Why is blogging more useful in China?
In China, unlike North America and Western Europe, the influence of certain fashion bloggers is said to surpass that of media coverage and advertisements. We all know that certain bloggers can instantly attract awareness but in a closed-off market such as China, bloogers are the main vehicle that consumers use to discover and adopt non-China products and brands.
What makes blogging so useful?
Though Gogoboi and Dipsy may not ring any bells (yet), these are fashion bloggers that have a combined following of over 100,000 users on microblogging site Weibo (a blend of Twitter and Facebook). Dipsy, for instance, is also a Vogue China columnist and posts about seasonal collections, runaway shows at major international fashion weeks, and Chinese celebrities’ cooperation with brands.
There is simply a wellspring of influence brands that can benefit from when they engage correctly with popular Chinese fashion bloggers.
- This can be seen in the successful collaboration of Gucci’s turnaround in 2016, which can be said to be the achievement of Chinese fashion bloggers who first caught on to the new designs and promoted them to consumers.
- What’s more, one Weibo blogger, Mr Bags, recently collaborated with Strathberry, and Gogoboi took over the Louis Vuitton Weibo handle for Paris Fashion and Week Fall/Wintr 2015.
- Furthermore, Cartier recently topped a list of the most influential Valentine’s Day 2017 marketing campaigns courting Chinese shoppers. In an example of the significance of such strategies for influencing Chinese millenials, Lu Han (K-pop superstar and actor) reposted Cartier’s campaign information on Weibo and it was consequently reposted more than 500,000 times. Other examples can be drawn from the recent campaigns of Moleskine, Yirantian and Yoox.
What does this mean for businesses?
This rapid transformation of the blog from unassuming hobby to professional marketing tool is just another example of contemporary marketing strategies.
- These new successful tactics revolve around engaging carefully with the individual consumer and blending the product with the consumer.
- Akin to native online advertising, we are seeing brands doing a gorilla-type native marketing that blurs the lines between what is corporate messaging (the brand) and what is considered at its root un-orchestrated communication ( bloggers).
The question now is how such online marketing strategies can help a brand to assert loyalty amongst new customers and capture the elusive phenomenon of “stickiness.”
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