How does Jiao Xia tap into this lucrative market in China? What are some of the key takeaways brands can learn from its success?

About Jiao Xia

Jiao Xia was founded in 2013. It specializes in sun-protective items, including umbrellas, hats, gloves, jackets, and shoes.

The brand grows wildly. From its prospectus, it managed to achieve annual revenues of over 380 million RMB, 790 million RMB, and 2.4 billion RMB from 2019 to 2021. With a gross profit rate of over 50%, Jiao Xia has become a vanguard in the industry.

Tap into the Hard Sun Protection Trend

“Hard sun protection” or physical sun protection is a trendy concept among Chinese girls, thanks to the education finalized by many online publications. It delivers the message that physical items, such as umbrellas, hats, and gloves, are better at preventing sun than sun cream.

With growing awareness of physical sun protection, China Insights Consultancy estimates that the market scale of sun-protective clothes grows from 45.9 billion RMB to 61.1 billion RMB from 2016 to 2021. It is expected that by 2026, the number will reach 95.8 billion RMB in China.

Jiao Xia has met its golden growing period when anxiety and solutions both exist in the market. Most Chinese consumers want to have fair skin and they’ve been educated to embrace the hard sun protection. Jiao Xia, an expert specializing in sun-protective products is there to solve their issues.  

Dare to Change Hero Products  

Sun-protective umbrellas have been Jiao Xia’s hero products for a long time. It is sold at 179 RMB, not cheap in the China market, but with its creative paintings on the umbrellas, a UPF (Ultraviolet Protection Factor) above 50, and its carriable size that can be easily put in a pocket, it wins love from many Chinese girls. Based on Jiao Xia’s Tmall statistics, the brand sold more than 4.5 million umbrellas.

What makes the brand continue to grow is that it doesn’t stand where it was but keeps exploring new opportunities. It sounds cliché, but in practice, not many brands dare to lower the contribution percentage of a lucrative business section to their annual revenues.

In 2019, it introduced new product categories, including sun-protective face masks, jackets, and hats. Moving to 2021, the brand expanded its business to a broader range, such as sunglasses, leggings, and Martin boots.

With new product categories, the contribution of the umbrella has gradually decreased from 86.9% in 2019 to 20.8% in 2021. What replaces the umbrella’s iconic position are clothes and accessories (sunglasses, face masks, and gloves), with growing percentages from 0.8% and 5.3% in 2019 to 29.5% and 25.4% in 2021 respectively.

Use Numeric Facts to Convince Consumers

According to Jiao Xia’s prospectus, the brand has worked with more than 600 KOLs by 2021, among which 199 of them amass over 1 million followers. Together they brought over 4.5 billion traffic for Jiao Xia on the Internet.

Since the prices of Jiao Xia’s products are higher than the average, KOLs often tell the brand’s stories from different angles based on their follower’s profiles. Jiao Xia also scientifically frames its products with hard facts, such as its competitive UPF index, reports from professional assessment organizations, and customers’ feedback.

Our Thoughts

Spotting the trend and leveraging it to expose the brand name and keep introducing new products to satisfy the market’s ever-changing needs secure Jiao Xia’s position in the China market. The brand also has KOLs to tell its story and uses numeric facts to convince consumers.  

With growing numbers of players in the sun protection industry, it requires more for brands to stand out and let consumers see them and try them.

The post How Does Chinese Brand Jiao Xia Tap into The Sun Protection Market In China? appeared first on China Marketing Insights.

According to Tmall, the majority of pet owners are young millennials and Gen Z females. Based on a report published by CBNData (2020中国互联网消费生态大数据报告), people’s pet-related consumption in 2020 was 1.5 times the scale of 2019.

Many domestic pet care brands are benefiting from people’s growing enthusiasm for raising pets such as Pidan (彼诞) which, founded in 2015, has already become a leader in the pet industry.

Hero Product

The product that brought it success was its Igloo cat litter box which won the RedDot Design Award in 2016, only a year after the company was founded. But the prize wasn’t the only thing that made it successful, it was also the product’s price. 

The average price of a cat litter box in China ranges from 30-200 RMB. At that time, the founder of Pidan, Ma Wenfei (马文飞), decided to sell the Igloo cat litter box at 365 RMB, which is way higher than the industry price.

