Gucci and Louis Vuitton show how luxury brands can survive in China post-pandemic – by staging outrageous fashion shows and apple-themed ad campaigns on Weibo and Douyin
It’s official – the Chinese economy has already bounced back and is gaining ground on the rest of the world. Looking at major luxury groups’ recent earning reports, those performed closest to expectations should send thank you letters to the Chinese market – as both the online and offline luxury sectors are booming in China.
Covid-19, which put the brakes on international travel retail, seems to have redirected Chinese consumer spending back to China. The effect accelerated the domestic shopping trend that had emerged after the central government slashed the value-added tax (VAT) rate in early 2019, which narrowed the price gaps for many luxury items. And with the recent appreciation of the yuan, a growing number of Chinese shoppers now prefer to purchase their big-ticket items domestically.
If you take a closer look at the luxury battleground in China, the winning brands are the ones integrating online and offline journeys while providing consistent experiences via omnichannel strategies. Here are two of the luxury houses that leveraged the Chinese market remarkably well.
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Bring the show to you
For its spring 2021 men’s collection, Louis Vuitton reworked the traditional concept of fashion shows by launching an animated film, followed by live touring runway shows – and China was the first stop. Due to Covid-19, the brand took in 100 million impressions with just five posts for the event. The show featured the brand’s ambassador, Kris Wu, alongside friends of LV who boosted morale for hospital workers in China.
A day before the show, Louis Vuitton also invited Wu and other friends of the brand, including Ouyang Nana, Zhong Chuxi and Fan Chengcheng, to create individual teasers for Weibo. These triggered a total of 63,000 likes, nearly 100,000 comments, and a whopping 620,000 shares. Over a thousand guests attended the show, and more than a hundred million people watched online. Afterwards, the brand offered detailed guidance on how to purchase the product directly through its WeChat Mini Program.
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Louis Vuitton set a great example of how to build a smooth consumer journey by utilising both online and offline tools. As a result, the brand’s largest flagship store in China achieved record-breaking sales in August, which was believed to be a recording-breaking month for the China market overall too.
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Curated social media contact
Everyone knows social media marketing matters in China’s market. But what does it mean when a brand inspires discussions or starts a new trend? Every social media platform has its own rules, and the preferences of young netizens vary a lot. Therefore, brands must consider using platform-specific marketing strategies. Posting the same commercial clips on all platforms is a waste of resources and a bad look.
Take Gucci, for example. Beginning in early 2020, the Italian luxury brand started launching official accounts on various platforms beyond WeChat and Weibo. That included short video app platform Douyin and the social media/e-commerce platform Little Red Book. In the beginning, the brand was criticised for its questionable influencer choices, outdated effects, and confusing visuals. By July, Gucci’s Douyin stats were only comparable to a mid-tier influencer’s.
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Gucci only won consumers’ hearts back recently, thanks to a successful Chinese Valentine’s Day campaign. On July 30, Gucci introduced the GG apple print collection featuring a motif made up of two interlocking red letters Gs, apparently inspired by the phrase “apple of my eye”.
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For Weibo, Gucci posted seven short films with open endings that the audience was invited to participate in finishing. This way of cleverly involving the audience allowed the shorts to collect over 1.5 million views. Meanwhile, on Douyin, Gucci posted a series of amusing B-rolls of the short movies, which sparked netizen discussions. For Little Red Book, Gucci used the community-style forum to invite actresses to introduce the collection via live-stream or post detailed pictures of the product. The hashtag “Gucci Qixi” has reached over 126,000 views on Little Red Book so far.
This article originally appeared on Jing Daily.
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Gucci’s hit Qixi Festival campaign for ‘Chinese Valentine’s Day’ and Louis Vuitton’s support for Chinese healthcare workers helped the luxury brands reestablish their presence, despite a growing trend among young Asian millennials for homegrown labels over stuffy Western brands