Sounds familiar right? Not long ago something similar happened with the Xinjiang cotton scandal. Every year brands get caught up in scandals. But with the correct response, it doesn’t have to mean the end of their China journey.

Coach is one of those brands. It took the slow road, but it has survived and found its way back from the scandal. Recently it held a large-scale show in Shanghai which helped the brand generate lots of buzz on social media. Though Coach still has a long way to reach its previous peak performance in China, it seems like the brand is getting there.

What happened to Coach in China in 2019?

The scandal started from Versace defining Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao as individual countries on a T-shirt. Following it, many other brands such as Coach, Givenchy were discovered to have the same issue.

People were outraged and those brands’ ambassadors were busy distancing themselves from brands by announcing the termination of their contracts. A key reason why Coach was severely influenced was the cancellation of contracts by its two ambassadors: Liu Wen (刘雯) and Guan Xiaotong (关晓彤). Both of them are top celebrities and their actions drive massive amounts of attention and traffic.  Under the comment area of Coach’s apology announcement on Weibo, many people were asking the brand to get out of China and stop earning money from Chinese consumers. The future of Coach seemed dark back then.

Coach’s performance after the scandal

Social media engagement on Weibo

I choose Weibo as the subject to monitor Coach’s social media engagement. First, the platform is one of Coach’s official channels to present its brand image and announce big events. Second, Weibo’s statistics (including numbers of likes, comments and reposts) are more transparent compared with WeChat,

The data excludes posts involving celebrities and KOLs, as the engagement numbers usually go extremely high for those posts. Here is the average engagement prior to the scandal: 

And here is the average engagement after the scandal:

You can see from these two charts that Coach’s social media engagement fell dramatically after the scandal. People were reluctant to have interactions with the brand when it first started to post content again.

Sales performance after the scandal

From lack of social media engagement, it appears Coach might not survive from the scandal. However, after parent company Tapestry released its financial report of 2020, it seemed as if the effects weren’t as serious as they looked. The report shows that Greater China achieved $600.8 million in sales, accounting for 17% of Coach’s total sales. If we look at the percentage of Greater China’s contribution in 2019 and 2018, which were 18%, it didn’t make great difference.

Coach’s bags have also frequently shown up in top fashion KOLs’ posts. The event that it held on June 3 grabbed lots of attention. It seems that people have let go of the scandal back in 2019. How does Coach manage to do so?

How Coach Earned Back the Love of Consumers in China

The first Weibo post after the scandal

After its official apology on August  12, Coach didn’t post anything on its Weibo account and went silent on social media for two months.

The first post after the scandal was not until November 6, 2019. The post announced Coach’s participation in the second China International Import Expo. This is not some usual exhibition but a national-level expo, being recognized by the Chinese government.

By showing up at the Expo, Coach was delivering the message to Chinese consumers that it was making efforts to fix its mistakes and it has gained official approval to join such a government-run event.

We don’t want anything bad happens to brands. But if your brand happens to get caught up in any scandals, do keep quiet for a while. Nike hasn’t posted anything on its Weibo account since March 12, after the Xinjiang Cotton scandal, same with Calvin Klein and H&M.

Do the politically right thing

Besides the second China International Import Expo, Coach also participated in the third Expo in 2020. This shows Coach’s sincerity to please Chinese consumers and do the politically right thing in China.

Other than the Expo, when COVID first hit Wuhan in early 2020, Coach immediately donated 1 million RMB to the city. In the comments area on Weibo, people were saying Coach reacted fast and was being generous.

Celebrity and KOL strategies

After the two ambassadors terminated their collaboration with Coach, it would need to find a new one. This would be achieved once things cooled down and celebrities were willing to work with the brand again. The new ambassador it picked is Yang Zi (杨紫). She is a child star who became famous from a household TV series called Home With Kids (家有儿女). In recent years she has shed the child-star image and played the lead role in numerous romantic dramas. Yang has 57 million followers on Weibo and it is fair to say almost every young person knows her.

Before officially announcing Yang Zi as its ambassador, Coach had been interacting with her by having her appear in video clips. So on August 31, 2020, when Coach announced the collaboration, Yang’s fans were cheering up for her and the post gained 182k likes so far.

Other than Yang, Coach also actively worked with other celebrities and KOLs, including Ding Yusi (丁禹兮), Chen Yuqi (陈钰琪) and Dong Youlin (董又霖). You may find those names sound unfamiliar. And yes, they are not as famous as Liu Wen, Guan Xiaotong or Yang Zi. I think it’s not because Coach doesn’t have the budget to work with higher-level celebrities. It’s because the brand wants to be low-key for now instead of working with some big names and drawing lots of traffic all of a sudden. The brand wants to grow and recover steadily. It is playing a safe card.

Offline presence is necessary

If you follow the timeline of the Coach scandal, you will find the brand was a little bit lucky. The scandal happened in August, 2019. Coach kept silent for 2 months on social media, and then in early 2020, COVID hit the country and offline stores and events were shut down. Everything offline didn’t restart until March.

So during this period when Coach should be low-key and had better not hold any offline events, every other brand was doing the same thing because of COVID restrictions.

Even after COVID restrictions loosened, Coach stayed fairly quiet and it wasn’t until December 2020 that Coach held a big offline event. I believe December could be some people’s happiest month, as it has Christmas, and it is the end of past and a fresh start of a new beginning. Coach picked a good timing, when hate and negative voices of its past scandal might be less.