It turned out that Ma made a smart decision. The high price earned the brand lots of attention and combined with the fact that the product had won a well-known international award, consumers believed that the product deserved the price.

Headstrong CEO Willing to Take Risks

There are only 55 people in the team, and as the CEO Ma has a one-vote veto. He often gets into debates with his sales department when it comes to pricing. For example, the cat litter box, which proved to be a correct decision. 

In terms of cat litter, Ma also applied the premium price strategy. He set the cat litter at 8 RMB per kilogram (the average price is 1-2 RMB per kilogram) and at the beginning, his colleagues thought he was putting the company at risk.

And it turned out that Ma made the right decision again. The high price and the high quality quickly earned the product lots of attention as well. By focusing on providing pets with the best product, Pidan achieved 220 million RMB in annual sales 5 years after it was founded.

Marketing Tactics

Pidan caters different marketing strategies based on different social media platforms.

Xiaohongshu

From Xiaohongshu, you can see Pidan’s consumers are loyal to the brand. There are a few negative posts saying Pidan’s products are not convenient to use, and in the comment area, its consumers are saying “the situation doesn’t happen to me” and they are suggesting the right way to use its products.

On its Xiaohongshu account, Pidan doesn’t sell any product. The majority of the posts are images of cute pets and there is a post inviting XHS users to create stickers based on its cozy duck Igloo box.

Weibo

Similar to its XHS content, Pidan posts images of cute pets, most of them are kittens.

On its Weibo account, Pidan also holds lucky draw activities to create more connections with its followers.

Douyin

The majority of Pidan’s content on Douyin is about users’ trying its products, which shows features of its products and its comparison with other similar brands.

Pet Brands Should Focus on Gen Z Consumers

According to the pet report (2019中国宠物行业白皮书), in 2019 23% of households in China have a pet. Compared with Japan, which reached 38% in 2018, China still has room to grow in the industry. 

What makes China’s pet industry different from either Japan or America is that the majority of pet owners in China are post-90s, among which, post-95s take up 35.6%. For pet brands, the most effective way to reach target consumers is social media promotion on channels where Gen Z are most active such as Douyin, Bilibili, Tmall and Xiaohongshu. 

Read more: “它经济”这一年太火！有商家营收两亿，有品牌融资两亿

The post Chinese Pet Care Brand Pidan (彼诞) Taps Into Growing Pet Economy appeared first on China Marketing Insights.

The last time that we talked about international brands exiting the China market it was Forever 21 and Topshop, and this time, it’s the beauty brand Revlon. 

While many brands and consumers were celebrating the Double 11, Revlon made the announcement that it is applying for bankruptcy. The brand is excusing itself not only from the China market but also the international market. 

One of the Earliest Brands in the China Market

Revlon is one of the earliest foreign brands to enter the China market. In 1976, it opened the store in Guangzhou. Following this, in 1996, Revlon opened a company in Shanghai, becoming a pioneer international player in the Chinese beauty market. But in 2013, the brand exited China and closed most of its stores. 

In 2015, when China’s ecommerce industry was rapidly developing and many foreign brands were entering and making profits in the China market, Revlon purchased skincare brand Elizabeth Arden, aiming to expand its product categories and cover more international consumers. In September 2016, Revlon opened its Tmall Global store.

Ironically, while Revlon is suffering, Elizabeth Arden is doing great in China. In 2017, Elizabeth Arden’s online sales in China grew 50% (I remember at that time its green tea lotion was many people’s go-to choice for body lotion). With the success of this subsidiary brand, Revlon opened its Tmall store in 2019. A Tmall store is different from Tmall Global which is cross-border commerce, so this move meant it officially came back to the China market. But still, it failed to take off.

Limited SKUs and Slow Product Development

As a nearly 100-year-old beauty brand, Revlon has its star products which are its lipsticks and foundation. But this is not enough, especially in the China market. Those star products can be used for a hook to guide consumers to explore the brand, but they can’t stay there and not change forever. 

In the FMCG industry, especially the beauty industry, every 18 months to 24 months is the maximum time for brands to launch new products or update packaging. The frequency for the Chinese beauty brand Perfect Diary is less than 6 months. For example, in the eyeshadow palette category, Revlon has only one palette which Perfect Diary has up to 24 for consumers to choose from. 

