This Year’s 520 Campaigns Overshadowed by 618 Presale Kickoff

It feels as if brands are so busy preparing for this year’s 618 Shopping Festival that they didn’t put much effort into this year’s 520 campaigns. I didn’t hear lots of buzz about 520 campaigns, but rather, by mid-May my phone was already being bombarded with tons of 618 advertisement messages.

I think there’s also getting to be too many shopping holidays in China, especially during the first half of the year. The timeline goes as: CNY, Valentine’s Day, Women’s Day, Double 5 (5.5), Mother’s Day, 520, Father’s Day, 618, Qixi and Double 11. And these are just those big ones, there are many other smaller festivals.

What’s more, 618 used to be a smaller shopping holiday, and 11.11 was the biggest one, but ever since last year, the length and effort of promotion seems nearly as big at 11.11. Last year China was starting to recover from the COVID pandemic in late Spring, and the 618 shopping festival was used as a way to stimulate and kickstart the economy. Well now marketplaces and brands seem to think that after last year’s huge performance, they must do even better this year. In a recent article we shared that the major commerce platforms kicked off their 618 presale in late May.

Back to 520 – it appears that with the growth of 618 and the overwhelming number of festivals, brands are cutting out some of the smaller festivals and to focus on the major ones. Leaving us with fewer 520 campaigns this year.  

For those who aren’t familiar with 520, it is one of China’s many “Valentine’s Days”. In Chinese, the numbers 520 sound similar to the words “I love you”.

Domestic Brands’ 520 Campaigns

NAYUKI TEA x Roberts Rūrāns

This is Nayuki Tea’s sixth collaboration in its artist series. In the past some of the artist is worked with include Japanese artist PePe Shimada, Cinyee Chiu, American artist CDR. All of them turn Nayuki’s bottles into their canvas and put their creativity on it. Customers don’t have to go to these artists’ exhibition because they are viewing it from the bottle.

This year, the brand work with a Latvian artist Roberts Rūrāns. His works are very recognizable with bright colours and strong geometrical shapes. The theme that Nayuki features this time is “Holding hands”.

Instead of only focusing on lovers, Nayuki interprets the theme into six sections. They are “Dear family, hold hands”, “Lovely puppy, hold hands”, “Best friends, hold hands”, “Teammates, hold hands”, “The one, hold hands”, “Soulmate, hold hands”. Besides bottles, Nayuki also has those drawings on its vacuum cups and mugs. They are really cute and their colours are healing.

Perfect Diary and its lipstick box

For 520, the brand launched a sophisticatedly-designed box with its iconic high heel lipstick in it. It also plays a bit with the Chinese pronunciation of box, which is “xiang”. The pronunciation is the same with “miss” in Chinese. So in Chinese, “I miss you” is the same pronunciation with “The box wants to see you”.

POPMART VIP Day

Blind box toymaker used 520 as a way to express its love for its loyal followers, holding a VIP day where members could use points to get exclusive discounts on products. In its WeChat post promoting the event, the brand said that love makes your heart beat excitedly, and so can these discounts and opening blind boxes from POPMART.

Luxury Brands’ 520 Campaigns  

Prada

Prada didn’t’ play seriously with the 520 campaign. On May 20, it simply posted on Weibo promoting its iconic inverted triangle shape, including its Leather Hair Clip and Symbole Earrings. Along with a 3-second video showing these two products, Prada was saying “The classic inverted triangle marks the date of a relationship”.

Gucci

On the contrary, Gucci gave special attention to this year’s 520 campaign. Part of the reason might be the decline (22.7%) of it sales performance in 2020 and the brand wanted to make the best use of this festival to boost sales.

Gucci launched a collection dedicated to this festival, most of the items are in a red colour tone. It also created a 520 video featuring several Chinese celebrities, Ni Ni (倪妮), Lu Han (鹿晗), Song Zuer (宋祖儿) and Lai Guanlin (赖冠霖). The video was posted on April 29 both on Weibo and its WeChat official account. From then until May 20, Gucci constantly used the hashtag #Gucci520# in its Weibo posts.

The brand also did a great job on Qixi Festival (which is another Chinese Valentine’s Day) in 2020. Check out our article to see how it unfolded the campaign.

Tiffany and the 520 Key 

Tiffany’s preparation for its 520 campaign started from May 1. To show its sincerity, it launched a new and limited product for 520 only: a Tiffany Keys necklace with a bright red colour. To increase exposure for this special product, Tiffany invited several celebrities to wear it, including Gong Jun (龚俊), who is the main ambassador for this product as he was the first celebrity announced by Tiffany on Weibo to wear it. Austin Li, Cecilia Song (宋妍霏), Ou Hao (欧豪) also joined in to promote the 520 key necklace.

Read more: 奈雪CUP美术馆｜520，每一次牵手，都是一句我爱你