One of last summer’s biggest travel and leisure trends in China was City Walk. Instead of checking off as many tourist sites as possible in a militant fashion (aptly dubbed “special forces tourism”,) City Walkers like to meander. With a rough route sketched out beforehand, they mosey from spot to spot seeing what they find on their way. The point is to go slowly enough to really take in your surroundings – and maybe even find some hidden gems along the way.
City Walk has now taken on a new life as a marketing strategy, and it lends itself well to offline brand activations localised to individual cities. This month, the e-commerce site Tmall cleverly combined City Walk with another internet-famous trend, MBTI personality types, to create “the world’s first real-life MBTI personality test”.
Between March 6th to 8th participants could create their own City Walk route by exploring personality-themed checkpoints along Shanghai’s trendy Anfu Road. Each checkpoint corresponds to a different dimension of the MBTI personality test and has several newly launched products from global brands to discover there. There are also online treats waiting for customers. By searching “personality experience centre” on the Taobao app, shoppers can find exclusive discounted goodies tailored to each personality type.
A total of 38 brands, including the Chinese perfumery Cosmic Speculation and the American beverage container brand Stanley, launched new products as part of the CityWalk + MBTI event. This was in tandem with Tmall Little Black Box, the e-commerce site’s dedicated channel for product debuts, housed within the Taobao shopping app.