Unclear Positioning

The first time Revlon left the China market, many industry voices were saying the brand didn’t position itself clearly in the market. Revlon was available offline both in shopping malls and supermarkets. These are two very different settings targeting different consumers. It makes consumers confused whether this is a middle or high-end brand. In general, most Chinese consumers came to the conclusion that Revlon is an affordable brand. 

But when it re-entered the market, Revlon increased its prices on Tmall which made consumers confused. On top of that, Revlon didn’t have offline stores anymore and this really affected consumers’ shopping experience because they couldn’t test out products before buying, which consumers generally like to do for higher price point cosmetics.

Not Enough Promotion 

For the first 17 years that Revlon was in the China market, it barely appointed any Chinese ambassadors. Though it had the Oscar-winning actress Halle Berry as its ambassador before, her dark skin is unrelatable to Chinese consumers, not to mention that most of Chinese females are pursuing white skin.

More recently, Revlon had a Chinese celebrity Liu Yuning (刘宇宁) as its ambassador. But this didn’t generate much buzz about the brand on social media. 

In Contrast, What Did Elizabeth Arden Do Right?

Compared with Revlon, Elizabeth Arden has a much stronger social media presence. It frequently works with mid-tier and top KOLs and signed hot idol Hu Yitian (胡一天) as its ambassador. In a Weibo post from the official account, Elizabeth Arden asked followers how they knew the brand, the majority of answers were saying it was because of Hu.

An interesting thing to notice is that, among celebrities that Elizabeth Arden works with, most of them are male celebrities. They cover various careers, including actors, singer, author and street dancer. This makes sure the brands’ collaborations reach different and more audience.

Other than marketing strategy, I would say the key thing for Elizabeth Arden’s success is its reputation for quality. Its moisturizing lip balms and white tea body lotion are things that I will recommend to friends and purchase again and again.

Read more: 露华浓深陷“破产疑云”，美国国宝级彩妆品牌为何屡次败走中国？｜案例精选

The post Revlon is Exiting China While its Subsidiary Elizabeth Arden is Flourishing appeared first on China Marketing Insights.

Despite a tumultuous year surrounding the drama with TikTok in the U.S., TikTok’s parent company ByteDance is doing well and is looking to fill more than 10k job positions in China by the end of 2020.

While many people in the West only know of TikTok, ByteDance actually operates many platforms including Douyin, Toutiao (今日头条) and Xigua Video (西瓜视频). So far, ByteDance has hired more than 30k employees this year in China. Adding 10k, the company will have over 100k employees worldwide. So crazy.

Most of the new job positions are related to education, games and ecommerce, which can give us an idea of ByteDance’s strategy and key growth areas. Why these three areas?

Education

According to Zhang Yiming (张一鸣), founder of ByteDance, education will be the company’s next key focus. Though the company isn’t known for education, it is building the development team and launching apps gradually, the Guagualong (瓜瓜龙) series is one of them.

Games

The game industry is covered by two players at the moment: Tencent and NetEase (网易), with 70% of the market in total. ByteDance aims to break the situation.

We know that games can be classified into two categories, one is called casual games, for example the classic link game, and the other type is moderate-intense engagement games, such as Honor of Kings (王者荣耀) and Onmyoji (阴阳师). While ByteDance has achieved great success in casual game development and 80% of these games have achieved monetization, the company still has a long way to go for those big mobile games. Reasons why this is happening is that, users who play casual games match with Douyin user base, most of them are young and fashionable females. On the other hand, if you look at Douyin’s livestream ranking board, you will find that most of the popular content is about performance, emotion and life or singing, there is barely any game livestreaming. The atmosphere is not fertilized enough to grow a big mobile game.

Ecommerce

Three main ways of monetization on the Internet are: advertisement, games and ecommerce. Douyin is always hoping to build its own ecommerce platform so that they don’t drive users to Taobao or Tmall and instead they can finish the purchasing cycle on Douyin.

In fact, another short video and livestreaming platform Kuaishou (快手) has acted faster than Douyin. Since December 2019, Taobao’s links can no longer be placed in Kuaishou content and the platform has been building its product warehouse, guiding influencers and MCNs to open stores.

