Luxury Brands Localize Festival Campaign through WeChat

WeChat is the most popular mobile messaging application in China, and companies can’t possibly ignore this powerful social media network if they want to reach more customers and expand their business. WeChat mini-programs, the applications that WeChat introduced within its ecosystem, allow companies to develop “mini-apps” in order to launch successful and interactive marketing campaigns. Mostly during holiday events, many luxury brands would take advantage of festivities to promote brand awareness and increase online purchases. In China, during festivals, the shopping malls and big stores can be seen covered with colorful decorations that are already advertised on WeChat mini-programs. Following are two examples of companies that used WeChat to boost their sales during festivals. Swarovski One such shining example is Swarovski. On the basis of the Advent calendar concept, Swarovski designed a gift box with 24 individual compartments that consist of three full-priced items and 21 free gifts. For the promotion of this product, which was priced at 434 (RMB 2,980), Swarovski created a highly engaging and interactive WeChat campaign that virtually recreated the brand experience. Every day, the virtual Advent calendar gave users access to different interactive mini-games. Once the game was completed, users would be given a card. Once all seven cards were collected, users could receive a holiday gift from Swarovski. To increase the chances of winning a prize and promote campaign awareness, users were able to swap cards with friends. Stella McCartney Stella McCartney’s festival campaign took its followers back to the 1980s and '90s by designing a vintage selfie contest. In a WeChat post introducing the contest, followers were encouraged to click on one of the images that then opened the mini-program. In this mini-program, users were able to take a selfie or upload one from their phone's photo library. After uploading a photo, users could customize their selfie with Stella McCartney-themed effects and stickers. Takeaways The reason for the successful cooperation between luxury brands and WeChat is quite understandable. WeChat users aren’t fans of hard sales: As a semi-closed platform, WeChat users have the option to scroll over “hard sales” articles in search of more entertaining content. They need more reason to click through to brand content. Knowing this characteristic clearly, luxury brands utilize holiday events as an entrance to prepare interactive activities. With the easy access of WeChat mini-programs, customers are more willing to join in the personalized activities and buy the products. By doing so, the localized luxury brands achieved satisfactory results during the festival campaign. This post originally appeared on WeChat's global official account, WeChatGlobal.

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Luxury Brands Localize Festival Campaign through WeChat