What it did for the event was to have 400 drones with lights create images of Coach’s bags and its iconic dinosaurs cartoon. The brand was wishing everyone a good holiday. The location that it chose was at The Bund, Shanghai, which is the most representative spot either in Shanghai or in China.

If The Bund event has somehow brought Coach back to the center of the stage, the following one publicly tells Chinese consumers that Coach has made its way back and it is doing better than ever.

On June 3, 2021, Coach invited top celebrities and KOLs to its Coach Winter Collection show in Shanghai. The brand designed its show place as a drive-in cinema with a vintage vibe. Celebrity attendees were diverse. There were top ones such as Yang Zi, Chinese singer Xiao Jingteng (萧敬腾) and Chinese actor Zhong Hanliang (钟汉良). Idols who become well-known to the public such because of those contestant show such as Liu Xiening (刘些宁) were also invited. In terms of KOLs, Coach mostly invited top ones such as Mr. Bag and AnnyFan.

Because of the amount of celebrities and KOLs that Coach invited and the brand’s promotion, the event drew lots of attention on social media. The tag #Coach秀场直击 (#Coach Winter Collection Broadcast) has more than 100 million views so far. Coach itself keeps posting images from the event on its official channels. KOLs who have attended the event also posted related content to further promote the show and the brand.

Our Thoughts

Well, ideally your brand doesn’t have a scandal. Though everything has two sides, and a scandal might boost your brand’s influence, in the end, it is more likely to bring negative impacts than loyal customers.

If your brand does get involved in a scandal, especially political ones which are more sensitive here in China, the first thing is always to SINCERELY apologize. Don’t just do it because you need it, such as the official apology made by Dolce & Gabbana’s founders, which worsened the situation instead.

The second thing is to keep silent. On one hand this gives your brand time to restructure and plan out next moves, and it also fades either the scandal or the brand for a while. As time goes by, with the massive amounts of information they take in every day, consumers are likely to forget the scandal.

If you strictly follow these two steps, it is likely the scandal will eventually pass.

The post China Marketing Case Study: How Coach Won Back Consumers After a Scandal appeared first on China Marketing Insights.

Will this just pass or is it a turning point? Will Chinese brands be able to capitalize on this massive opportunity? 

The Scandal 

On March 24, Chinese netizens unearthed and posted a Statement on Due Diligence published by H&M last year saying it would never use cotton from Xinjiang Province over forced labor concerns. 

With support from government media outlets and China’s Communist Youth League, the posts quickly went viral and began trending on Weibo’s hot topics board. Main ecommerce platforms such as Taobao, JD and Pinduoduo removed H&M products and Huawei directly banned H&M’s app from being downloaded. 

A related topic called “I support Xinjiang’s cotton” (#我支持新疆棉花) received over 1.8 billion views on Weibo within a day. 

Other Brands Started Coming Under Fire 

After the H&M news came out, people kept digging deeper and found out a non-profit group called Better Cotton Initiative (BCI), that gives sustainability accreditation to businesses, had stopped licensing activities in Xinjiang and that many other international brands had been working with BCI or had also published pledges to avoid using Xinjiang cotton. One of these was Nike. 

Nike Boycott

In the statement, Nike was asking its suppliers not to use cotton produced in Xinjiang. All of a sudden, people moved their target to Nike and now the related statement on Nike’s official website can no longer be accessed. 

One of China’s hottest young celebrities, Wang Yibo, who often appeared in Nike campaigns and even had an offline event with Nike scheduled for March 26, quickly and publicly terminated his collaboration with the brand. With 38M followers on Weibo this announcement drew swarms of attention. Following Wang, another Chinese celebrity, Tan Songyun (谭松韵) also made the announcement to stop her collaboration with the brand. 

The whole scandal was like fire and it spread very quickly. Many other international brands, such as Uniqlo, ZARA, Pull & Bear, Adidas, IKEA and more were found to have similar announcements. 

Today, popular video game Honor of Kings announced it was cancelling its much awaited collaboration with Burberry. Only days after the new skins Burberry designed for the game had been revealed to much fanfare. 

Consumers Rally Behind Chinese Brands 

Similar incidents have occurred in the past.

For example a political scandal that started with luxury brand Versace in 2019. At that time, it classified Hong Kong and Taiwan as countries on its T-shirts. Then many other international brands were found to have similar designs. They came under fire for a while and celebrities and consumers were busy distancing themselves from these brands, like right now. 

But there are three things that make this situation different. One is that most incidents in the past have been related to Chinese maps and territories that are not in line with Chinese standards. This time, they are targeting an industry, or at least that is how it is being portrayed, with people online saying that these brands are “boycotting Xinjiang cotton, yet they want to make money in China?”

Xinjiang makes almost a fifth of the world’s cotton, so it’s obviously a significant industry in that region. 

The second difference is that the scandal that happened two years ago impacted mainly luxury brands. These are not affordable to everyone, so it impacted a smaller consumer group. But this time, these are brands that the majority of people would buy. H&M, Zara, Nike, Adidas, Uniqlo….I would bet any Chinese millennial or GenZ has at least one item from these brands if not many. 

And third…these brands have Chinese competitors.

When H&M got called out, people said, that’s ok, there are so many other influencer Taobao brands that offer similar clothing. Then when Nike got called out, people were saying there were many other sports brands, especially domestic brands to choose from, such as LiNing and Anta. 

