How to reach Chinese consumers effectively in North America?

By now, it’s no surprise that Chinese consumers offer a major marketing opportunity for brands and businesses in North America. Research shows that almost 1.2 million Chinese residents in Canada account for $61 billion in consumer spending. 

The question is — what is the most effective way to capture the Chinese audience? It is important to understand their purchase behaviours and media usage. A deep understanding of the nuances of Chinese culture, the language, and the media platforms is key to the success of your marketing strategy. 

Here are some tips for your brands to target Chinese consumers in North America:

1. Social media is an extremely powerful tool 

Image via Ecommerce China

Our most recommended channels include WeChat, Sina Weibo, Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book), TikTok, and online forums. These platforms hold most of the opportunities for your business to raise awareness and create leads with engaging marketing strategies.

WeChat is king for the Chinese audience, not Facebook or Instagram. Your brand should have a WeChat official account, acting almost similar to a traditional website. It offers a place for your business to post content, receive messages, build your brand, and create loyalty.

Weibo is often called the “Chinese Twitter”, and is a good mix of Facebook and Instagram. Xiaohongshu combines features of Amazon, Pinterest, and Instagram that allows its users not only to share lifestyle or product experience, but to purchase branded products. TikTok is a video-sharing platform with genres like dance, comedy, and education. 

Image via Walk the Chat

2. Offer information in Chinese and adapt your messaging 

Image via Hypebeast

This group prefers to consume content in their ethnic language. Chinese-language informational materials, such as printed messages, signs, and videos are more likely to be noticed and appreciated. 

Reaching this demographic requires more than just translation. They identify themselves mostly with Chinese culture. One of the most effective ways to promote your brand is to integrate Chinese traditional cultural elements into your marketing content.  

3. Work together with the local community

Image via JingDaily

Another effective marketing method is to create a group chat for gathering information and generating discussions on WeChat. 

Brands can also consider working with local Chinese KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders). They are influencers who are able to demonstrate and highlight products, giving more confidence to future buyers.

4. Understand tastes and preferences

Image via Barron’s

China's luxury market has proved unstoppable. They have shown to be high purchasing, especially in luxury retail. Reports show that the majority of Chinese, about 70 per cent, prefer their luxury spending overseas.

Doing adequate research into the styles, trends, and interests in the target demographic will help in tailoring the message (and products) to the Chinese audience. As well, understanding the mentality behind status and exclusivity can help drive marketing efforts.

At Spotlight West Communications, we help agencies and brands reach the large Chinese consumer market through websites and digital platforms. Experienced in identifying potential customers, trends, and purchasing habits, our team helps in developing online and offline marketing strategies. 

Connect with us at info@spotlightwest.ca or follow our social media accounts (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) to find out more about Chinese social trends or marketing tips!

The Complete Guide for your Mid-Autumn Festival marketing

Symbolizing the Chinese celebration of harvest and reunion, the Mid-Autumn Festival appears to be extra special this year — with China’s National Day and Golden Week all aligning at the same time. 

Having previously talked about the various traditions of the festival on our #SpotOn blog — we want to take time in 2020 to look at some intriguing examples of Mid-Autumn marketing ideas, from popular global brands.

Let’s start with Netflix’s collaboration with Pearl Studio and Lady M, the world-renowned luxury dessert brand, on an initiative to promote the upcoming animated musical Over the Moon. Fusing both Eastern and Western elements, the collaboration offers a limited-edition mooncake gift box housed in a lantern-shaped package, with a light-up feature and paper cutting details depicting scenes from the highly anticipated film. 

It’s a perfect balance of creative ideas, while showcasing the initiative and truly reflecting on the festival spirit.

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Netflix’s Mid-Autumn collaboration with Pearl Studio and Lady M

Branded gift boxes are indeed a great approach to secure publicity in a timely manner, while offering customers a memorable experience that’s closely associated with brand identity. 

Last year, mooncake packages from Loewe, Louis Vuitton, Tiffany & Co. and Fendi all made it into Weibo’s trending list, with their exquisitely designed gift boxes.

Loewe

Louis Vuitton

Tiffany & Co.

Fendi

American chocolatier Godiva also recently debuted their immersive pop-up at Fashion Zoo, an annual fashion exhibition in Shanghai. Featuring a golden colour palette that gives off some major autumn vibes, the photogenic space highlights their latest mooncake collections, which are artfully decorated with patterns of full moon and peony.

Godiva's Mid-Autumn Pop-up at Shanghai Fashion Zoo

Apart from branded gift boxes and pop-up activations, content creation also plays an extremely crucial role when it comes to engaging the Chinese market — especially with the younger demographics (mainly the millennials and Gen Z) who are always hungry for unique experiences and ideas. 

Luxury automobile companies such as BMW and Audi have all become skillfully adept at incorporating relevant Chinese trends into their marketing messaging — but no brand has come close so far to the trendsetter reputation that Durex China has established, with the mind-blowing creativity they continue to demonstrate each year.

Mid-Autumn Poster by BMW

Mid-Autumn Poster by Audi

Mid-Autumn Poster by Durex China

Feeling a bit inspired by these ideas? Are you trying to plan out marketing strategies for the rest of the year, to engage with more Chinese customers? Great news — we can help!

Talk to us about Chinese traditions, fun social media trends, or marketing tips to reach your desired Chinese demographics — just drop us a message at info@spotlightwest.ca, or say hello on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn!

