The archive · Content & Film · Marketing decision · 2021
NetEase Cloud Music 2021 'Dominant Personality Color': 8 Tracks Reveal Your Color
An 8-question music test creates flattering posters with color pairings, goes viral, and hits No. 3 on App Store.
NetEase Cloud Music (网易云音乐)
What it had to solve
In May 2021, personality-test H5 pages had become formulaic, and the WeChat (微信) ecosystem could block external links at any time, but NetEase Cloud Music still wanted to create another internet-wide viral event and direct traffic to its own App.
How it works
On May 26, 2021, NetEase Cloud Music, together with 19th Creative Studio, launched the 'Your Dominant Personality Color' H5: users listened to 8 music tracks and chose the scenes they associated with, and the system assigned one of 16 personality types and generated a personality poster named by color. The poster copy contained no negative evaluation, only flattering phrases such as 'a bright star beyond the horizon' and 'an exceptionally wise pioneer', and at the end it marked 'colors that will be attracted to you' and 'colors to keep distance from'.
The test went viral on WeChat Moments (微信朋友圈) on the day it launched, then spread from WeChat to Weibo, Douyin (抖音), Zhihu (知乎), and Xiaohongshu (小红书). The Weibo topic 'NetEase Cloud Music Dominant Personality Color' exceeded 300 million views; according to the Digitaling project page, the H5 went viral on 6 major social platforms with zero paid media, rose to No. 3 on the App Store download chart, increased the WeChat Index by 2400%, and generated over 1.4 billion off-platform topic views.
During the campaign, WeChat blocked the test webpage. NetEase Cloud Music immediately changed the QR code on the result page to 'Come to NetEase Cloud Music, search for Color', directing onlooker traffic into its own App, turning the viral event from a marketing campaign into an App user-acquisition tool.
Why it lands
- All test results were positive flattery, so users sharing the poster meant being praised, making them naturally willing to share.
- The 'attract/repel' color pairings gave the content comparability; people gathered to compare and find similar types, so the topic spread naturally.
- The format of listening to music plus associating scenes fit the music platform's assets, making it hard for other brands to copy directly.
- A Plan B for WeChat link blocking was prepared in advance, so the crisis became an App traffic opportunity.
What it did
0-cost viral on 6 major social platforms; Weibo (微博) topic views 300 million+ and secured 3 trending searches; WeChat Index rose 2400%; same-day App Store download chart rose to No. 3 (up 28 places); off-platform topic views exceeded 1.4 billion.
What you can take
Users shared because results were worth showing off, not accurate; high emotional value and social pairings beat ad budget.
Since then
After the event, brands such as Durex (杜蕾斯) and Chayan Yuese (茶颜悦色) created their own test images to piggyback on the trend, deepening the breakout. For NetEase Cloud Music, 'Dominant Personality Color' continued its viral H5 playbook from Jungian psychological archetypes, M2 Psychological Painting (M2 心理绘画), to annual listening reports, becoming a representative case of 'test as traffic' and also triggering industry discussion about the professionalism of test-based marketing and platform blocking rules.
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