When he heard about the incident, my fellow CMI content creator Hank Zhang agreed. “If this had happened several years ago, Nike wouldn’t have to worry so much. But now people’s opinions of Chinese brands have changed. It’s cool to wear homegrown brands like LiNing and Anta. So people have an easy alternative.” 

LiNing & Anta Benefitting From Nike Boycott

LiNing has already benefited greatly from the scandal. After all of this started happening, netizens noticed that some LiNing apparel even boldly calls out that it uses cotton from Xinjiang. On the comment area under related Weibo posts, people were saying they would definitely support Li Ning and other domestic brands. On March 25, only a day after the scandal began, its stock price rose 7%. 

Besides the rise in stock price, Li Ning’s livestream on Douyin on March 24 saw a huge boost. Its official Douyin account “李宁体育” achieved average sales of 300k RMB/day in the past 30 days. But on that evening, it managed to achieved over 3M RMB in a single night. 

Another sports giant, Anta, which is actually the third largest sports group in the world, was originally under fire because Fila, which it acquired many years ago, was a member of BCI. However, it didn’t get affected by the scandal too much. It reacted quickly and made an official announcement on March 24 saying it was in the process of exiting the organization and it would keep using Xinjiang cotton. 

Chinese netizens showed great support for Anta’s decision and were commenting “support domestic brands” on Anta’s livestream. It is estimated that on the evening of March 24, Anta’s livestream room on Douyin managed to achieve nearly 2M RMB. This is also a big leap from its usual performance of around 800k RMB. 

Other domestic brands spotted this trend and grasped the opportunity to show their support for domestic materials. Another sports brand did something creative. ERKE (鸿星尔克) tagged Wang Yibo (the celebrity that left Nike) on Weibo and invited him to be its ambassador. The post quickly showed up on Weibo’s hot topic ranking board. I haven’t seen the brand for a while and it was a little bit surprising to see how it made use of the scandal to promote itself.  

Our Takeaway 

Even while I am writing this article, it is being discovered that there are more and more international brands that have made the announcement to boycott Xinjiang cotton, including Burberry, Calvin Klein, New Balance and Puma. Following these findings are correspondent celebrities’ Weibo announcement saying they would permanently discontinue their collaboration with those brands, and those are top celebrities. 

To be honest, I am shocked as I never expected this scandal would go out of control like this.

This is a complicated issue but it comes down to the fact that brands should respect China and Chinese consumers if they want to earn money from us. I think that’s the bottom line and common sense in every country. 

You can’t do one thing to please one market that is offensive to another. And you can’t assume that we will see issues the way that people in other countries will. 

The Chinese market is indeed growing so quickly but behind the growing consumption ability of Chinese consumers is our ego and need to be respected. If brands think making money out of Chinese consumers is easy, then they are wrong. We may want the best quality and name brands, but we also won’t allow a brand to show disrespectful signs towards our country.  

This may eventually pass over like all the other scandals have. But it will really depend on how these brands respond and how they choose to act. Either way, I think this will have a long lasting impact on the future of Chinese fashion brands who will definitely be seeing more support from consumers over the months to come. 

Read more：

终止与NIKE的一切合作！一个接一个！

耐克也被曝光，王一博谭松韵：终止合作

真相大白！起底H&M背后的魑魅魍魉

The post Boycotts of H&M, Nike, and Others Creates Massive Opportunity for Chinese Brands Like LiNing appeared first on China Marketing Insights.

After Grace bravely revealed Show’s scandal, she gained a lot of positive attention and her career started to take off including a photo shoot for BAZAAR and becoming the Chinese ambassador for By Far, a niche Bulgarian luxury bag brand that was very popular among It girls last year.

At the end of 2020, she became one of the core cast members of Chinese reality TV show Fourtry, alongside famous stars such as Ouyang Nana and Fan Chengcheng.

She now has 11M followers on her Weibo and the average likes for her posts are around 10k to 12k.

On January 20, Grace launched her clean beauty brand Code Mint (纨素之肤) with lipsticks, blush and highlighter. The average price of her products ranges from $10 – $24, which is very affordable for either university students or people who just graduate and start their careers.

Code Mint is Tapping into Clean Beauty

First, what is clean beauty? To become a clean beauty product, two main criteria must be met: clean ingredients and transparent labels. Clean ingredients mean that products that you are using are not risky to your health. Transparent labels, for example, not including fragrance in beauty products or labelling buzzwords such as “natural” or “eco” while actually the product is not.

In China, the concept of clean beauty is still in its early stages and consumers need to be educated, and Grace believes that this is a trend that Chinese consumers will chase after in the near future.

This seems likely as more and more young Chinese consumers are paying closer attention to their health and wellbeing post-COVID, and this includes what they put on their skin.

How Does Grace Introduce Her Beauty Brand?

Weibo is Grace’s main promotion platform, where she has 11M followers. She started to mention the brand since the end of December 2020. Grace also has another secondary Weibo account, which is called Xiaohao (小号, small account) in Chinese.

Compared with her big account which is more polished, she often posts daily life and her feelings on the small account, which has 896k followers so far. The small account revealed her contribution for the brand and Grace sources the account’s followers for advice on which lipstick shade to launch and tells them what process she’s after.

I have to say she’s very smart. First, the majority of people who follow her small account are her loyal followers who want to see more of the daily life of Grace. Second, she keeps telling followers how her team works on this project. As a follower, it feels like I am growing with the brand together. This helps Code Mint to build closer relationship with its customers even prior to launch.