But have a look at today’s main ecommerce platforms: Taobao is known for its wide range of product categories, JD is a place to go if users want to buy home appliances and Pinduoduo is known for group buying and extremely low price. Can ByteDance find a novel position in the market? We will see if this can happen.

With the expansion of its team, Byte Dance is looking for more office buildings. News about ByteDance purchasing buildings often show up. In June, the company bought land in Shenzhen worth 1.08 billion RMB to build its new office building. Outside of first tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, Byte Dance is also expanding and opening offices in second tier cities such as Wuhan (武汉), Chengdu (成都), Xiamen (厦门) and Zhengzhou (郑州). 

Read more: 字节跳动年前再招1万人，员工总数将破10万

The post ByteDance Will Hire 10k More Employees By The End of 2020 appeared first on China Marketing Insights.

Pinduoduo is one of China’s largest e-commerce platforms and an industry leader who helped popularize the concept of social commerce in China. Yet while it initially became famous for its wildly popular group-buying feature, Pinduoduo has since evolved into much more than just a group buying platform. 

In this episode Ada Yang, Head of Social Community at Pinduoduo gives us an overview of the platform, and then shares several other features and initiatives you many not have heard of such as:

• A virtual farming game where users can earn real fruit sent to their home for free
• Its relatively new live streaming feature and how PDD is iterating on the popular live streaming trend
• Its New Brand Initiative that leverages user data to help export factories who have been hard hit by COVID and the negative geopolitical situation to create entirely new brands aimed at the domestic market, guiding them through product development, branding, and marketing.

Guest: Ada Yang

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pinduoduoinc/

Twitter: @pinduoduoinc

The China Ecommerce Podcast

Medium

Learn more about the topics we discussed:

• Pinduoduos effort to help farmers with technology and alleviate poverty in rural areas
• New Brand initiatives 
• Shanghai vintage brand Campaign 
• MIT Tech Review article on PDD C2M model
• An article about Duoduo Live

The post Understanding Pinduoduo’s Evolution, with Ada Yang appeared first on China Marketing Insights.

Never’s image is featured on one of the eyeshadow palettes in the Discovery Collection. The shades in the palette are created by Austin and inspired by Never’s personality. Profits from the palette will be donated to an animal protection fund in Beijing. The product is going fast – during the live streamed launch Austin already sold out 180k palettes. 

Read more: 美人计｜连李佳琦的狗都开始联名带货了

Key Takeaways From Questmobile Report on Young Consumers in Lower Tier Cities

As of November 2019 there are over 200 million post-90s consumers located in 3rd-tier and lower cities in China. This is 10.1% growth YOY. In Chinese these consumers are referred to as 小镇青年 (Xiaozhen Qingnian) or “small town youth”. Here are some key takeaways from the report: 

• Their average monthly screen time is 127.9 hours, slightly higher than young people in 1st and 2nd tier cities (127.3 hours).
• Students and white-collar workers make up 60% of Xiaozhen Qingnian. Their income is lower than 6,000 RMB. The average amount per month is around 4,000 RMB.
• Yet since living costs in lower tier cities are much lower, they have more disposable income. 
• Xiaozhen Qingnian’s favorite topics to search online are: food, travel, fashion, ecommerce shopping, auto, and wealth management. 
• Xiaozhen Qingnian spend on average 7.1 hours/month on ecommerce platforms. 
• The top 3 e-commerce platforms they use are Taobao, Pinduoduo, and Xianyu. 
• The group places more value on recommendations from friends and acquaintances, and often group buy together. 
• They are sensitive to price and are willing to spend more time browsing other platforms to compare prices. They love searching for coupons and discount information as well. But when it comes down to it they care even more about quality and brand name.  
• They show great interest in second-hand products. 
• When it comes to planning travel, Xiaozhen Qingnian’s interest in vacation rentals like Airbnb has increased significantly since 2018. 

