WeChat, Weibo, Xiaohongshu—each platform is a unique puzzle piece in the vast Chinese social media landscape. For luxury fashion groups, juggling multiple brands across these diverse channels presents a complex challenge. How do you ensure each brand resonates with its target audience while maintaining a cohesive brand identity? How do you track progress, identify opportunities, and make data-driven decisions that elevate your entire portfolio?
Enter KAWO’s Organization KPIs – a game-changer for fashion powerhouses seeking to streamline their social media strategy and unlock new levels of success.
A Fashion Forward Approach: A Global Luxury Group’s Triumph
Imagine a global luxury fashion group with a constellation of iconic brands under its umbrella. This group was facing a common challenge: managing a multi-brand social media strategy in China’s complex digital ecosystem.
WeChat, China’s undisputed social media titan with over 1.2 billion active users, presents a unique challenge for global brands seeking to make their mark. It’s a platform with its own language, culture, and algorithms – a landscape vastly different from Western social media. A renowned outdoor apparel giant with a powerful global presence experienced this firsthand. Despite their brand’s international recognition, their WeChat engagement was falling flat, leaving them disconnected from a massive potential audience.
The Challenge: Beyond Vanity Metrics
The giant knew that simply measuring likes and shares wasn’t enough. They needed a deeper understanding of what truly drove engagement on WeChat – the kind of insights that could fuel a more effective content strategy.
Since its inception, KAWO has championed transparent collaboration workflows, integrating this principle not only into team management but also into its product development ethos. Over the years, our clients have enthusiastically embraced this approach to social media management, recognizing the value of simplified and transparent workflows in fostering efficient teamwork. It is the unwavering support of our client teams that has enabled us to maintain key features like “single user permissions” within our product offerings.
Yet, over the past decade, the Chinese social media scene has undergone a remarkable transformation. What was once an unstructured approach to social media management has evolved into a more sophisticated operation, resulting in substantial changes in the scale of brands’ social media activities. Some brands, which previously focused solely on “Duo Wei” (WeChat + Weibo), have now expanded their presence to include a cross-platform social media array (“Duo Wei” + Kuaishou + Douyin + Little Red Book + Bilibili) across all product lines. In response to these shifting user demands, KAWO has implemented significant product enhancements.
During Labor Day holiday, the number of Chinese people traveling inside the country reached a record high. Simultaneously, a new internet buzzword gained popularity: “Special Forces Tourism” (特种兵式旅游).
As a novel form of tourism, “Special Forces’ Tourism” is characterized by time constraints, multiple scenic spots, and affordability — mainly appealing to college students or recent graduates. This trend can be attributed to two factors. Firstly, there is a pent-up enthusiasm for tourism that has been suppressed by the pandemic for three years. Secondly, Gen Z college students and recent grads face financial constraints. To address these challenges, they utilize their resourcefulness, leverage the convenience of online information, and focus on maximizing time efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Their goal is to save money, save time, and have an enjoyable experience.
Keep in mind, Gen Z are particular about their preferences and trends move fast! Make sure to stay up-to-date and always work with a knowledgeable, local team to develop relevant campaigns and communications. In this article we’ll cover several marketing strategies unique to Gen Z and examples of brands which have executed campaigns under each theme.
GUOCHAO
Guochao (China Chic) = Chinese goods + trend of the times.
In a narrow sense, if something is “Guochao” it refers to trendy brands created by local Chinese designers, or trendy products designed by local Chinese designers that contain Chinese cultural elements. As the trend has evolved, the term now generally refers to the popularity of domestic product groups and products with Chinese characteristics (including foreign brands’ limited series related to China).