Back to her big account, Grace officially announced the brand on the last day of 2020 when she posted a saying-goodbye-to-2020 Weibo. In the post she mentioned she used to be heavily committed to her relationship with Show Lo, and didn’t focus much on her own career.

Following this, Grace posted 8 Weibo each day from January 1-8. In those posts, she introduced main members of her team, why she named the brand Code Mint, how she worked with a Swedish designer team, whom she paid 500k RMB for designing the logo and packaging and how she interprets the slogan of Code Mint. Every post is so long but they are easy to understand. From those posts, you spot an extremely hard-working and enthusiastic woman who loves her career and beauty so much. Her genuine love and enthusiasm for the brand and the work she is doing shines through.

After Code Mint was officially launched, Grace promoted her brand by working with beauty KOLs. Not only does she have them post about the product, but when they do, she interacts with them on Weibo, for example, by reposting their posts mentioning the brand and writes 1-2 sentences saying nice thing about the KOL. So she actually drives more attention and traffic to the KOL and helps them grow their following as well. Besides this, Grace uses her products in public all the time, for example on the set of Fourtry 2 (潮流合伙人2) or when filming for magazines. Many followers leave comments asking what lipstick shade she was wearing or whether she was wearing Code Mint’s highlighter on the show.

Comments

While Grace has many loyal fans, she has many haters as well, and most of them are loyal fans of her ex-boyfriend Show Lo, whose career in Mainland China was destroyed because of what Grace revealed.

In general, Code Mint is liked by many girls, but there are also negative voices saying its products are not high quality, and some satire Grace’s spending on hiring the Swedish designer team. They are saying Code Mint’s packaging is plagiarized and it is very similar to a Korean beauty brand 3CE.

It seems like Grace is very committed to the brand and she’s not like other KOLs or celebrities who have a third party to handle everything and the brand only has their names on it. Based on Grace’s attitude, I am quite optimistic about the brand. But the beauty market is getting very saturated, and I am not sure whether Code Mint can break out from fierce competition. The brand only launched a little over 2 months ago so it is too early to tell.  

Read more:

Clean beauty in China: Can influencer Grace Chow help drive awareness of category with new brand?

周扬青个人美妆品牌Code Mint将上市，明星热衷跨界美妆待解研发难题

The post From Influencer, to Celebrity, to CEO of a Clean Beauty Brand: Grace Chow Rewrote Her Story appeared first on China Marketing Insights.

All of a sudden, this joke went viral and Starbucks reacted very quickly with it. The brand posted on Weibo inviting people to join its Qifen Zu. All they needed to do was post on their WeChat moments saying “I want to join Qifen Zu”, take a screenshot of it and post it on Weibo, and tag Starbucks. If they were selected by Starbucks, they would be given coupons and other bonuses.

Many Offline Businesses in China Leverage Qifen Zu 

While Starbucks’ Qifen Zu is organic, and unpaid, many businesses in China actually pay for people to make their stores and restaurants look busy.

For example, pubs. They hire people to run to the floor first when the music comes on and dance crazily. These people, the “Qifen Zu” are there to create the atmosphere that everyone is joining and don’t be shy and hesitant. Most of them are post-00s, because they are young and energetic, and they’d love to have a drink as well. 

Bubble tea stores also love using this tactic to create the image that people are desperate to buy their drinks. A store called Chazhilan (茶芝兰) in Shanghai hired more than 30 people to pretend to be its consumers and line up in front of the store on its first opening day. Every 15 minutes, there were two people called to line up to make sure that there were always people waiting in line.

The real estate industry uses Qifen Zu as well. On the day when a company launches new apartments, it will hire a bunch of people who are dressed nicely to visit the property and pretend to be interested in the apartments. It is faking the image that everyone wants to buy an apartment here, and giving people a sense of scarcity and urgency.

Online Qifen Zu 

This tactic is also often used online, the most common Qifen Zu that we see every day is the comment section of a Xiaohongshu advertisement or Taobao or Tmall listing. Many brands hire people to pretend to be customers and leave nice comments to guide real customers’ purchasing decisions. There are even companies that run this Qifen business. If the owner of the store wants a positive comment, it requires 100 RMB. 

Not only for brands, Qifen Zu also applies for celebrities or KOLs. They hire fake fans sometimes, to increase their popularity.

Conclusion:

While some may feel that this tactic is fake or misleading, in China it is a very common practice often used to jumpstart the popularity of an offline store or to grow an account or drive traffic to a product online. But brands need to pay attention to its limits. Don’t overuse this tactic.

Read more: 四周都是“气氛组”，只有你是傻白甜

The post New Viral Phrase You Need to Know: Qifen Zu (气氛组) appeared first on China Marketing Insights.

According to DT Finance (DT财经), the TOP 10 most popular male ambassadors from 2019-2020 are: 

1. Wang Yibo (王一博)
2. Deng Lun (邓伦)
3. Jackson Yee (易烊千玺)
4. Li Xian (李现)
5. Wang Junkai (王俊凯)
6. Zhou Zhennan (周震南)
7. Hua Chenyu (华晨宇)
8. Justin Huang (黄明昊)
9. Lay Zhang (张艺兴)
10. Xiao Zhan (肖战)

In order to take full advantage of the fan economy and be able to work with multiple ambassadors, brands in China use all sorts of titles for different levels of celebrity partnerships. For example, brand ambassador is biggest partnership and they might only have one of these, “brand friend” would come after brand ambassador and you might have several of these, and then specific products or departments may have their own ambassadors, for example YSL vs. YSL Beauty.  

