In 2019, Xiaohongshu, which was involved in the "takedown door" incident due to malicious marketing and false notes, is encountering "growing pains", and the vibrato that focuses on short videos is still branded as "grounded" due to the sinking content. The unsound local social media ecology has made international luxury brands that have always been cautious take a wait-and-see attitude towards it.
In the past three years alone, China's local social media has grown rapidly after heavy rectification and content improvement, with a huge user base and increasingly powerful influence, making them an important entrance to consumption decisions for Chinese young people, and some rules and games pioneered or formulated by local platforms are also subtly influencing the marketing strategies of international brands.
There is no doubt that the importance of local social media platforms such as Xiaohongshu, Douyin, and Station B is steadily increasing in the hearts of international brands. Taking Xiaohongshu as an example, more than 80% of the users of the platform are young women, and consumers in first- and second-tier cities account for up to 60%, users prefer to grow grass, have strong purchasing power and high consumption willingness, and this group of high customer unit prices, high conversion rates and high loyalty is the precise target group of international big names.
Balenciaga's official Douyin account
Although the "crab" is delicious, the first "crab eater" always faces a more serious challenge, and with no job to copy, the brand can only cross the river by feeling the stones based on limited experience. In 2019, Dior became the first luxury brand to open an official Douyin account, and a year later became the first luxury to enter Station B.
In the same year, Louis Vuitton opened the official account of Xiaohongshu and tried to broadcast live during the epidemic, explaining the 2020 summer series to users, with a total of 15,000 people watching online. Although this "premiere" was described by netizens as "earthy", and even complained that "big brands sold the feeling of stalls", after this, nearly 30 first-line luxury goods have successively entered Xiaohongshu, and now, Gucci, Prada, Celine, Versace, Balenciaga, Omega and other brands have opened Xiaohongshu and Douyin accounts.
Since Versace entered The Little Red Book in 2020, it has produced dozens of posts and accumulated more than 20,000 followers. Judging from the content released, the first three months were mainly based on the same model of the star, trying to lure users to the official Mini Program to buy, and did not highlight a hot single product. From the end of 2020, Versace Little Red Book has gradually entered a better situation, not only began to focus on the signature items of the Medusa series and the Maze series to launch a dressing strategy, but also adopted the expression form with the characteristics of the Little Red Book, such as emoji segmentation and setting exclusive hashtag. In January 2022, Versace launched the #TeamVersace project, releasing the brand's original Chinese supreme upper body street shoot, which is understood to be only released on the Xiaohongshu and Douyin platforms.
Versace's official red book account
Sheng Yuyang, founder of Jeffrey Digital Marketing, who has long worked with a number of international first-line brands, told WWD China that after resigning from traditional media three years ago, he began to specialize in localized content production for international brands. According to Sheng Yuyang's observation, in the past, international brands focused on the overall brand tone, and now they pay more attention to the influence of a single product, generating leverage multiple value, and at the same time, the data of Xiaohongshu can also help brands reposition their products.
Beauty brand Bobbi Brown's front moisturising primer is a good example. According to the notes in the Xiaohongshu station, users have repeatedly mentioned that this product is "just opened is a smell of oranges", so Xiaohongshu suggested that the product nickname be taken as a more vivid "orange cream" for the brand. According to the official data of Xiaohongshu, after the marketing of Xiaohongshu, the search of the e-commerce platform increased by 1,000 times year-on-year and the sales volume increased by 900 times year-on-year. As Sheng Yuyang said: "International brands continue to increase the socialization of local content, and have transitioned from simple construction to intensive cultivation, and then to the stage of co-creation of users, platforms and brands, which is an inevitable trend." ”
Dior's pop-up pool at the Edition Sanya hotel was a hit, constantly swiping social media; Gentle Monster's Haus of Shanghai future retail space held a face installation out of the circle, becoming a punching destination for hipsters in the city. The young generation of Chinese users who "love the sun" and "look at the face value" form a fission-type communication of the local social platform by searching for strategies, participating in the experience, sending selfies and making strategies, so that consumers can see the new season products, and at the same time vividly experience the brand culture value from multiple dimensions.
Haus of Shanghai
When local social media becomes more and more like the circle of friends between strangers, there are more offline scenes buried behind the sharing of grass. The recognizable life picture and the virtual community relationship form a strong binding, leaving a projection for the heavy users of the platform to achieve efficient dissemination and transformation. And visual design with symbolic significance seems to be the key to the brand's standout.