Read more: QuestMobile2019小镇青年洞察报告：2亿青年每月128小时都在干嘛？

Art & Aroma Essential Oil Skincare

Art & Aroma (Chinese name 芳研社) is a small Chinese essential oils skincare brand founded in 2014 by two friends, a chemist and a biologist. While still small at only 10 SKUs, the brand has been featured by one of China’s top business writers Wu Xiaobo Channel (吴晓波频道) and has a very loyal customer base, with a repurchase rate of 80%. Here are some of the things they have done to grow such a loyal customer base: 

Emphasis on Private Traffic: 
Art & Aroma focuses heavily on private traffic. They operate 4 personal WeChat accounts with a total of 4,000 connections across all accounts. All of their private traffic users are customers of their Tmall store. After each and every person purchases a product, the team will actively encourage the person to add the company’s WeChat. After adding the accounts, the users are segmented into different categories and WeChat groups, such as skincare, hair care, new products launching and discounts.

These four accounts regularly post content on Moments with 25% of content about skincare, 25% about event and live streaming notifications, and the rest is about the daily lives of the three founders and other lifestyle content. They also actively participate in customers’ lives by liking and commenting on customers’ Moments posts.

Passion for Proving Product Quality Helps Gain Visibility:
Once team members shaved part of their hair just to test whether their shampoo product could increase hair growth rate. The story was later featured by the popular WeChat Commerce platform Youzan(有赞). On that night Youzan posted the article, Art & Aroma did over 200k RMB in sales, and sold out 3,000 hair care sets within 4 hours.

Giving Consumers Ownership:
Similar to a domestic beauty brand Chioture(稚优泉), Art & Aroma invites its customers to participate in the decision making process. This includes choosing scents, ingredients, packaging styles and product names. Co-founder Qing Fen(清芬) said involving customers in this process makes customers happy while simultaneously promoting new products. 

Offline Aromatherapy Certification Courses:
In the past the brand has held offline aromatherapy certification courses. This is a great way to interact with customers in real life and for the co-founders to demonstrate their professional expertise and inspire trust. Right now a growing number of Chinese beauty and skincare consumers are known as 成份党 or consumers that pay great attention to the ingredients. Classes like this would appeal to that consumer base. 

Livestreaming:
Art & Aroma’s livestreaming is very different from most brands. One of the co-founders Xiao Ke(小珂) live streams three times a week. Unlike other brands, she doesn’t actively try to sell products. She typically sits in her kitchen or dining room drinking a cup of tea and chatting with viewers. Usually, she shares a book, a movie or her hand-made crafts. Sometimes she shares her thoughts on essential oils and skincare. 

Read more: 仅靠4000好友做到复购率80%，被吴晓波频道看中的“她”如何打造强信任关系？

China Marketing Podcast Ep. 64: An Overview of China’s Burgeoning Fragrance Market 

Today’s conversation is with Dao Nguyen, founder of ESSENZIA, a boutique marketing creative strategy agency helping fragrance and cosmetics brands reach young Chinese consumers. We dive deep into China’s rapidly growing fragrance market which has changed dramatically over the past 5 years.

Dao gave an overview of the market, answering questions such as:

• Who are the main consumers?
• What types of fragrances tend to appeal to a Chinese audience?
• Which brands are doing well in the China market and why?
• Are there any mistakes brands tend to make?

Later in the episode we also discussed China’s beauty industry and I ask Dao to share her thoughts on the rise of China’s domestic beauty brands.

Listen on Spotify, iTunes, or XimalayaFM

Women In China Marketing

This is a new online directory dedicated to women who specialize in helping brands market to Chinese consumers.

It was created by the wonderful Olivia Plotnick after a report on China marketing trends for 2020 in which only 1 of the 22 report contributors was a woman.

Check it out here
And if you’d like to add someone to the list, feel free to submit a profile!

The post Perfect Diary’s Latest Cross-Collab is with Austin Li’s Dog?! appeared first on China Marketing Insights.

This is a story about the power of branding and marketing to transform an everyday item into a sought-after, trendy one. 

There is a variety of dried apricot local to Xinjiang province that has been a regional specialty for over 400 years. Although it had be classified as an official “China Regional Product” in 2007, sales were bad because the promotion sucked and the packaging was bad so the product frequently rotted during transport. In 2018 the Xinjiang government got smart and turned to Alibaba’s popular flash sales platform Juhuasuan(聚划算) for some help. 

