The Brief
In partnering with the Royal Melbourne Show, Bastion Asia was tasked with increasing the event’s visibility among Chinese consumers and driving ticket sales.
The Approach
We started by strategically reviewing the touch points for Chinese visitors to the Show to ensure they were optimised for the local Chinese audience. As part of this we removed a significant barrier by integrating Chinese mobile payments to enable walk-up ticket sales on a platform widely preferred by Chinese customers.
We also created the first ever WeChat “mini-program” event guide for an Australian major event. Mini-programs are sub-applications within WeChat that you can swipe down on WeChat to access. Users spend more time in mini-programs and they’ve emerged as a key part of the WeChat experience. Our mini-program helped Chinese visitors learn more about the Show and navigate it quickly and easily, helping them have a great time. To amplify this we also executed a comprehensive PR campaign including ticket-sales partnerships, an online consumer campaign, Chinese influencer and KOL engagement, a media launch as well as WeChat content marketing.
The Result
The results encompassed jumps in ticket sales, follower growth (1,800 new WeChat followers), audience engagement (open rates 500% higher than industry average) and drove a new audience to experience the quintessential Victorian event for the first time.