Dairy Queen scoops up success on Douyin

Douyin’s – China’s TikTok counterpart – is the vehicle which has helped make Dairy Queen a major player in China’s ice-cold arena, expanding ‘life scenarios’ related to ice cream by using the platform’s Local Life, which provides a variety of daily services, including buying food, booking hotels and scheduling and fitness activities. Users can complete these purchases in the app itself.

The market size of the Chinese ice cream industry is fast-growing and possesses vast potential, with brands noticing its untapped seasonal attributes and boosting the year-round demand.

Following DQ’s announcement that it will open a further 600 stores across China by 2030, the US-based restaurant chain got creative on how it can quickly entice new customers. DQ has partnered with Douyin Local Life services to identify potential hot products and leverage the platform traffic through online and offline channels, tapping into the platform’s popularity with their core customer base.

Based on Douyin’s user scale and content mechanism, a breakthrough has been identified by DQ. Combined with topic-driven products, the brand has established a process of leveraging content traffic and pushing it to purchase conversion. This has resulted in the instant conversion of online traffic, as well as the back-feeding of offline traffic from online popularity.

The power of celebrity has not been ignored; DQ has collaborated with seven public figures beloved nationwide, and 38 regional figures. The brand has partnered with the huge Mei Niye to customise new ice cream product Yao-Lin-Lin, which features their image. In addition, DQ magnified its reach through IP. By virtue of the official IP’s popularity, it has stimulated the UGC content through blind-box games. Furthermore, through the long-term closed-loop acquired via O2O, including celebrities’ goods sales and live-streaming, DQ’s stores reflect the branded campaign and celebrity influence.

The proof is in the ice cream, and DQ has generated 296 million GMVs from marketing, 12.99 million orders, and 1.22 billion exposures in 2022.