Yili dazzles at Bilibili’s New Year’s Eve Gala

Dairy brand Yili aced their sponsorship role of Bilibili’s flagship New Year’s Eve gala this year, using the opportunity to launch their new milk soda as a fashionable and innovative lifestyle item that Gen Z can’t wait to be seen with.

Bilibili’s New Year’s Eve gala was the perfect stage for the product launch. The platform’s live-streamed event has in only three years become a huge cultural event for Chinese audiences, especially the younger generations. This year the livestream reached 310 million people at its peak.

Yili worked closely with Bilibili to develop a branded experience that went much further than any traditional sponsorship, with the brand and the platform partnering to co-create a spectacular show with a highly interactive and technically sophisticated user experience.

Breaking the traditional one-way communication mode of audiences simply watching the show, viewers of the gala were also able to interact through games and puzzles and even allowed to select their own storylines.

Brand content as part of the show

Yili and Bilibili invited Phoenix Legend (a famous music band in China) to sing a brand song to launch the milk soda product in an entertaining way at the gala. They also launched a hashtag (#cheers with Milk Soda for new year#) to trigger further engagement, and encourage influencers to add their own content to tease social buzz.

The sponsorship was so successful that during the event, the brand index of Yili Yogurt in Bilibili increased by 432.5%, jumping from the ninth position to the first in the food and beverage category. On the event day, the number of brand fans exceeded one million, showing how effective Bilibili can be for winning over a Gen Z audience.