BA Greater China - Chinese New Year

BA Greater China - Chinese New Year

British Airways and Social@Ogilvy Beijing have launched the airline’s first WeChat campaign to celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year with the airline’s social media followers. Social@Ogilvy developed a festive campaign to lure the more than 350,000 existing BA followers on Sina Weibo to the airline’s newly launched presence on WeChat . Both these Chinese social platforms are hybrid versions of Twitter and Facebook and have hundreds of millions active users.

The campaign is based on the Chinese tradition of giving Hongbao (red envelopes filled with money) to friends and loved ones at new year, and BA gifted the first 2014 users to register on the official BA WeChat account @ 英国航空 (BritishAirwaysChina) a specially branded envelope to mark the Year of the Horse.

The custom-made golden envelopes were then delivered physically to the doors of the first followers. Inside each envelope was a new year greeting from BA’s regional manager Tracy Dedman and a promotional coupon worth 300 RMB (50 USD) to be used for future flights on the airline. Three randomly selected followers also won roundtrip BA tickets for travel between China and London in their Hongbao.

The campaign ran between January 10 and 22, ahead of the Chinese New Year. Following the success of this first WeChat campaign, which gained over 10,000 followers, BA says it is planning to develop more in-depth campaigns and services for its WeChat presence.