Right off the bat Juhuasuan changed the packaging, and that alone helped sell 20 tons of dried apricots on the platform. But they didn’t stop there. They knew that snacks with nice packaging and good brand stories can easily become popular among young people aged 23-28. So the next step was to develop a plan to turn these dried apricots with a walnut in the center into a trendy wanghong product. They called it a Desert Macaron (大漠马卡龙).

While not technically a macaron, if you use your imagination it kind of resembles one? In its advertising, Juhuansuan presented it as the perfect afternoon tea dessert. On social media, Juhuasuan released a cartoon video, showing how Desert Macarons defeated traditional macarons in terms of taste, and how natural and healthy they are. At the same time, Juhuasuan invited foodie influencers to unbox it and taste it in front of the camera.

And it took off, selling over 100k bags of apricots in a year. Who knew an apricot with a walnut in it could be so cool? 

Read more: 聚划算造了一个网红

Is Gucci’s Golden Hour Over?

According to RBC Capital Markets’ latest report, Chinese consumers’ passion for Gucci is declining with only 30% of the study participants saying they would buy Gucci. Brands that ranked higher than Gucci include Chanel, Hermes, Louis Vuitton, Prada, and Dior.
 
This is the first year that Gucci did not make the list of TOP 5 fashion brands. Another interesting finding is that Chinese consumers’ interest in Balenciaga and Bottega Veneta is increasing. 

Read more: 中国有钱人现在没那么想买GUCCI包包和衣服了

Key Findings from Chinese Lipstick Consumption Report

• In 2018, Chinese consumers made up 11% of the global lipstick market. 
• Over 10.6 billion RMB in lipsticks were sold on Alibaba in 2018    
• The most popular lipsticks are those sold at around 200-300 RMB. 
• The three most popular lipstick colors are: cameo brown, bright red, and oxblood. 
• Key marketing phrases and attributes that appeal to Chinese consumers are: “suitable for yellow and skin color”, “makes your skin look more bright”, “very tender”, “brings out your personality”.
• The most popular lipstick brand in China is MAC. 
• Domestic brands are growing. On Xiaohongshu, posts about domestic products have grown 116% YOY, with over 5M users discussing them. During this year’s 618, 589 domestic brands experienced doubled their results YOY and 183 brands having 10X-ed their results! (who knew there were that many domestic cosmetics brands)
• Cross-collaborations continue to be popular. Successful case studies include: MAC & Honor of Kings, Coca Cola & The Face Shop, Hey Tea (喜茶) & L’Oreal. 

How Did Domestic Brand Proya Cosmetics get its Bubble Face Mask to go Viral?

This past July, a bubble face mask from domestic Chinese skincare brand Proya suddenly went viral. It ranked the first on Douyin’s skincare board, helping the brand boost its sales from 20m RMB to over 60m RMB in July. In the age when there are numerous face masks on the market, how did Proya successfully create a viral product?

The product itself: 

• Novelty: Normally when you use a face mask you might feel a reaction, but you can’t see anything happening. But the Proya mask is different, it creates bubbles, and the dirtier your face is, the more bubbles appear. In other words, what consumers buy is more than a face mask, it is a fun toy!
• The visual “evidence” of the bubbles convinces consumers that the product is effective
• Friendly price – A face mask set is under 100 RMB. In Douyin’s August product ranking board, all of the TOP 10 products’ prices are under 100 RMB. 

Solid social strategy: 
Proya divided the bubble face mask’s marketing strategy into three stages. First, it started with testing, paying influencers to test the product for them online. Next, it latched on to hot topics that women were researching online and created content around those. And finally, it invited celebrities to promote the brand and spread it to a mass audience. 

What’s next for Proya: 
Following the viral bubble face mask, this article discusses what Proya should do to leverage this and sustain momentum:  

• Keep exploring new products. Not random products, but products that are related to cleansing and face masks since that’s what they have become known for. 
• Strengthen the brand’s image. Use the face mask as the entry point to guide consumers to follow the brand. 
• Focus on retaining the new customer base they have gotten using private traffic. 

Read more:「泡泡面膜」月销6000万的爆品投放方法论

The post Juhuasuan Transforms Dried Apricots into Wanghong Food appeared first on China Marketing Insights.

