How to use WeChat photo features for marketing?

This post is the 4th part of the five-week-long Flow WeChat Marketing Special series, in which every week, we introduce and explain the practical use of selected WeChat features.

Nowadays, with having more than 520 million smartphone users in China, photos have become an important part of communication and self expression. Photo taking and sharing is frequently incorporated in social marketing campaigns in order to engage users and gather large amounts of user generated content.

WeChat users are often willing to take part in contests and campaigns that run on their favourite brands’ accounts. In order to get followers to take part in the campaigns, marketers often leverage Wechat photo features.

The German luxury brand Montblanc is known for running genuine and creative campaigns on WeChat. Last year, the brand launched “The Big Boss” (大板）campaign that used WeChat photo feature in a very engaging way. Users were invited to take part in a contest, in which they could share pictures of themselves posing as the Big Boss, a personification of Montblanc’s brand values. The contestants’ friends and Montblanc followers could then vote for their favourites.

The American premier jeweller Tiffany & Co have also leveraged user generated images in their Chinese valentines’ day campaign. WeChat users were invited to take part in a game, in which they had to share a picture showing the proof of love. The best images were awarded with gifts from the brand.

In Harper’s Bazaar’s “Secret Weapons for Selfies” Campaign, users were asked to upload a selfie and name the “secret weapon” that they used, which could be any make-up, accessory or high-tech product. The winners received gifts and one was selected to model for Bazaar Beauty’s videos.

Using WeChat’s software development kit, your web page can access the following powerful photo taking related functionalities if opened in the WeChat browser:

• choose image (or take picture with the phone camera)
• preview image
• upload image
• download image

After taking or choosing a picture, it can be retrieved for further processing and edits on your own server or be reused on your web pages.

There are many practical ways to leverage WeChat photo features in your promotional campaigns:

• photo and selfie contest
• create puzzles from user generated images
• offer branded photo editing and beautifying tools
• create animated slideshows from users’ images
• upload profile picture for account registration