As seen by the image above, only a couple years ago, the majority of the current TOP10 male idols were not on the ambassador ranking board. Consumers are changing and so are their favorite male idols. Girls change their “husband” along with every new TV series.

Only three of the top 10 male idols in 2017-2018 are still on the ranking board today. And it’s likely that many of the top idols from 2019-2020 won’t be on the ranking board 2 years from now. We can see in the chart below that many of the top names seemed to have peaked in 2019, and some new names such as famous actress Fan Bingbing’s brother Fan Chengcheng, singer Cai Xukun, and actor Song Weilong are rising fast.

Types of Brands

The most popular product categories they represent are food and beverage, skincare and personal care, apps/services such as Didi (Chinese Uber) and food delivery platform Eleme (饿了么). 

When it comes to luxury, brands are more cautious selecting ambassadors. At the moment, among the top 10, only Jackson Yee (易烊千玺) and Lay Zhang (张艺兴) have been sponsored by luxury brands.

The Top 10:

So who are these top male idols? Let’s take a closer look!

Wang Yibo (王一博)

Wang Yibo is in a Korean-Chinese boyband UNIQ and he is also known for his identity as a motorcycle racer. Wang became extremely popular because of a TV series he starred in which is called The Untamed (陈情令) and a street dance battle show called Street Dance of China (这就是街舞). Wang has 36M followers on Weibo, and he is the ambassador for 23 brands, 6 brand’s faces (品牌大使) and 4 brand’s friends.

Deng Lun (邓伦)

Deng Lun is an actor and a permanent guest for a trendy reality TV show Great Escape. Deng ranked 34 on 2020 Forbes Chinese Celebrity List.

Jackson Yee (易烊千玺)

Jackson is super popular in China, especially among girls. He was born in 2000 and has 86.3M followers on Weibo. Jackson is known for being a member of a Chinese boy band TFBOYS. He is a good singer and a good dancer. He also shows great talent in acting. Better Days (少年的你), the first movie that Jackson starred in, has won many movie awards and nominations.

His large follower base and his excellent performance and image have earned him ambassadorships from many brands, including luxury brands such as Tiffany, BMW and Armani Beauty. He ranked No.1 on 2020 Forbes Chinese Celebrity List.

Li Xian (李现)

Li Xian is a Chinese actor. His is best-known for his role in the extremely popular drama Go Go Squid! (亲爱的，热爱的).

Wang Junkai (王俊凯)

The same as Jackson Yee, Wang is also from the boy band TFBOYS and he is the leader of the group. Wang is also a good actor, his best-known movie is Miracles of the Namiya General Store.

Zhou Zhengnan (周震南)

Well, I suppose we won’t see this name in next year’s ranking as he was involved in a massive scandal recently. Zhou is a singer and dancer and comes from a wealthy family in the real estate business.

In October, it was reported that his parents were deceiving customers by taking their payments but not offering them apartments to live in. This irritated many people and Zhou hasn’t posted anything since October 26 when he posted an apology on Weibo.

Hua Chenyu (华晨宇)

Hua Chenyu, also known as Hua Hua (花花), is a Chinese singer and a song writer who is known for his powerful vocals, wide vocal range, dramatic stage performances and skill in composing. He is one of the most influential singer-songwriters in China.

Justin Huang (黄明昊)

Justin is a singer, dancer and rapper. He attended a reality TV show called Idol Producer (偶像练习生) and successfully joined the male group Nine Percent. He is currently a member of the group YUEHUA’s Next.

Lay Zhang (张艺兴)

Lay, is the former member of a popular Korean boys group EXO. He is a singer, songwriter, rapper, record producer, director, dancer and writer. He was known because of a reality TV show called Go Fighting! (极限挑战). Lay ranked 5th on Forbes China Celebrity 100 in 2020.

Xiao Zhan or Sean Xiao (肖战)

Unfortunately for Xiao, it is also highly possible he will not be on the list next year. Xiao is a singer and an actor. His best-known work is the TV series called The Untamed (陈情令). In February, he was criticized for allowing his diehard fans to report platforms that didn’t create beneficial content for Xiao and it led to the breakdown of those platforms.

Read more: 品牌爸爸最爱的流量男明星，我们找到了

The post The Top 10 Chinese Male Idols With the Most Brand Ambassadorships in 2019-2020 appeared first on China Marketing Insights.

The brand was founded in 2013 in Changsha (长沙), Hunan Province. What’s interesting about the brand is that, though it is super popular among consumers, especially young people, in its 7 years in business it has never expanded beyond Changsha. Only weeks ago it finally opened a store in nearby Wuhan, not those first tier cities like Shenzhen or Shanghai, but a second tier city Wuhan. And they have plans for 2 more stores in Wuhan.

How popular is Chayan Yuese? 

According to China Business Network (第一财经), Chayan is the most liked brand among consumers. Only 1.34% of consumers that have had it don’t like it while 8.56% of consumers don’t like Hey Tea. 

Changsha is famous for its stinky tofu (臭豆腐), the Orange Island and the Yuelu Mountain (岳麓山). People are saying Chayan is Changsha’s fourth name card because it is so good and has been always staying in Changsha for so long. For many people who visit Changsha, Chayan is in their to-do-list, and in fact, many people go to Changsha just to have a taste of Chayan. 

How does Chayan differentiate itself from the big players? 

