Brands Go Digital and Get Creative For "Goddess Day”
Plus: A shoppable reality show, influencer health warnings, and inspirational undies.
In China, International Women’s Day on March 8 has gone from being a socialist holiday to (yet another) shopping festival. With store traffic still in the doldrums due to the coronavirus, this year brands are flocking to digital outlets to reach female consumers with limited-edition products, gift boxes, and content-driven marketing. Alibaba’s Tmall has emerged as a key driver of e-commerce activity around Women’s Day, which has been rebranded with new names such as “Queen’s Day” and “Goddess Day” by various platforms.
Tmall’s “warm-up” campaign for Women’s Day involved recruiting four actresses to create a “Girlfriend Team” to share product recommendations — with a focus on the beauty, personal care and sportswear categories — and promoting a “love yourself” vibe. Tmall also created a hashtag on Weibo to encourage consumers to interact with the celebrities and post their own recommendations, which has already drawn 610 million views and 3 million comments.
Several brands have launched campaigns that celebrate both Women’s Day and cherry blossom season. Following last year’s viral limited-edition cat’s paw cups, Starbucks is partnering with Tmall this year to promote a line of cherry blossom-themed products for International Women’s Day on March 8, including a pink mug topped with a lid in the shape of Tmall’s cat-ear logo. While Starbucks has reopened most of its stores across China after shuttering roughly half of the 4,300 outlets in late January, there may be a decline in footfall for some time to come, and the brand is stepping up its online activities to stay digitally connected with consumers in the meantime.
Also making the cherry blossom/Women’s Day connection, Converse released a highly coveted line of pink sneakers, clothing and accessories with an ad campaign starring musician and vlogger Ouyang Nana, whose status as an influencer has helped propel the brand’s widespread popularity in China through previous collaborations.
We recently noted how e-commerce livestreamer Li Jiaqi sells products via his broadcasts while keeping viewers entertained with his antics, plus regular appearances from celebrity guests and his adorable bichon frises. Now one of his pups has become the inspiration for a new product. Direct-to-consumer makeup brand Perfect Diary launched a 12-color eyeshadow palette featuring the pet’s visage, which was available through March 8 via Perfect Diary’s Tmall flagship store and Li Jiaqi’s livestream broadcasts, selling out within seconds. The makeup collaboration has a charitable component too, with Perfect Diary donating 1 yuan for each palette sold to an animal welfare nonprofit in Beijing.
During last year’s Singles’ Day, Estée Lauder’s campaign with the rising star Xiao Zhan helped fuel record sales for the brand, and for Women’s Day, another major beauty label is hoping to leverage his celebrity — even in the face of a fan-fueled controversy reported on by CCI earlier this week. Olay produced a series of short films with a romantic storyline that feature Olay products as an expression of Xiao’s feelings for his partner. Olay reportedly purchased the rights to the song performed by Xiao in the films (“You Are the Most Beautiful Scenery in This World,” 你是此生最美的风景), which he had previously sung during Douyin’s gala concert last year.
E-commerce Gets Back to Reality (Television)
E-commerce giant JD.com is the title sponsor of Mango TV’s “Welcome Back to Sound” (朋友请听好), a new reality show premised on a group of celebrities living together as they host a radio advice show. Since its debut in January, the series has received consistently high ratings, with 90 million views for its first episode, and a highly favorable score of 8.7 on review site Douban.
An undisputed star of the show is its setting: an airy, glass-enclosed mansion that many viewers have called their dream home, which is not only decorated with JD.com-logo items, but also provides an appealing backdrop for furnishings and other household products that can be purchased via JD.com as viewers watch the show. The e-commerce platform created a special “Welcome Back to Sound” page to showcase goods seen onscreen, and provides a portal for viewers to register for an opportunity to call in and speak to the stars of the show and obtain additional surprise benefits.
Among the recent crop of highly anticipated urban dramas, Tencent Video’s real-estate workplace series “I Will Find You a Better Home” (安家) has emerged as the clear winner, with its realistic depictions of family and work relationships and nuanced take on important social issues resonating with viewers and spurring discussions on social media.
Tencent leveraged the drama’s popularity to benefit brand sponsors of the series by launching a large-scale “Love + Alliance” campaign with nine brands including the LVMH-backed cosmetics label Marubi, Kabrita goat milk formula and mobile-phone maker Oppo. Tencent developed a series of posters, a short video and a hashtag (#爱家生活的仪式感#) that position the brands around a set of shared core values that are aligned with the drama’s focus on family, homes and following one’s dreams, creating opportunities for product placement and relatively seamless brand integration with the content of the series. The campaign reportedly reached nearly 38 million people within the first hour of its launch.