Butterful & Creamorous is a popular bakery originating in Seoul, South Korea, whose name may be difficult to remember quickly, but its iconic green bag with the "&" motif is always memorable. In xiaohongshu alone, there are nearly 6,000 brand-related notes in the search for "green bag bread"; the topic of "green bag" on Douyin directly uses the Butterful & Creamorous packaging bag as the avatar, with a total of 7.595 million plays; station B searches for "green bag", with nearly 100 stores and tasting reviews. Judging from the user-created content of each platform, "queuing for three hours", "exquisite middle class", "high value", and "photo artifact" have become high-frequency keywords.
Notes on "Butterful & Creamorous" in the Little Red Book
Graphic designer Zhang Zhe analyzed the popularity of the "green bag" from the perspective of design profession: the essence of graphic design is to use "vision" as a way of communication and expression, convey ideas or messages, and gain people's understanding and interaction. Butterful & Creamorous represents the "ceiling of the bread world" and "the standard of the middle class petty bourgeoisie", when the highly saturated green, easy-to-remember brand identity is associated with the brand, except for a small number of food lovers who are keen to appreciate the taste, most people love not the "green bag", but the lifestyle it represents. "There is money, there is leisure, and there is taste. You don't have to spend tens of thousands of pieces to wear a full logo, carrying a green bag can meet all imaginations," Zhang Zhe said. According to the second-hand trading platform Idle Fish, Butterful & Creamorous's empty paper bags have an average list price of 20 yuan.
Also in charge of the Internet traffic code is the Italian luxury brand Prada. In 2021, Prada held a pop-up event at a vegetable farm on Urumqi Road in Shanghai. In the 2,000 square meters of vegetable farms, the Prada brand logo and three classic colors are everywhere, the vegetables and fruits on the stalls are also wrapped in Prada wrapping paper, the event attracts many kol and fashion lovers to punch in, and the Little Red Book has more than 1500 notes about the "Prada Vegetable Farm".
Prada hosts a pop-up event at Shanghai Wuzhong Market
Nowadays, the luxury "high cold" brand design has long lost its freshness, a variety of curious cross-border, the extension of life scenes for young people who pursue freshness to bring more unique experiences, the immersive scene built by the brand not only provides traffic passwords for young people who are eager for Internet attention, but also contributes to the brand's own social media communication power.
Dior's official B account
Leo Chen, who has been engaged in visual display work for 16 years, has served international brands such as Jil Sander, Rochas, Max Mara, etc., as a witness to the development of the local retail industry, he said that the development of e-commerce, the rise of short videos, and the use of social media allow consumers to grasp information faster from multiple channels, which means that visual display artists must not only adhere to the original international characteristics of the brand, but also integrate into the brand localization communication without trace. "Nowadays, in the visual display link, we really need to think more about how to attract consumers to punch in, and how to let consumers independently carry out secondary communication later."
Leo talked about the Jil Sander pop-up event held at the boutique LMDS not long ago: "Towards the end, there are still many people waiting in line to enter the store, there are many friends in the circle of friends to share, and former colleagues in Paris have also sent messages to inquire about the situation. Leo said that in the current situation that Jil Sander has not opened an offline physical store in Shanghai, the cooperation with the style of the boutique LMDS can be described as complementary. In addition to the visual impact of the window arranged with a full acacia, the flowers wrapped in a white paper and black logo, holding a latte printed with a logo paper cup, standing in any position, inadvertently instantaneously, can take a variety of beautiful photos, and finally share it with platforms such as Little Red Book.
Notes on Jil Sander's topic at LMDS pop-up shops in the Little Red Book
The keyword of social media is "sunshine", the core is "appearance", and the product or experience with obvious style will allow users to better show their life culture attitude, which is a win-win situation for brands, platforms and users. But after the "Prada Vegetable Farm" incident, there were also some different voices. In the weibo "Magic City Fresh Things" topic, after taking photos in the Prada vegetable market, the woman threw the vegetables into the garbage truck, leaving the brand paper bags, staged a modern version of "buy the tree and return the pearls", many scalpers hung the paper bags that should have been free on idle fish, a brand new 80 yuan, and 60 yuan for the things.
This sense of atmosphere marketing, which can quickly spread on Xiaohongshu and Douyin, has now been valued by more and more brands, and the so-called "Xiaohongshu aesthetic" has even begun to influence the visual image design of brand marketing activities. In the era of information fragmentation, when "sharing" becomes a transaction and brand identity becomes a shortcut to obtain "attitude" and "traffic", how should international brands grasp the threshold and tone that have been adhered to for a long time? This is a new problem left to brands and platforms. WWD
Written by Di Huang
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