Case Study: How to Create Sponsored Content That Bilibili Users Actually Like

Chinese video streaming site Bilibili will be a key platform for brands in 2021. A favorite of China’s GenZ, the NASDAQ-traded company recorded 70% year-over-year growth in Q1 2020, reaching 172 million monthly active users.

While the platform has grown to reach a more mainstream audience and now features a wide range of content, it was initially focused on anime, comics and games (ACG) and is well known for its strong base of loyal users.

Bilibili users are known for having a certain taste for offbeat wacky content. And they like people, and brands, to keep it real. Content that works well on other platforms won’t necessarily fly on Bilibili.

When it comes to sponsored content, Bilibili users aren’t against it, they know that KOLs need sponsored content to survive. They even have a slang word for it called qia fan “恰饭”. Originally meaning “eating” in the dialects of the Southwestern region in China, on Bilibili, qia fan means people need to do something to make a living, or influencers need to create sponsored content to survive. The term became so popular it was included by Bilibili in the “Annual Popular Phrases of 2019” released in 2020.

Let’s take a closer look at two successful examples of Bilibili KOLs creating sponsored content that viewers actually enjoyed and understand what kind of Bilibili creators brands should collaborate to achieve success.

@雁鸿Aimee Collaboration with Fanta

Creativity is a core competitiveness of Bilibili creators, which is different from other social media platform KOL marketing. “雁鸿Aimee” is a Bilibili creator in the fashion and beauty area, with 294,000 followers. Her content is not as normal as other fashion content creator’s unboxing, try-on hauls, and summer outfit idea videos. She is extremely good at designing and creating handmade ancient Chinese women’s headdresses.

Aimee’s collaboration with Fanta is one of her amazing designs that caught people’s eyes. She spent 300 hours creating a traditional Chinese opera phoenix crown using Fanta cans! In her video, she recorded the detailed process of making the crown, with ending poses presenting the amazing look.

Before seeing this video, I can’t even imagine how a beverage brand like Fanta could present such interesting content. By working with creative Bilibili influencers such as Aimee, Fanta was able to present a young and interesting brand image for Generation Z consumers.

“老师好我叫何同学” Collaboration with Chinese Phone Brand OnePlus

“老师好我叫何同学”, or “Classmate He” is a top-tier Bilibili creator focusing on reviewing digital products, with over 5.17 million followers on Bilibili. He is 21 years old and is still a college student. His video “I used 10,000 lines of mobile notes to make an animation” created for the OnePlus (a Chinese smartphone manufacturer) 8 Pro, is one of my favorite pieces of Bilibili ad content.

The animation shows that the OnePlus 8 Pro 120 Hz mobile screen is very smooth to use and swipe, and it brings comfort for long-term use.

Even though the topic is just a regular mobile phone review, the integration of creativity and professional testing of “using notes to make animations” is what makes this video special and attractive. The video has now gained 6.7 million views, 858K likes, and 39K bullet comments. There is a comment saying that to “恰饭,” some influencers read the briefs and parameters, but Classmate He’s ad content quality is really admirable and it’s worth all the content creators to learn from him.  

Key Takeaways

In recent years, KOL marketing has become one of the major marketing channels in China. On Bilibili, in order to assess whether the brand advertising is effective or not, compared to data level indicators such as video views and number of likes and collections, it is more important to check out the real reactions of users in the bullet comments that fly across the screen and how they interact with the content and the KOL.

Bilibili is a very community driven platform, therefore when evaluating the value of Bilibili influencers, brands must consider the community the influencer has built on the platform and the level to which they are able to drive their audience to positively engage with the content.

Creative, long form content that provides value tends to perform well on the platform.