The Campaign

The social networks are taking more and more power in terms of brand communication in China as in the other countries in the world. Almost every premium brands open the official account on Weibo – seen as the Chinese tweeter and the No.1 social network in China. There’s a lot of debate about to which degree the premium brands go in social networks to avoid damaging the brand image and exclusivity. Officially on Weibo, any topic that is related to brand advertising would not become the #hot topic#. People on Weibo often dislike the content that is suspected as advertising, and they will blame the KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) who earn benefit by pushing these information to their fans.

Results

SHANG XIA is a lifestyle Chinese premium brand, created by Jiang Qiong Er and supported by French luxury brand Hermes. It aims at protecting and celebrating traditional Chinese craftsmanship, but with modern contemporary design. Our mission is to spread the message on Chinese social networks that SHANG XIA – born in China – will open its Paris Store in the luxury capital of the Western world. But how can we draw Chinese netizens' attention by knowing that going social on such a profound luxury brand is always a risk? As a soulful brand, SHANG XIA is not about seducing the mass. SHANG XIA is about to touch the soulful audience, honestly interested in the brand’s way of life and philosophy. Therefore, on the occasion of SHANGXIA-opening-in-Paris, we invented the story of a mysterious masked man, wearing the traditional Han Fu. He traveled from China and sowed the “culture” seeds in Paris. We let the people post pictures of him and develop conversation initiatively on social networks. This generated the public curiosity until the brand revealed the whole story on the opening day on the official Weibo.

Weibo is the No.1 social networks in China when our campaign started. We allow the curious people in the street to post photos of the seed-sower using their own Weibo account/Wechat account. The KOLs found the interesting topic and started to follow the “trip” of him, which made more and more people be aware of the seed-sower’s story.

With 0 media cost, we’ve achieved: - 6,000,000 page views - 452,200 views for the 1 official post - 15% more fans recruited - Public curiosity and conversation about the mysterious seed-sower for 3 weeks And more importantly, this campaign succeeded in finding the right balance between social media conversation rules and spirit of high luxury soulful brand.