In recent years, the Chinese public seems to be fascinated by older celebrities who are able to maintain a youthful appearance, giving them the nickname “冻龄女神” and “冻龄男神” or “age freezing gods and goddesses”. Everyone wants to know their secrets, prying into their eating habits, skincare routines, and positive mindset practices. 

Many skincare brands are capitalizing on this trend and promoting their products by appointing these age-freezing celebrities as their spokespeople, including Zhong Liti (钟丽缇), Lin Zhiying (林志颖) and Bao Wenjing (包文婧). Most recently, domestic facial mask brand MECMOR (名膜壹号) named Yuan Yongyi (袁咏仪) as its ambassador. Yuan (pictured above) is 47 years old and is famous for her skincare and “age-freezing” abilities. Working with her has proven to be a wise choice as the brand has gained a lot of attention – and new customers. 

On top of this, MECMOR also appears to have a good PR team. The company was recently featured on a national news program on CCTV, where they reported that the brand’s products are safe to use, and are free of additives. The CEO of MECMOR even drank 75ml facial mask serum in front of the camera. The stunt garnered a lot of attention from consumers, and seems to have been an effective method to convince people of the products’ safety. 

Read more: 49岁的“斩男鼻祖”重返银幕，霸占热搜，网友给跪了：哪里买的防腐剂？！

Let’s Not Forget Chinese Male Consumers

We hear A LOT about female consumers of all ages, but not nearly as much about the male consumer. In the past Chinese males didn’t pay as much attention to style and appearance because it was associated with being too feminine and not manly, but this perception is changing. From the massive sneakerhead economy, to the growth of the male skincare industry, this is a consumer segment companies should start paying more attention to. Fashion and style are becoming just as much of a status symbol as a house and car. 

According to the “China Luxury Online Consumption” whitepaper, male consumers on average spent 6% more than females, and the number of males who made three or more luxury purchases in a year was also found to be higher than females. 

Interesting takeaways about shifts in the male consumer market: 

• As Chinese women’s salaries have gone up, and are the same, if not higher than the men they date, it’s not as easy for men to use their salaries or material items to attract women, and women have started to care much more about men’s appearance
• Women control the media. 80% of writers and editors of WeChat OAs are women, meaning that womens’ higher requirements for their male counterparts gets amplified by the media. 
• In the past a “good husband” would be spending all his money on taking care of the family and spending money on himself was looked down upon, but as the standard of living has gone up, this has changed.
• Limited edition items from trendy brands have become social currency and status symbols for young men, from Supreme, to Air Jordans, to the recent Uniqlo x KAWS t-shirts, they are a means of self-expression, and a way to find belonging 
• Peer pressure also plays a big role: compared with female consumers, males consumers are more likely to buy trending, must-have items, and are more likely to succumb to peer pressure if others in their social group purchase those items 

What it takes to make a product popular among male consumers: 

• Must be social currency, a status symbol – make others look up to them
• Whether price is high or low isn’t the determining factor. You must give them a greater reason to want the product
• Limited edition and beautiful design are important 
• Provide increasing purchasing levels so they can grow with your brand

Read More: 优衣库 x KAWS、毒APP、CHAO社区爆发，为什么男性消费开始崛起？

Kuaishou Wanghong Makes 13M RMB Off of His Wedding

A couple years back when Angelababy got married, everyone was discussing how commercialized her wedding was. Well now making money off your wedding day is something that internet celebrities are doing too. 

On June 12, Liu Yishou (刘一手), who has over 18M followers on Kuaishou and 3.58M followers on the live streaming platform YY, held a live stream on Kuaishou ahead of his wedding. During the stream, the host, Liu and other special guests sold over 30 products, including baijiu, French wine, and skincare products from the brand JLV. 

While people were shocked that he was trying to make money off his wedding, even more shocking was his explanation why. He said he had no choice because he still needed to pay debts to YY for 23m RMB (not sure how this happened), and he also mentioned that he was not sure whether he could continue live streaming after that night. He said it will depend on that night’s sales. Whether or not this was all true it appears to have really motivated his fans to “help” him out.

