China-made messaging app WeChat roped in Lionel Messi as its new global ad star. The new campaign will stretch into countries including India, Brazil, Mexico, Spain and Thailand, and marks the largest marketing push for WeChat, a product that lets users send messages, voice recorded notes and pictures to friends via their smartphone. WeChat has always been very innovative in their brand marketing campaigns. It has over 300 million users, most of them in their home market of China, but increasingly users from other countries are joining the service. This week, Tencent revealed that WeChat now had over 70 million users outside of China, up from 40 million in April.
The ad was created by Stardust which shows Messi helping an old lady entertain a crying infant using the app's video calling. Messi’s football skills don’t seem to impress the infant initially, but the ball hitting a basket of fruits and displacing an orange elicits laughter from the baby. The film ends with a voice over explaining WeChat’s features. The ad shows only a old lady and not the baby.
I still love the previous WeChat Indian ad. WeChat which has been focusing in the Indian market by integrating with brands specially with Bollywood on the marketing aspect to create the buzz.
Mobile messaging apps are the next generation of social networks and players from Asia are going to dominate the market. It won’t be just WeChat but apps like Hike, Line, Kakao Talk, etc. would be the ones who would be providing stiff competition to networks like Facebook. WeChat India facebook page has 566873 likes. It is interesting to know their business model. How will they make profit from a free app after spending millions on their ad campaigns. I tried to download the app in my iphone and it worked great, able to chat with my friends in Malaysia and UAE.
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