The taste is the first thing that helped Chayan gain so much popularity among consumers. Those ingredients are carefully selected. The second thing is the service. It can be compared with the hotpot restaurant Haidilao’s (海底捞) service. Staff will always tell you that the drink will taste better if you have the nuts and cream first, and then drink the tea. Customers also have the right to have another one for free if they feel like the one that they’ve gotten doesn’t taste very good. 

While Hey Tea and Nayuki’s images in many consumers’ eyes are more like wanghong, Chayan is very approachable and down-to-earth. Chayan has around 300 stores and the number for Hey Tea and Nayuki are both around 400. However Chayan’s stores are only located in Changsha at the moment, so in many spots, almost every 50 meters there is a Chayan store. 

Chayan’s WeChat articles are also very cute. They are like a friend briefing you on what’s happened recently. For example, the orange goes bad, what “s/he” had for lunch or what happened today. Those articles are written in the tone of Chayan’s employees. 

The receipts that they give to customers are also very fun. Some of them are saying how’s it going with the company, and one time, the receipt went on Weibo’s hot topic ranking board because at that time many brands are copying Chayan and on the receipt it said “once we have enough budget, we will sue these brands” (等我们有钱了就去告他们). It really feels like this is your friend or your neighbours talking to you about small and casual things.

Accidental Collaboration with Hey Tea

In March this year, Chayan and Hey Tea went viral due to a Weibo lucky draw activity started by Hey Tea. A Weibo user @等一杯茶颜悦色 (waiting for a cup of Chayan Yuese) won the prize provided by Hey Tea. In the comment area, people were joking that Chayan and Hey Tea were coupling. “CP” or “coupling” is a trendy term in China and has been leveraged by many brands in China as a marketing tactic. Check out this article to learn more about it. Chayan’s logo is a drawing of a Chinese woman, and Hey Tea’s logo is a cartoon of a Chinese boy, so netizens were joking that the Hey Tea boy liked the Chayan girl.

To leverage this viral accident and continue the joke, Chayan and Hey Tea had a collaboration in July. Hey Tea’s team visited Chanyan’s team in Changsha. They tasted local food and went to local landmarks. Together, they launched a co-branded box which had a key chain, a sticker and a glass bottle.

It might seem odd that two brands which are competitors working together. But in fact, this is a smart for tactic for both. It is such an unusual collaboration that created lots of social media buzz and grabbed consumers’ attention. They were guiding traffic for each other.

Read more: 茶颜悦色为什么蜗居长沙？

阿喜长沙会茶颜，得闲饮茶

The post A Low-key New Tea Player: Chayan Yuese appeared first on China Marketing Insights.

But what is unique to China is just how people are staging these images and creating these fake realities. In China the fastest way to appear rich on social media is, of course, a WeChat group.

The news that has everyone buzzing is a WeChat group called Shanghai Debutante that cost 500 RMB to join, filled with other people that have the same dream: to tell the world that they are living a high-end life and that they are socialites.

Appearing wealthy on social media

In these groups, people organize photo shoots with each other, split the costs of renting hotel rooms, luxury bags, etc. 

For example, a wanghong hotel in China is the Bulgari hotel in Shanghai. Girls like to take the following images:

• Wearing the Bulgari towels lying on the bed
• Having afternoon tea with the Oriental Pearl in the back
• Their breakfast
• Celebrating their birthday at the hotel

When they are taking these photos, for example wearing the Bvgalri towel or having afternoon tea or having breakfast, they follow strict rules not to make the towel wet and not to actually eat the food so that everyone gets a chance to pose with it. 

In the group, people also share the cost of renting a Ferrari for a day to take pictures with it.

On the Internet, these fake socialites are also called “Pinduoduo socialites” for their use of group buying tactics.

Appearing wealthy in real life

But it’s not all about the pictures, it’s also about real life too. One member might be renting a Hermes bag for a month, but she only wants to carry it for a few days so she asks other members whether any of them would like to share the bill and carry it for the rest of the month.

Some group members even go so far as to ask if others would like to share a pair of second-hand Gucci silk stockings.

Some people use these groups to build their social media following, while others do this because they want to show others that they are living well and they want to get into a relationship with a rich person.

For example, a screenshot from one of the groups showed a girl sharing her experience of a date. In the end she found out that the boy only drove a BMW and she dumped him. Because she was looking for someone who drove a Ferrari at least. Crazy!

What does this mean for brands?

Is it really important to show people that they are living well? Not exactly. The core reason people do this is the Internet traffic. The main way for these “socialites” to monetize is to get sponsorships from brands or to do ecommerce livestreams. To do this, traffic is what they need. So instead of purchasing fake followers, which brands are becoming more savvy at catching, they want to gain real followers by pretending to have a life that their followers aspire to.

Since these images can help them gain traffic, it shows that Chinese Internet users love seeing something sophisticated and they have great curiosity to see behind the scenes in the lives of a socialites.

In this scandal, brands are not exactly the victims. They get more exposure, for example, the Shanghai Bulgari hotel and many high-end afternoon tea places. But at the same time, if I see someone post about staying at the hotel on Xiaohongshu or I see someone carrying a Dior bag taking photos when having afternoon tea, I can’t help questioning the reality of it.

Read more:

我潜伏上海“名媛”群，做了半个月的名媛观察者

上海名媛算个毛，我扒一下流水线的高富帅，包你大开眼界

The post Wannabe Socialites Leveraging WeChat Groups to Build Their Fake Lives appeared first on China Marketing Insights.