Sohu TV recently began airing the highly anticipated second season of “Well Intended Love” (奈何BOSS要娶我), which includes some extensive brand integration from domestic beauty label Inglepharm’s.
The rom-com’s female lead character, Xia Lin, is a B-list actress who pays a great deal of attention to her appearance and is often seen applying Inglepharm’s products as part of her elaborate makeup and skincare routines. Products are also displayed in the background of the dressing rooms on the series, which is where many of the romantic interactions between the Xia and partner Ling Yizhou take place.
The lead characters also appear on a “show-within-a-show” — a reality show called “Our Holiday” with Inglepharm’s as the title sponsor, and its logo and products are visible just about everywhere during the shooting scenes.
Beyond the series, lead actress Wang Shuang has been expressing her enthusiasm for Inglepharm’s via her official Weibo account, and has interacted with fans on the platform to discuss her favorite products.
Baidu Enlists Celebrities to Reject Wildlife Consumption
In response to evidence linking the coronavirus outbreak to the wildlife for sale at a Wuhan food market, on February 24 the Chinese government announced a comprehensive ban on the trade and consumption of wild game. Internet giant Baidu has stepped in with a public health campaign featuring numerous popular celebrities and influencers.
On Weibo, Baidu launched the hashtag “100 reasons for refusing to consume wildlife” (#拒绝野味的100个理由#) and kicked off the campaign with top celebrities such as Huang Xiaoming and Zhou Dongyu sharing their reasons for not eating wild game. “Wildlife consumption isn’t a delicacy, it’s a poison,” reads one. “Eating wildlife doesn’t show status, it shows ignorance,” reads another. Influencers and ordinary users have chimed in with their own reasons, including, simply, “you’ll die.”
A number of brands heeded Baidu’s call to spread the message through posters featuring their animal mascots, such as retailer Suning’s lion, travel platform Qunar’s camel and, interestingly, Playboy’s bunny, who asks “How can you eat a bunny, for bunnies are so cute!”
Baidu released a report on the coronavirus and banning wildlife consumption, and partnered with CCTV and health experts to create video content for distribution across platforms.
On its search engine, Baidu adjusted the autofill feature so that any queries related to “wildlife consumption” redirect users to a public health warning.
Brand Film Pick: Neiwai’s “No Body Is Nobody”
The venture-backed Chinese lingerie brand Neiwai has made a name for itself by offering minimalist designs produced with high-quality cotton fabrics, an aesthetic similar to the Swiss brand Hanro, geared towards independent-minded women who find luxury in comfort.
For this year’s Women’s Day campaign, the brand is challenging China’s rather rigid standards of female beauty with a message inspired by body positivity, a movement that has gained momentum in the West but has yet to make significant inroads in China. Neiwai invited photographer Luo Yang, whose own work has long focused on women’s bodies, to lead a project featuring six women of varying ages, body types and skin tones.
The fourteen-minute “No Body is Nobody” is a behind-the-scenes documentary of the process, with Luo and her subjects speaking candidly about their relationships with their bodies, their impressions of the others and how they have been perceived, a fitting theme given the brand’s name, which means “inside-outside” in Chinese.
Report Corner
We Are Social and Hootsuite’s Digital 2020 report on China is out, with loads of key stats on internet usage, social media and e-commerce.
GroupM reports that both Douyin and Kuaishou saw sustained increases in usage following their Lunar New Year’s Eve giveaways, with lower-tier cities a primary source of new users.
Media 360 shares 20 trends for 2020, including the ubiquity of video, the imperative for brands to develop original content and livestreaming as a driver of sales and social media integration.
News in English
Aspiration and emotion are two key qualities shared by the seemingly disparate fields of gaming and luxury fashion and beauty, but they help explain why so many brands are keen to get involved with esports. SCMP
Meanwhile, Tencent and Xiaomi-backed gadget firm Black Shark collaborated to release the first 5G gaming smartphone. KrAsia
A gallery of key influencer networks in Asia, including several that help brands expand their reach in China, such as Hi-Com, Parklu and AsiaKOL. Campaign Asia
More on how influencer platforms work with KOLs in Asia, including some key differences in the Chinese market. Campaign Asia
And thanks to Taobao’s promotion of rural livestreaming e-commerce, farmers can become influencers too. What’s on Weibo
Museums are breaking down their walls, so to speak, in order to engage and inspire housebound Chinese through social media and video platforms. Radii
Are online sales channels enough for beauty brands to offset the impact of store closures and the reduction in offline shopping activity due to the coronavirus? Glossy
What slowdown? Lego is doubling down on the Chinese market with plans to add 150 new stores in the country this year (the same number it opened there last year). WSJ
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