But that’s not all. There were multiple streamers attending the wedding and people streaming at the wedding and they got into a bit of trouble due to one of the attendees. You see Liu had invited former popular Kuaishou live streamer Tianyou (天佑) to his wedding. Tianyou had gotten kicked off of Kuaishou for talking about doing drugs, so when Liu and Tianyou hopped on Liu’s wife’s Kuaishou account to live stream, the stream was shut down within a minute. And the same thing happened with all of the streams in which Tianyou appeared. That’s some rigorous censorship right there! 

While selling out your wedding might seem tacky, it’s not a China thing. Check out this recent story that went viral in Western media: This viral “surprise” proposal shows the less glamorous side of influencing

Read more: “网红婚礼”生意经！快手千万粉丝结婚卖货，天佑露脸直播被封…

China Influencer Marketing Podcast Episode 50: How Mogu (蘑菇街) is Dominating Chinese Fast-fashion with Raymond Huang, SVP of Strategy at Mogu

Welcome to episode 50 of the China influencer marketing podcast!!!! 

Today’s guest is Raymond Huang, SVP of Strategy, at the publicly-traded fast-fashion social commerce platform Mogu or, in Chinese, 蘑菇街.

If you’re like me and have a general awareness and understanding of Mogu but don’t really know what makes the platform unique, then this episode is for you. Raymond starts off by sharing a complete overview of Mogu, such as the apps content, the products it sells, and user demographics, and more.

Then we dig a bit deeper and learn what makes Mogu unique, from their tailored content algorithm, to their hundreds of homegrown influencers, to their regulations which prevent sellers from offering the same products as each other. We also discuss e-commerce live streaming and why adding this feature a couple years ago has been incredibly beneficial for the platform. 

Listen online here, on iTunes here, and on Ximalaya FM here.

Mommy Blogger Mini-program Makes 120M RMB a Month and Only 20% of Traffic Comes from the Blogger’s Official Account

小小包麻麻 (Xiaoxiao Baomama) is a popular mommy-baby WeChat Official Account and a very successful ecommerce mini-program that earns 120 million RMB a month and has an 80% repurchase rate. But what is fascinating is that the company has managed to make this MP extremely popular, so much so that people are seeking out the mini-program on its own. Unlike many e-commerce MPs which rely on traffic from the corresponding OA, only 20% of Xiaoxiao Baomama’s traffic comes from its OA. 

Growth strategies: 

• The CEO of 小小包麻麻 Jia Wanxing (贾万兴) doesn’t think mini programs need to rely on WeChat Official Accounts. You can find ways to drive traffic to them just like independent apps. 
• Strategies that Jia uses to build the MP customer base include group buying and earning credits. Group buying is nothing new, but that’s why he uses it, consumers already have this habit and it has proven successful
• Jia’s team selects specific products for group buy campaigns, specifically lower priced or trending items, because when it comes to these products, customers don’t spend too much time making purchasing decisions and are more likely to participate
• The credits system is their “secret weapon”. When old users bring new users to the platform, they earn virtual coins. Once they accumulate enough coins, they can get discounts, or sometimes win items for free
• After applying these two strategies, the MP’s user base grew from 100,000 to 4.3M from 2017 to 2019. 

Understanding their customers: 

• Platform claims to be strict about product quality, logistics, package, after service, making sure that users are respected when they are shopping. 
• Direct and easy participation in discount campaigns. Don’t make the rules overly complicated like many platforms do
• Customers receive 3 messages after they purchase products on the platform. The first tells them payment is successful, the second is a shipping notification, and the final one is coupons. If a customer buys diapers, the team sends her other products’ coupons, for example, formula. 
• When writing product descriptions, the team first identifies what emotions customers might have when they are shopping. Curious? Caring? Or in pursuit of authority?
• For example, when introducing international brands, the team expects customers might question the authenticity of products. Instead of telling customers how to identify real ones and fake ones, the team directly post group photos of the main KOL 包妈 and other execs visiting the brand’s factory 
• They customize content depending on how much info they think the customer will need to see before making a purchasing decision. When it comes to products that customers don’t need to spend too much time thinking about, such as diapers, they choose words and images. When it comes to products that need more demonstration, such as food and toys, they use videos or live streaming.

Read more: 不靠公众号粉丝，这个月入1.2亿的母婴自媒体用什么变现？

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