The archive · Marketing & Growth · Marketing decision · 2018
Alipay's Weibo lottery becomes 'Chinese Koi', 1M reposts in 6 hours
Repost to win global free-order package: Alipay's Koi hit 1M reposts in 6 hours, 3M weekly, making koi a national meme.
Alipay (支付宝)
What it had to solve
China's mobile payment market was approaching saturation, and Alipay was pushing overseas payments, but awareness of overseas features was low and competition was fierce; it needed a campaign that used a small budget to leverage traffic on the scale of hundreds of millions, making users proactively learn about 'paying with Alipay abroad'.
How it works
On the afternoon of September 29, 2018, Alipay's official Weibo account launched the 'Wish you become the Chinese Koi' campaign: reposting the Weibo post gave users a chance to win a free-order gift package provided by more than 200 Alipay global partners. On October 7, Alipay drew the sole 'Chinese Koi' from nearly 3 million reposters—netizen 'Xin Xiaodai (信小呆)'.
On the surface, it was a common Weibo repost lottery, but internally it was a carefully designed communication structure: the prize list was so long that it took 3 minutes to finish reading, covering food, lodging, and transportation for global outbound travel; 'koi' is a familiar symbol of good luck for Chinese people, and the campaign coincided with the National Day travel peak, turning every outbound traveler into an organic promoter of Alipay's overseas payments.
The results broke corporate communication records: in less than 6 hours, reposts surpassed 1 million; weekly cumulative reposts surpassed 3 million; total interactions exceeded 4 million; 90 layers of reposts were formed; it covered 210 million UVs; the official Weibo account gained 1.03 million new followers; it became, at that time, the fastest corporate communication case in Weibo history to surpass 1 million reposts. The campaign budget was only RMB 200,000-500,000.
'Koi' subsequently became a national buzzword of the year, 'reposting koi' became a social norm, and the campaign was regarded by the industry as a pioneering case of 'ecosystem-based communication'—the brand built the stage, and ecosystem partners and users performed together, using a very small budget to leverage traffic on the scale of hundreds of millions. The case won a silver award at the 2019 Golden Eye Award.
Why it lands
- Packaging the 'lottery' as a 'good-luck story' used a shared cultural symbol among the public to lower the participation threshold.
- All prizes were provided by more than 200 ecosystem partners, and the brand's cost was only RMB 200,000-500,000.
- The absurdly long gift list was itself content, naturally creating 'wow' and the desire to repost.
- Choosing the National Day travel peak, it embedded the functional points of overseas payments in entertainment to complete communication.
What it did
Within 6 hours, reposts surpassed 1 million; weekly cumulative reposts surpassed 3 million; there were 90 layers of reposts; it covered 210 million UVs; the official Weibo account gained 1.03 million new followers; it became the fastest corporate communication campaign in Weibo history to surpass 1 million reposts; it won a silver award at the 2019 Golden Eye Award (金瞳奖).
What you can take
Build a stage where partners and users participate: partners give prizes, users create topics, brand turns luck into story.
Since then
After the draw, 'Chinese Koi' Xin Xiaodai became the focus across the internet; 'koi' evolved from a campaign into an annual national meme; brands followed up with 'momentum-building' lotteries, and Weibo lotteries thereby entered an era of ecosystem-based communication; Alipay also accumulated million-level followers on its official Weibo account through this. In 2019, Alipay continued the IP by launching 'Global Koi (全球锦鲤)', replicating the same playbook at the Spring Festival, and the 'koi' series became a social asset that Alipay could reuse every year.
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