In the post-epidemic era, more fireworks have emerged in the city. The social topics of "young people's stalls" and "trunk bazaars" emerge one after another, and the neighborhood city integrates the driving force of the city's economic recovery, and is also evolving into a "spiritual utopia" in the busy urban life of young people, with its strong sense of identity, ritual and satisfaction, it has become the most lively corner of the city, so that people in the hustle and bustle of the city can enjoy a moment of comfort and satisfaction in the community atmosphere of life and fun. At the same time, new trendy blocks and pop-ups with different gameplay have emerged, and the trend of "everything can be marketed" has become a traffic explosion point on major social platforms. However, after the traffic outlet, how much commercial imagination space is there behind the urban markets that have exploded out of the circle?
China's current economic development embraces opportunities such as market openness and consumption growth, but it also faces new challenges brought about by economic instability and changing consumer behavior. Although people live in a metropolis of material abundance, the stressful times make them feel isolated and turn to spiritual healing and self-reconstruction. In this environment, people now choose to infiltrate their hearts in a concert, go deep into the mountains and forests to understand the sense of relaxation in exquisite camping, they pay more and more attention to their own spiritual needs and emotional experience, and express their emotions, personality and taste with "pleasing themselves" consumption has gradually become people's rigid needs; People's consumption concepts are also becoming more and more rational, re-examining the overwhelming advertising and marketing, and are more willing to pay for the "meaning value" of the brand.
From a business point of view, they are surrounded by brand marketing, and what they lack is not a new product, but a "reason to buy" that can support their emotions.
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The market happens to be an excellent place to meet the needs of consumers today. Compared with the consumption experience that requires "admission tickets" such as concerts, exquisite camping, art exhibitions and sports competitions, brick-and-mortar street commerce is a low-threshold scene where you can get emotional value out of the house. Therefore, a large number of emotional value consumption demand has poured into the offline consumption of the market, making the market complex, a unique "emotional field" that creates warmth and urban fireworks for a single field, become a popular position in the commercial market.
When commercial entities came out one after another and entered the market with some standardized eye-catching art installations and mass-selling goods, LINE FRIENDS chose to intensively cultivate the "experience" and selectively select like-minded participants to give human warmth and match diverse emotional experiences in the market space, creating a "safe house" with emotional satisfaction for urban young people.
This year, LINE FRIENDS kicked off its annual SALLY DAY city landmark tour on the occasion of the birthday of its popular character Sally, and collaborated with KIC KIC to create a happy offline birthday party for SALLY - "SALLY YELLOW MARKET". The nearly 100-meter brand pop-up market was painted in SALLY's signature bright yellow "livery", instantly grabbing everyone's attention, attracting more than 250,000 people to visit and check in in just two days from April 13th to 14th.
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At the same time of "Occupy a Street", LINE FRIENDS also brought the "SALLY Amusement Park", which integrates market games such as sandbags, rings and chopstick clip dolls, and created a down-to-earth creative interactive booth for multiple otherworldly licensee partners such as China Construction Bank, Nine Electric, Aojiahua, Thermos, moody, and Sanban, and jointly launched creative check-in activities such as brand stamp collection and gift exchange. Different from the traditional market, the brand invited its partners to become "stall owners" not for the sake of sales, but to play with young consumers by co-creating an "immersive IP experience", and to interact and socialize in their preferred way, so that consumers can enjoy the functional value of products and start a journey of IP emotional experience.
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Different from the conventional business form, LINE FRIENDS' market brings consumers a unique shopping experience of "picking up a product = unlocking a social experience", and also allows people to truly see the essence of the market complex in a social sense - the "emotional field" function that integrates commercial consumption and spiritual resonance. When consumers communicate with brands at SALLY's Fun Marketplace, the stall owner is no longer limited to simply selling a product, but telling a story or inviting them to try a new experience. The interaction in the market scene allows brands and consumers to express themselves and even complete their identity from a private perspective. LINE FRIENDS' new "urban social field" is different from any kind of commercial scene for the purpose of display, and it is not only a presentation of sincerity, but also a transmission of the concept of LOHAS. In an atmosphere full of relaxation and comfort, buyers and sellers have a common identity - participants in the market, and this irreplaceable spiritual interaction has also become the reason for consumers to pay, and LINE FRIENDS has also formed a solid new model of co-creation and win-win in the "SALLY YELLOW MARKET" pop-up event to earn traffic, tourists to enjoy the experience, and brand stall owners to gain fame and fortune.
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In addition to working with licensee partners to create customized experiences for consumers, LINE FRIENDS is also good at enriching the whole consumption scene with the consumption formats that young people love, infiltrating the playful figures of popular IP images such as Sally, Brown Bear, and Connie Rabbit into multiple "eating, drinking, and playing" scenes, and joining hands with seven lifestyles around KIC Daxue Road, such as "Trua Boo", "81BAKERY", "ALPHA SEEDS COFFEE", "Chasheng Fresh Fruit Tea", etc. Coffee and roasting brand stores have launched creative merchandise such as limited IP displays, stickers and cup sleeves. With the "SALLY YELLOW MARKET" as the center, the brand has built the area around Daxue Road into a "SALLY community" integrating food, drinks and lifestyle, so that every pedestrian passing by and participating in the market can enjoy the relaxation of city walking in the familiar comfort zone, secrete dopamine in the joyful and bright atmosphere of the SALLY birthday carnival, and start a unique City Walk journey in the brand's limited-time pop-up community.
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In terms of site selection, it is obvious that LINE FRIENDS, the "manager" of the SALLY market, also chose KIC University Road after careful consideration. In the course of years of urban development, KIC has gradually become a "complex innovative knowledge community", with the natural advantages of "integrated development of three areas" of university campuses, public communities and science and technology parks.
On the one hand, LINE FRIENDS is located here, which is derived from KIC's unique artistic and humanistic inclusiveness and the "customized emotional experience" that the brand hopes to create in the SALLY pop-up market. On the other hand, due to the high degree of overlap between their audiences, the young people, parent-child family consumers radiated by KIC covering business, humanities, science and technology innovation and other diversified content are the core group of the brand, and the foreign licensor partners have also attracted the attention of people from different interest circles such as design, fashion, and sustainability, and continue to empower LINE FRIENDS to continue to reach users in a wide area with the new model and surprise experience of "IP + multiple business co-creation" on top of the original core audience.
With SALLY celebrating her birthday with her fans and netizens on April 27, the 2024 LINE FRIENDS City Landmark Tour has come to a successful conclusion. Since 2019, SALLY, which has successively walked through iconic city landmarks such as Beijing CCTV Tower, Shanghai Oriental Pearl Tower, Canton Tower, and Jingdezhen, the porcelain capital, has also continued to deepen into China's local culture in the surprise experience of Yicheng, integrating new scenes and creating diversified experiences and content with "IP+landmark cultural and creative marketing", and giving "SALLY DAY" a unique urban atmosphere and crowd memory with a specific urban language. As SALLY becomes closer and closer to the "people, goods, and yards" in the city, it is believed that LINE FRIENDS will continue to create more surprises for the local market with its innovative strength that keeps pace with the times, and leads the development trend of IP commercialization from "idea to business".