Background

The Black Pearl Restaurant Guide (here in after referred as The Black Pearl) is a ranking system that selects quality restaurants in China, it is most preferred restaurant directory by locals. As the City of Gastronomy, Macau has 13 Black Pearl restaurants and 3 of them belong to Sands Resorts Macao. To strengthen the strategic partnership with The Black Pearl, Sands Resorts Macao initiated The Black Pearl Campaign in 2019 to further reinforce its image of place for gastronomy.

Describe the creative idea

In this campaign, BAIDU’s AI Speech Recognition Technology was effectively used in our game to promote dining options of Sands Resorts Macao. Signature dishes from Sands Resorts Macao will be displayed and players can make a guess of the dish name within 10 seconds. BAIDU’s AI Speech Recognition Technology will tell if the player is correct, followed by introduction of relevant dish information (i.e. chef and restaurant descriptions). In addition, players will be ranked differently based on their scores. This further aroused competition among their social circles and amplified the communication significantly.

Describe the strategy

Upon the release of 2019 Black Pearl Restaurant Guide, integrated marketing took place with the use of innovative technology.So our strategy was to connect visitors and cuisine in a fun way. With effective use of BAIDU’s AI Speech Recognition Technology, we lauched a game witch offered interesting interaction and throughout knowledge of resort dinning.

Describe the execution

During the campaign period, planned communication occurred on various channels to draw traffic to the game app. BAIDU OMNI Marketing- It accurately identified potential visitors of Sands Resorts Macao and streamed relevant news feed ads to them. DPS Targeted Communication- Banner ads were published on different kinds of websites (i.e. video websites and vertical websites) and were shown to audiences from 8 main cities as identified by big data, drawing visits to the campaign website/game app. WeChat Banner Ads- Banner ads were inserted in the posts associated with campaign-related topics (i.e. travel and dining) so that the ads were read by relevant audiences of Sands Resorts Macao. TOUTIAO App Start-up Ads- App start-up ads were published in various TOUTIAO apps (i.e. Toutiao, iXigua, Douyin, and Huoshan). The ads were accurately directed to users with relevant tags (i.e. Guangdong, travel lover, and food lover). Online coverage expanded vastly at this stage.

List the results

Total exposure reached 35,000,000 views; 74.23% of the players willingly finished all challenges in the game; BAIDU Index of The Black Pearl Restaurants increased by 284%; and various restaurants under Sands Resorts Macao climbed to 1st on DIANPING ranking.