Yang Mi Walks Into Your Wechat Friends Circle, What Is The Idea Of Luxury Brand?

No global market is more dependent on Star Marketing than China.

Early this morning, many people in WeChat circle of friends received a friend circle advertisement released by star Yang Mi. In the form of video interaction, advertisements invite users to click into H5 pages by wiping the tears to power. The page shows Yang Mi's global brand spokesperson of Estee Lauder, a beauty makeup brand, in the middle of last month in Milan, aimed at promoting Estee Lauder's latest DW makeup products.

It is noteworthy that this is the second time that Yang Mi appeared as a global brand spokesperson in WeChat's circle of friends in April.

Since the beginning of last year, WeChat users have received more and more frequent advertising campaigns for luxury fashion and beauty brands in their circle of friends. Since the beginning of this year, there have been many innovations in the form of advertisements. Among them, the stars into the circle of friends is a significant trend.

At the beginning of this year, the appearance of the star Chen Kun and the name circle of friends have triggered a heated debate among netizens. At that time, Estee Lauder launched a first round of innovation in the form of advertising circles for friends in order to promote the classic product of the small brown bottle essence, and release the friends circle in the name of Chen Kun through the new year's key node.

Similar cases include Liu Haoran and Ke Yan, Wang Junkai and BOLON glasses, rocket girl 101 - Yang Chaoyue and Clinique. In other consumer goods fields, Nicholas Tse and Budweiser worked together to break into the circle of friends for help, and also achieved better interactive performance. The hit rate of the head image reached 12 times that of the average, and the nickname clicks reached 6 times the average.

WeChat, which has more than 1 billion 100 million monthly active users, is becoming a new battleground for luxury fashion brand marketing, especially the beauty brand is more daring to try new marketing forms.

According to the Tencent index, more than 90% of the voice of the head beauty brand comes from social media, that is, young people in social media. Young consumers who grow up with social media prefer to contact brands in their familiar scenes. Estee Lauder group also recently said that sales of the group in the Asia Pacific market continued to grow as the Chinese people increasingly used mobile phones to buy cosmetics, and over half of the sales in the latest quarter came from the mobile terminals. In 2017, Estee Lauder put up 18 times in WeChat's circle of friends, of which about 1/3 were new products.

At the end of the rolling page of Estee Lauder, users can fill out the mobile phone number and the city in the page and apply for DW Makeup Foundation Liquid experience. This also means that Estee Lauder has not only realized the promotion of classic products, but also enhanced the consumers' awareness of global brand spokesmen, and further accumulated user's online behavior data.

Data has become an important asset of the brand. Estee Lauder has further accumulated user's online behavior data with the help of this marketing.

Compared with the previous advertising campaign with brand as the main body, the star suddenly appeared in the circle of friends, bringing surprises and freshness to many users. It is obvious that the most prominent advantage of the star friend circle style is to bring the star fans' effect to the amplification of the brand through the personification characteristics of the stars.

According to Tencent, the effect of the click and rate of the head and nickname in the style advertisement is unexpected. Especially when the brand is putting in such a circle of friends, it usually chooses the fans who are targeted to put stars. This often can bring the star influence to the extreme, leveraging the strength of fans, effectively improving the advertising interaction rate and social communication.

In addition to short-term immediate traffic growth, star friends circle can further enhance the socialization of luxury brands. When stars appear in the circle of friends just like their close friends, they not only make advertisements more original and natural, but also provide a more cordial and socialized way for interaction between brands and users.

After testing the water at the beginning of this year, micro letter began to focus on promoting this new mode of star friends circle last month, and created more "two stars" by creating a phenomenon of "stars appearing in my circle of friends".

Different from the past luxury brands as the main body, the stars suddenly appeared in the circle of friends, bringing surprises and freshness to many users.

Just like Yang Mi's advertisement case, the pattern of star friend circle often appears with the video interaction. Users can start the brand egg page according to the hint to draw a simple picture on the outer video. This undoubtedly stimulates the willingness of user reviews to forward social interaction and makes advertising more topic specific. Data show that the total interactive click rate of the advertising style reached nearly 5 times the mean of the big market, and the average landing rate of the total landing page reached 10 times the average of the market.

Users need advice, and brands need key opinion leaders to spread them. Stars entering WeChat's circle of friends means that stars become the most direct media bridge between brands and consumers. This is the deepening of the development of fashion bloggers and KOL (key opinion leaders) marketing in China in the past two years.

As early as 2017, KOL has become a key link in the marketing of luxury fashion and beauty brand. Global marketing consulting firm Greg Paull, head of the R3 consulting firm at three, said that China KOL has been leading the rest of the world and has become the real media carrier.

In the short span of two or three years, KOL marketing has gradually replaced traditional marketing methods such as television and print advertising. Wu Yifan, Lu Han, angelababy, Yang Mi, Di Ali Gerba and other traffic star resources are carved up by the major brands. In the form of cooperation, brands and stars are no longer confined to offline activities, but with the help of brand ambassadors and spokesmen, they launch the global marketing from online to offline.

What is worth noting is that stars are becoming more socialized and KOL oriented in their interaction with brands. Celebrities with social assets and influence have gained more popularity from brands.

In the process of upheaval in the functions and roles of stars, stars have also been entrusted with the mission of "carrying goods". This also means that stars start to undertake the three tasks of enhancing brand image, producing marketing content and carrying goods. For example, the brand invited Di Ali Gerba, Yang Mi and other traffic star cooperation, not only to make the brand image younger, but also to help the brand "take goods".

