million people participated in the campaign Communication Results: 1) 126,438 reposts on and 32,072 comments on Weibo (31.42 million impressions) 2) 239 online media articles (55 million impressions) 3) 360 articles on 150 forum and SNS, resulting in 450,000 hits, 3,211 comments, 450,000 engagements, and 50 million impressions. 4) Ranking top 7 trending Weibo topics on the-technology list. 5) 27.78 million WeChat impressions.

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

In the face of an economic downturn, whether or not people would receive the year-end bonus in 2013 was a heated topic for discussion and a major concern for many of our target consumers. Research also showed that almost all of the Huawei phone users use Weibo or WeChat. We believed that an entirely digital campaign leveraging with this social hot topic and featuring engaging content would resound with our target audience.