How 58.com Turned Chinese New Year Into a Gamified Recruitment Boost

Background

Chinese New Year represents reunion, joy, and renewal, and the internet increasingly reshapes how people think and act. Since 2016, 58.com has run annual holiday campaigns that distribute billions of red‑packet rewards through various interactive product play‑methods.

Goal‑Oriented Design

For the 58 recruitment platform, the core objective of the 2021 "Salary‑Boost" season was to create efficient connections between job seekers and employers. The team leveraged festive scenes and mini‑games to attract attention, drive interaction, and convert engagement into retention and business outcomes.

Adapting to Pandemic Shifts

The COVID‑19 pandemic accelerated online celebrations. The 2021 campaign replaced travel‑related rewards with physical items and cash red‑packets, emphasizing live‑streaming to align with 58’s recruitment services.

Gamification Principles

Drawing on the idea that games can fill real‑world gaps, the design incorporated the four classic game elements—collection, nurturing, interaction, and exploration. Effective holiday activities focused on card‑collection and upgrade mechanics, guided by a game‑behavior analysis framework and eight principles that boost user willingness to participate.

Design Strategies to Motivate Users

Target Orientation : Align activities with users’ aspirations for promotion and salary increase.

Reward Structure : Combine material incentives (red‑packets, physical prizes) with intrinsic motivators such as achievement and ownership.

Storytelling : Create a narrative featuring the IP character “Bull Da Li” who progresses from a job‑seeker to a career‑hero.

Visual Cohesion : Use “New National Trend” Chinese cultural elements, 3D graphics, and consistent typography to reinforce brand identity.

Task System and Component Reuse

A modular task system reduced design and development costs. Reusable components included a “red‑packet rain” mechanic, task‑tracking widgets, and prize‑center pages, enabling rapid iteration across multiple sub‑venues such as live‑stream stages, brand employer showcases, and industry highlights.

Key Motivators

Value incentives, sense of ownership, mission, social interaction, achievement, scarcity, mystery, loss aversion, and probabilistic events were woven throughout the experience to sustain engagement.

Outcome

The "Salary‑Boost" season integrated scenario‑based storytelling, fun, and gamification into a cohesive holiday recruitment ecosystem. Participants earned tangible rewards while addressing real‑world job‑search challenges, enhancing user happiness and accelerating employer‑candidate matching. The campaign demonstrated how strategic product management can turn festive marketing into measurable recruitment impact.