With COVID19 decimating the world economy, this year’s Qixi (七夕, Chinese Valentine’s Day) was one of the busiest ever as brands sought to leverage China’s quick recovery to make up lost earnings. Brands that never had never before joined the revelry tested the water this year, for example Belgian fine leather brand Delvaux.

When Gucci first launched its Qixi collection which is featured in apples, I thought who would buy such a thing? It doesn’t look good. But as Gucci’s Qixi campaign began to unfold, it grew on me, and I would go as far to say that Gucci had the best Qixi campaign of 2020. I know Qixi has long since past, but I think the learnings we can take from Gucci’s campaign are valuable at any time of the year.

Now first and foremost, I felt that Gucci demonstrated a lot of sincerity by creating a whole collection instead of just a few accessories or simply titling other collections as a Qixi collection. What’s more, the Qixi collection included a wide range of items from bags and clothes to accessories.

Why apple?

At first I found it very odd that Gucci chose an apple as the symbol for the collection as apples have no symbolic meaning of love in China and I felt like maybe Gucci was misinterpreting the holiday. However, Gucci did their homework and was aware that apples didn’t symbolize love in China, instead, Gucci designer Alessandro Michele, said he drew the inspiration from ancient Greek stories about Hera and Gaia. In this story, the apple does represent love.

What’s more, compared with a traditional heart shape and Balenciaga’s I Love You “我爱你” bags, Gucci’s apple design is low-key, and it is something that customers are able to use even it is not Valentine’s Day.

A 25-day Campaign to Drive Home the Apple Theme

To make sure that consumers understood the apple design, Gucci ran a 3-week campaign across all major Chinese social media platforms. Gucci also designed a slogan called “I Apple U”, meaning I love you to go along with the campaign.

On July 31, Gucci announced this collection on its official WeChat account. The article shows an animation of the apple turning from green to red and finally with the double G on it. The red color represents the passion in relationships, and the green color stands for youth, while the Double G makes the total look cuter. By the end of that day, the article had over 300k views. On its Weibo account, the video was posted and by the end of the same week, it had 700k views.

After the announcement, on August 10, Gucci published a series of 7 mini romantic movies starring six young idols (林彦俊 & 赵露思，胡一天 & 姜贞羽，丁禹兮 & 周洁琼). The films were set at a school campus, a library and a CD store. These places are nostalgic for most post-80s and post-90s consumers, and they are also places that as a student, you must have been to. Ny the end of the campaign, total video views surpassed 16.7 million.

Customizing Campaign Content for Each Social Channel

Gucci also customized its marketing tactics to fit each social media platform:

Weibo: Weibo is a platform that gathers lots of young idols and where fans find information about their idols. In the end of every romantic small video, Gucci gave viewers right to vote which ending would they like it to be. And on the next day, Gucci announced the result. This is getting viewers more involved and engaged in the campaign.

Douyin: Different from Weibo, Gucci didn’t post complete videos on the platform. Instead it shared behind-the-scene footage. They are very natural and fun. These entertaining scenes appeal to Douyin users a lot.

Xiaohongshu: Gucci opened a Qixi pop-up store on Xiaohongshu. Compared with other platforms, the brand’s Xiaohongshu content was more focused on product introduction and description. It also worked with Xiaohongshu top KOLs such as @大睿睿, aiming to show consumers how they could style this collection in their everyday lives.

Offline: Gucci also decked out its offline stores with the apple pattern which was very eye-catching and social media worthy.

Conclusion:

In summary, Gucci won Qixi by demonstrating a clear commitment to and understanding of Chinese consumers, creating a custom collection with a story behind it, employing celebrities popular among their target consumer base to bring the collection to life, and launching marketing campaigns thoughtfully customized to suit each social media platform.

Read more:

“苹果”的力量让爱情成真，Gucci靠什么成为七夕奢侈品赢家？

Gucci七夕情人节系列全新上市

The post Case Study: How Gucci Won Qixi appeared first on China Marketing Insights.

On July 21, a huge scandal lit up Weibo’s hot topic ranking board. Yamy, former captain of a girl’s group Rocket Girls 101, released a video with audio of her former boss Xu Zhaoyang(徐明朝) harshly criticizing the her appearance in front of her colleagues, telling them Yamy looked really ugly and that she has poor style and taste.

Now we all know the entertainment industry is harsh, but Xu’s comments were brutal, and they were said publicly. What’s more, it is highly likely this isn’t the first, nor the last, time he will speak and treat people this way. This recording set off not one, but two major discussions across the internet:

1. The changing definitions of beauty in China and the greater acceptance towards people who don’t fit traditional beauty norms
2. The prevalence of 职场PUA or workplace pick-up-artists and toxic work environments in China.

Changing Beauty Aesthetics

Yamy has a very distinctive look. She got what Chinese people refer to as phoenix eyes. It’s the opposite of the very popular wanghong look, or the look you see among many Chinese celebrities with big eyes and the more Western double eyelid. But while many people may not find it beautiful, this look is also what makes her stand out among all the other artists.

Under Yamy’s post there are so many supportive voices telling Yamy to be confident and “stand up!” and “be yourself!” And of course, many people are condemning Xu’s behavior.

From this scandal, one thing for sure is that, people’s definition of beauty in China is expanding. We used to place so much value on double eyelids, big eyes, a pointed nose and white skin. And a couple years ago everyone we saw in the media fit that one definition of beauty.