EFC CEO Mark Yu, a fashion PR company, once said to WeChat public LADYMAX, "although the United States also has popular bloggers and entertainers, it is not as dependent on the stars as the Chinese market."

In fact, in terms of business conversion rate, celebrities have more advantages than ordinary fashion bloggers or KOL, which also brings greater challenges and impact to fashion KOL. Compared with fashion KOL, the audience base of stars is more extensive. Thanks to the rapid development of fans' economy, more and more star fans are willing to follow the star entertainers to buy the same products, which will help directly promote the sale of a certain product. "Star share" has also become a key word with Chinese characteristics.

At present, luxury fashion brands have built a complex marketing system around stars.

McKinsey's "China luxury report 2019" pointed out that after the official release of Gabrielle handbag by Chanel, Yang Mi, the first star "Queen of goods", carried the bag on the WeChat public account of Mr. MrBags, a super fashion blogger. Then, by the well-known local bloggers, the top-level fashion can be easily and easily understood to create various kinds of photos, blogs and comments that consumers can easily understand. Finally, a long string of grass roots red is used to complete the localization of products for consumers across the country.

This pyramidal multi-layer communication includes all levels of stars and bloggers KOL, allowing them to "do their jobs" and play different roles in different stages to different consumers, which is conducive to the effective contact of consumers.

On the contrary, head fashion bloggers and KOL also appeared to be stars. With the gradual stabilization of domestic head bloggers, the personalization of bloggers is becoming more and more distinct, which provides the possibility for the brand to cooperate with the bloggers to launch customized marketing programs.

The fashionable public figures, such as "Siemens sister-in-law" and so on, have carried out advertisements in WeChat's circle of friends with the star friends circle. They can not only drain new fans for the public numbers, but also enhance their viscosity and interaction with existing fans.

In May this year, the cooperation between Rebecca and the luxury electric business Temple library also reflected the huge potential space of personalization bloggers online and offline marketing. A short video platform, a filmed home of ribecca in Guangzhou, has raised a heated debate on social media, giving many readers a deep impression on Rebecca's home. On the basis of this topic, temple library takes the theme of "Becky's Choice ribeca mobile Wardrobe" as the theme. The space is based on Rebecca's home. It has almost restored the exquisite appearance of the ribecca family, and carved the green walls, the red sofa and bedroom windows of the Rebecca home, which triggered the resonance of many guests.

What is the idea of a luxury brand when stars enter WeChat's circle of friends?

Luxury goods business Temple library for bloggers exclusive small programs to launch friends circle advertising means that the head blogger "Star" trend is obvious, the appeal is increasing.

Temple library has also set up a friend circle advertisement for the exclusive small program created by Rebecca. It is also China's first service platform for the bloggers' exclusive small programs to put friends circle, and has become the first case of advertising in the circle of friends. This also shows the trust of the temple library to the bloggers and the anticipation of the marketing effect.

Around WeChat's unique ecology, luxury fashion brands have been rapidly iterating in just two or three years, behind which is the localization efforts of global brands in the Chinese market.

In June 18th, Tencent advertising joined hands with Boston consulting company to publish the "2019 consumer digital behavior report on China's luxury market" at the Cannes creative advertising festival in 2019. The report analyzes 1500 Chinese consumers who have purchased luxury goods in the past 12 months to explore how luxury brands should better connect with consumers and enhance marketing efficiency in highly digitalized China.

Nicolas De Bellefonds, partner and managing director of Boston consulting company, admitted that because of the cultural and geographical differences between China and the west, the communication efficiency between luxury brands and Chinese consumers was not high in the past. How to better touch users, better enhance customer loyalty and make better use of data assets to promote business growth has become the three major pain points of luxury brand marketing in China.

But in the all powerful WeChat ecosystem, these pain points have been constantly conquered. In particular, the emergence of a series of tools, such as digital advertising, WeChat applet, WeChat payment, and so on, let the brand go deep into the Chinese local market.

Specifically, through the content, interaction, promotion and other forms, the brand combines the original traffic data of business flow, private line traffic, private online traffic and social traffic with the data capacity of Tencent, and then realizes the sale transformation at any time or anywhere through self building small program mall, or jumping to the third party cooperation channel, and through digital membership management.

According to Fan Yijin, general manager of marketing and operation of Tencent advertising major customer, under the impetus of Tencent platform capability, the offline retail channel in mainland China is accelerating the upgrading of digitalization. In the past, retailers rely more on display, promotion and other forms to achieve the goal of touch, interaction, promotion, transformation and re purchase. In the ecosystem of Tencent, all actions of brands and users can be digitalized, so that the whole path is smoother.

In Fan Yijin's view, different from traditional "products" and "stores", luxury brands now pay more attention to digital assets. In the future, Tencent will actively invest in smart retailing. With WeChat's efforts to commercialize small programs, the online potential of luxury brands will have more room for imagination. After all, whether they are luxuries or cosmetic products, their essence is social interaction.

To be sure, after nearly two years of trial and contact, luxury brands have begun to understand and adapt to China's rapid development and advanced digital ecological environment, and constantly increase investment in digital marketing in China, so as to enhance direct interaction with consumers.

To win share, we must first adapt to the rules, which is applicable at any time in any market.