Qixi Festival: A challenging Chinese holiday for global brands

Held on August 25 this year, Qixi Festival, the Chinese Valentine’s Day, is perfect for brands to focus on curating gift guides or releasing special edition themed items. 

The origin of this annual event is an ancient tale between two forbidden lovers — read more about it in our previous post — and is sometimes referred to as the Double Seventh Festival since it falls on the 7th day of the 7th Chinese lunar month. Most importantly, this day has grown in popularity for fashion and jewelry brands to target their promotions. 

Similar to the famous Single’s Day — which raked in USD $38 billion last year — brands are leveraging the Qixi Festival as a sales opportunity. 

Jewelry is becoming more sought-after for Chinese customers. China generates $5.8 billion of the global luxury jewelry market revenue and is also a major consumer of precious materials, such as gold and diamond. Men’s jewelry has also increased in popularity in Asia with millennials driving most of the sales in quality pieces as well as statement fashion accessories. 

With this in mind, Cartier released a video campaign that followed three different romantic relationships with the caption, “Trinity rings, witnessing all sorts of love and emotions in the world”, to promote a Cartier classic, the Trinity ring, that has three gold bands symbolically intertwined together.

Conflicting with Cartier’s message, Chinese e-commerce site Tmall included captions that described the two men as father and son, and a female couple as friends, much to the disappointment of many online users and the LGBTQ community.

Although they acknowledged that Cartier made an effort to showcase diverse relationships, the confusion surrounding the campaign may have hindered Cartier’s message and directed the conversation elsewhere. 

Another brand that has dipped their toes into this holiday is Burberry, as they continue to appeal to China’s young money. Their Qixi Festival gift guides for both men and women are a relatively tame approach to the holiday, featuring playful patterns and a festive colour scheme, and are front and centre on their Mainland China and Hong Kong websites.

Beyond that, Burberry is on a hot streak of meeting Chinese millennial and Gen Z’s expectations having recently unveiled their first social retail store in Shenzhen. This immersive, experiential store unveiled two new bags for the Festival through WeChat. 

Finally, earlier this month, Balenciaga released a limited edition design of their Hourglass Handbag with the Chinese characters “He Loves Me” in a Graffiti-style script. Within a few days, the hashtag #BalenciagaChineseValentineCampaignTasteless had more than 210,000 discussions and 170 million views on Weibo.

Some users commented that the oversized phrase on an otherwise classy silhouette was tacky and “simply ugly” as Balenciaga ultimately failed to tap into what customers were looking for this Valentine’s Day.

The real challenge is creating a collection and then advertising it in a way that appeals to younger generations and China’s social landscape — all while preserving the brand’s timeless luxury. 

Whether brands hit the mark or not, the Qixi Festival is proving to be a valuable enough opportunity for them to target Chinese consumers.

The Sad Story Behind Chinese Valentine’s Day

As if there wasn’t already an online Valentine’s Day in China — set on the popular date of May 20th which sounds similar to “I love you” in Chinese — you may be surprised to find out there’s actually another day even more authentic when it comes to celebrating love in China.

Officially named “Chinese Valentine’s Day”, this special date falls on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, which is why it’s also called “Double Seventh Day” or “Qixi Festival”. This year, that happens to be August 17. Although it’s been around for more than 2,000 years, it wasn’t until recently that its popularity returned, thanks to the massive influence of global consumerism.

So what’s the story behind Chinese Valentine’s Day?

Legend has it there once was a cowherd named Niu Lang, who was a very kind-hearted young man, attending to his crops and taking good care of his cattles everyday. One day, a mysterious old man showed up, leading the cowherd to visit a sick cattle from heaven. After the cattle recovered due to the great care from the cowherd, it showed its gratitude by helping Niu Lang meet Zhi Nu, a weaver girl from heaven. They fell madly in love with each other.

Unfortunately, their time together didn’t last long. Just like every great love story, an obstacle came about — the Empress of heaven was furious to learn that one of her weaver girls had eloped with a human being. She decided to punish the couple by splitting them apart and creating a huge river between them, keeping them from seeing each other for eternity (in some stories, this is also considered the origin of the Milky Way Galaxy).

Absolutely devastated, the couple cried day and night. The Empress saw this, and decided to make an exception, allowing them to meet for one day every year on the seventh day of the seventh month.

Although the story is sad, the day is now celebrated much more positively by Chinese millennials. While not exactly used to showing affection as outwardly as Westerners, the Chinese are always looking for perfect opportunities to profess their love — whether it be May 20th, Singles Day, White Valentine’s Day, or the official Chinese Valentine’s Day. It’s less intimidating to ask small or big relationship-related questions on a special occasion, knowing that there are many others doing so on the same day!

Global brands and local businesses have joined the trend, showcasing products through campaigns that are targeted specifically for the Chinese Valentine’s Day. Luxury names such as Burberry, Dior, Bvlgari, Tiffany, and even athletic brands like Nike, have all launched their “Qixi” lines recently, each represented by a popular Chinese influencer or celebrity.

As for traditions, Chinese Valentine’s Day is unlike other more common festivals such as Spring Festival or the Mid-Autumn Festival: there aren’t any specific ones you have to follow. The more popular one for young couples would be to get married on the day  — which is more romantic than the actual Valentine’s Day or on an anniversary.

As this year’s Chinese Valentine’s Day arrives, you can hopefully take time to celebrate with your loved one as well — having now had a crash course on the special day!

Shoot us a message at info@spotlightwest.ca if you’re interested in learning more, or follow our social media accounts (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) to find out more about Chinese social trends, or WeChat marketing tips!