The APAC region celebrates some of the most culturally rich festivals. Diwali, Lunar New Year, Hanami, and Songkran are just a few of the many celebrations that each carry unique traditions, beliefs, and customs. With such diversity, campaigns that overlook distinct cultural elements will likely fail to engage the target audience and may even risk appearing inauthentic. Understanding regional and cultural nuances is essential to creating effective campaigns.
The most effective festive marketing strategies emerge from combining human cultural understanding and AI’s analytical power. While AI offers insights from extensive data that enable personalized and targeted campaigns, humans bring their ability to understand cultural subtleties.
Several brands have successfully integrated human cultural insights with AI to create impactful festive campaigns in the APAC region. Here are a few examples:
- Coca-Cola’s Personalized Wish Cards for Diwali: Diwali greetings are an essential practice during the festival of lights. However, many of them end up being impersonal or mundane. Coca-Cola used the capabilities of DALL-E and GPT-4 models to help users move away from ordinary greetings and generate personalized digital wish cards. The campaign tapped into the tradition of exchanging greetings and generated AI-enabled unique content while blending in the brand’s iconic imagery.
- Shah Rukh Khan & #NotJustACadburyAd: Cadbury collaborated with superstar Shah Rukh Khan to create personalized advertisements for local businesses during India’s biggest festive season. The campaign enabled store owners to generate videos with the actor’s face and voice to promote their business utilizing AI and machine learning. This initiative addressed the problems of small businesses in the aftermath of COVID-19, supporting them during the festive season by helping them use celebrity endorsements to reach their target audience without the associated costs. The campaign even won the Best In Show SMARTIES India 2022!
- Mondelez Kinh Do Mooncake: Trung Thu is the biggest festival in Vietnam and a significant consumption period for Kinh Do’s mooncake business. Due to the muted celebrations across the country during the pandemic and later, the sales of mooncakes were at risk of seeing a downward trend. To uphold the traditions and promote e-commerce sales, the brand launched an innovative campaign. The brand utilized AI to enable users to create animated versions of their photos, tapping into the element of nostalgia and tradition. The blend of culture and AI-driven personalization resonated successfully with the consumers, boosting the brand’s growth.
- Alipay’s AI-powered Five Fortune Campaign: Alipay annual Five Fortune Chinese New Year campaign encourages users to collect digital fortune cards in the app. This year, the online payment platform incorporated AI, drawing massive engagement. The campaign enables users to spend fortune cards to create an AI-generated video or images or earn more fortune cards.
These campaigns demonstrate how combining human cultural understanding and AI’s analytical capabilities can create festive campaigns that resonate deeply with the audience. Here’s a step-by-step guide to how marketers can develop strategies that deliver a similar effect for their brand:
- Research and understand: First, research the cultural significance. Understand how and why the target region celebrates the festival. Identify key themes, symbols, and traditions at the heart of these celebrations.
- Leverage AI for data-driven insights: Use AI to analyze consumer behavior, preferences, and trends related to the festival in the target demographic. This data can help identify effective channels, messaging, and timing for your campaign.
- Integrate human insights with AI: Combine cultural understanding with data-driven insights. This integration ensures the campaign is culturally authentic and tailored to the target audience.
- Employ a diverse team: Create a diverse team with knowledge of the target audience to enhance the authenticity and relevance of the campaign.
- Test and optimize: Use AI-driven testing to optimize the content for maximum impact. Continuously monitor the campaign’s performance and adjust as and when needed.
The strategy for festive marketing in the APAC region needs to be as diverse as the region itself. Before strategizing for the festive season, marketers need to understand the target culture and its traditions.
Striking the balance between cultural relevance and data-driven decision is the key to festive campaigns that best resonate with the audience. While AI can provide valuable insights, it cannot replace the human understanding of cultural nuances. Marketers should use AI tools to enhance, not replace, human insights. This integrated approach can create memorable campaigns for the brand.
