A new China Insight Report has been release by Reuter: Intelligence, the leader in luxury data and intelligence in Asia. Produced in partnership with ILTM, Connecting with Chinese Luxury Travellers: Elevating Emotion in Digital China, looks at how international brands need to master not only China’s unique digital eco-system, but China’s unique cultural moments and happenings.
The report is available to download here, free.
The importance of emotion and story-telling
One of the key takeaways from report was that luxury travel brands cannot only focus on the capabilities of platforms available in China’s social media landscape, but must provoke connections beyond mere digital, elevating engagement and making emotional connections. The report explains that the big content wins of recent years found success thanks to boldly presenting more meaningful story-telling, that was based on Chinese cultural moments and issues.
Breaking down marketing labels across sectors
Marketing labels such as aspirational, immersive and inspiring are also broken down within the report, which describes their true meaning in relation to the functionalities offered by WeChat, and how RED and Douyin are being best employed by savvy luxury brands. A view outside of travel and hospitality takes a look at how leading brands in other sectors such as fashion and beauty are winning with luxury Chinese consumers.
The report goes further than examining the closed-loop functionality offered by WeChat, explaining how the big content wins in recent years have not only been about mastering the technology; but by international brands winning hearts and minds. These successes have been achieved through telling stories that provoke connections of a different kind: emotional connections.
UGC and interactivity key for younger consumers
This year’s insight report also explores how for luxury brands, WeChat – the true super-app that does it all – must still be the foundation of digital communications in China, while user-generated content (UGC) platforms such as RED and Douyin offer exciting new opportunities for innovative connections with affluent Chinese consumers.
On Douyin, they don’t only want to watch, they want to ‘give it a go’ themselves and get involved in whatever’s viral. Although a luxury brand may want to appear slick, luxurious and on-brand elsewhere, RED is the place to go under the cover, beneath the surface and behind the scenes. RED users have seen flashy and slick corporate communications a million times and expect to be able to enter the real world of the brand and product in their own RED world.
This is the second year of partnership with ILTM – read 2018’s report on Affluent Chinese Families here.
