Week In Review: July 15-19, 2013

In case you missed them the first time around, here are some of Jing Daily’s top posts for the week of July 15-19: 4 Vital Traits Shared By China’s Top Luxury Brands A scene from Louis Vuitton's Shanghai Maison opening in 2012. (The Clothes Whisperer) What makes a luxury brand successful with Chinese consumers? What sends a luxury brand home from China with its gilded tail between its legs? Variations on these two questions are what I have been asked most often during my years helping luxury companies build their businesses and brands in China and with global Chinese consumers. Ten or fifteen years ago, the answer was fairly straightforward. Johnnie Walker’s Eerie Bruce Lee Ad Sparks Intense Online Debate Chinese-American martial arts expert and movie star Bruce Lee died 40 years ago, but Johnnie Walker brought him back to life last week in an unsettling yet impressively lifelike CGI animation in a 90-second ad for Blue Label in China. In the ad, the animated actor wanders through a luxe Hong Kong hotel, explaining the “Be Water” philosophy for which he was known. LVMH Bets Big On Chinese Beauty Brand’s Global Ambition An ad for Chinese beauty brand Marubi. After nearly three years of negotiations, LVMH-backed private equity fund L Capital Asia recently held a press conference at the Shanghai World Financial Center to announce its plan to invest in Chinese domestic cosmetics brand Marubi, which LVMH hopes to propel into the global spotlight with a possible Dior partnership and Sephora distribution. Not only would this produce major profits for the companies involved, but it may spark both the domestic and global rise of Chinese beauty brands as major competitors to U.S. and European market leaders. Is ‘Tiny Times’ A Spot-On Glimpse Of China’s ‘Me Generation’? If director Guo Jingming hadn’t just set China’s opening day box office record for a 2-D Chinese-language film with his blockbuster Tiny Times (《小时代》), he may have been more disappointed about the slew of disparaging comments that have been used to describe his luxury goods-saturated work. Just a sampling of these phrases includes “vulgar,” “shallow,” and “hyper-materialist,” as well as full of “twisted male narcissism and a male desire for patriarchal power,” and “unconditional indolence.” What is also striking about the film is its portrayal of what the media is dubbing China’s “me generation”: a new group of rapidly consuming, young, middle-class Chinese, who are statistically more materialistic, according to research by McKinsey. China: This Week In Digital Luxury Marketing A roundup of new and ongoing campaigns in China through July 26, featuring YSL, Sisley, BMW, ELLE, For Beloved One, and Lacoste.

Week In Review: July 15-19, 2013

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Published July 19, 2013

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Week In Review: July 15-19, 2013