But now, if you take a look at the models and celebrities that are currently trendy, you’ll notice that the confines are slowly being broken. For example, singer and model Lexie Liu (刘柏辛), her looks are considered unusual because she has very thick lips and a big forehead, but she is featured all over fashion magazines and is also a brand ambassador for C-beauty brand Colorkey.

Then there is Jin Jing(金靖), who also has smaller eyes similar to Yamy and a “beauty mark” above her mouth, which many people say reminds them of a matchmaker in olden times. She is a very talented and entertaining actress with over 1.8M followers on Weibo.

These are only a few of the celebrities that are breaking the mold and and based on netizens’ support of Yamy I predict we’ll see more non-traditional celebrities in the future.

Toxic workplace culture

But the even hotter topic that has come out of Yamy’s scandal is discussion around the prevalence of toxic work environments in China, particularly what people refer to as 职场PUA. 职场PUA or ‘workplace pickup artist’ is a Chinese slang term for bad bosses and managers who don’t understand how to be a leader and think that yelling and losing your temper at your employees is a way to demonstrate your power.

Hearing the way that Xu treated Yamy unfortunately resonated with and overwhelming number of people, who began discussing their personal experiences with bad managers and bosses. So much so that the topic 职场PUA made it onto Weibo’s hot topics board.

Numerous Chinese media outlets and KOLs have chimed in on the issue as well including popular WeChat account 末那大叔 and fashion and beauty influencer 徐老师 or Teacher Xu. Xu actually filmed a video where she and her husband called fans who had submitted their stories about their bad workplace experiences and had then recount their stories and give advice to fans and viewers about how to handle these types of situations.

Read More:

被嘲讽的「Yamy们」

Yamy’s Weibo post

职场PUA，毁了多少年轻人

The post Celeb Scandal Reveals Changing Beauty Aesthetics and Prevalence of Toxic Leadership appeared first on China Marketing Insights.

Over the past couple years, there has been rising interest among young Chinese consumers in domestic brands and products that incorporate Chinese traditional design style and elements, a trend dubbed GuoChao or “China Wave”. While some brands have gotten creative with their designs, many have been lazy. Take for example this image below of lipstick collections from four different Chinese cosmetics brands. 

While these items may do well, as this guochao trend matures, consumers are going to eventually become fatigued and brands will need to move away from some of the overused cultural symbols such as dragons and peonies and think a bit deeper about the meaning of the items they are putting out. 

A great example of this is the massively popular “Fancy Carp” (more accurately translated as koi) collection launched by leading Chinese cosmetics brand Perfect Diary in June, right ahead of the 618 shopping festival. The collection includes an eyeshadow palette, highlighter, and lipstick inspired by koi fish and was part of their ongoing series of animal inspired products in partnership with Discovery. 

But the choice of koi wasn’t chosen arbitrarily – koi has great significance in Chinese culture. 

The most popular fish motif found in traditional Chinese art and culture is the Koi fish. To Chinese people, Koi symbolizes wealth, strength and perseverance, and also a symbol for good luck and best wishes. 

The first half of 2020 has not been easy, yet despite the hardships, Chinese people have remained optimistic and  are trying to finish the rest of the year strong. By launching this koi set, it implies that Perfect Diary hopes to bring good luck and a message of optimism to their fans and consumers. 

Besides creating a well-thought out product, Perfect Diary ran numerous marketing campaigns to support the product launch:

East-West Collaboration

To kick off the launch, Perfect Diary worked with nine famous overseas makeup artists, including Hollywood celebrity makeup artist Kristina Vidic and 2020 Paris Spring/Summer Fashion Week makeup artist Chiao Li HSu, who each created their own Koi inspired makeup looks using products from the set. 

Perfect Diary also collaborated with several top-tier Chinese KOLs including @彭特务, a top-tier Beauty KOL in China, with 4 million followers on Weibo. @彭特务 created two looks, one very fiery and intense, and the other glowing and shimmery. To date, her Weibo post has received nearly 2 million views, 12k reposts, over 8k comments, and 50k likes. 

Popular Celebrities as Product Ambassadors

Perfect Diary then drove even more traffic to the campaign by inviting popular celebrities, for example Tianai Zhang (a Chinese actress and model), Yunxi Luo (a Chinese actor and singer) and Zhengting Zhu (a member of boy band Nine Percent), to become “Koi Star Ambassadors” (锦鲤星推官). This is a new trend in China, instead of only working with one celebrity as the brand ambassador, they reach larger audiences and diversify risk by having celebrities become ambassadors for individual product lines. 

Besides posting on social media, Perfect Diary invited the celebrities to join their Douyin live streams. The interactions between fans and stars during the live streaming helped to promote the brand awareness, and those fans subconsciously became loyal customers of the brand.

Weibo #PerfectDiaryLuckyKoiMonth# hot topic

On Weibo, Perfect Diary then encouraged users to create their own Koi looks and post pictures with the hashtag #PerfectDiaryKoiMonth# or #完美日记锦鲤月#. Inspired by the looks created by makeup artists and KOLs, many everyday consumers also wanted to participate in the Koi trend. To date, the Weibo topic has accumulated 150 million views, 713K comments, and 815 original posts. 

Key Takeaway

Adopting the slogan “If you see Koi, Luck will come”, Perfect Diary took the Guochao trend to the next level by incorporating a traditional Chinese luck symbol into their products right at a time when most people feel they could use a little extra luck in their lives! 

The post Perfect Diary Koi Collection Designed to Bring Luck in a Year That Needs It appeared first on China Marketing Insights.