With Chinese Ecommerce Ahead of the US, Digital Marketing Gets Trickier

Once largely closed off to the world, today's China is a new frontier for opportunistic brands. The sheer scale of the country coupled with the fervor of a consumer base still energized by the relative newness of a semi-open market make for a standalone combination in the world of consumer goods. Obviously, anyone who has tried to crack the Chinese market will tell you the formula for success is complex, and not simply because it requires repositioning your brand for a new audience; that’s par in any new marketplace. In China, the hurdles are simultaneously technical and geopolitical: National interests can reshape your digital infrastructure and impose creative limitations on the campaigns driving to it, often with little warning. Fortunately, a simplified view of the past can serve as a primer, providing any brand with at least the outline of a playbook for a market unlike any other. Local pride At this point, brand cancellation is hardly a new concept, and Chinese consumers have called for their fair share of it. The story of Dolce & Gabbana might be the most easily recognizable to the American consumer: a promotional video deemed racist, followed by a defense of that video that was also deemed racist. Four years later, the brand is yet to bounce back. How BuzzFeed Found Success in Livestream Shopping Less understandable to American marketers, though, might be the backlash against H&M, Nike, Burberry and even the NBA. The brands’ open critiques of issues like labor rights in Xinjiang or free speech in Hong Kong were met with abrupt pushback from local consumers. Powered by a resurgence in national pride and economic strength, they vocalized their support of domestic policy through the denial of brands in opposition to it. Chinese brands are benefiting from the same resurgence. Once considered by Chinese consumers to be inferior to imports, they’re now growing in popularity at a faster rate than European and American luxury brands, according to Bain & Company. Unpredictable policy In recent years, the Chinese entertainment industry has gone through a series of reforms, with direct consequences for U.S. brands relying on local representation. In 2018, the country’s official media agency criticized the rise of “effeminate” male celebrities. In 2019, it extended this reach by censoring the pierced earlobes and ponytails of male pop stars, and in 2021, it began dismantling fan clubs and sites in a crackdown on fan culture in general. Unique to the country’s state-controlled internet is the punishment: Violators are essentially scrubbed from the web, seemingly disappearing overnight. For offenses ranging from tax evasion to inappropriate behavior, key representatives of Western brands became largely invisible, including pop star Kris Wu (L’Oréal and Luis Vuitton), Lucas Huang (Gucci) and actress Vicki Zhao Wei (Fendi), whose name was even removed from her films dating back to the '90s. Ultimately, for American marketers in China, PR recovery is not always an option, as your influencer network or celebrity partnership could disappear overnight. A different internet Suffice it to say, digital marketing in China is akin to marketing on a different internet: Devoid of Instagram, Google, Amazon and so on, the channel mix, the tactics and the point of sale are essentially redefined. To put things in simpler terms, Chinese marketing is where the U.S. is heading—the line between social, media and commerce is blurred. Your mix might include standard ecommerce (Tmall, JD.com), video-based social (TikTok, Kuaishou), educational content (Red), livestreaming (Taobao) and SMS hubs like WeChat and Weibo. Core to these networks are key opinion leaders (KOLs), an influencer parallel, who not only represent your brand socially but also essentially control the point of sale, primarily through livestreaming. Last year, streaming-heavy platform Taobao drove over $50 billion in sales in 24 hours; taking a piece of that market share meant building trust in the marketplace, thus securing placement in the right stream with the right KOLs, not simply buying ad space. Moving forward Clearly, with China’s total ecommerce revenue having surpassed that of the U.S., it has cemented its position as one of, if not the key opportunity for brands sprinting for growth. Still, these two intertwined realities—a complex geopolitical landscape and digital infrastructure that requires a total reimagining of marketing—means the standard playbook isn’t applicable. With that in mind, brands should explore partnering with strategists or agencies local to or at least expert in the Chinese market specifically, the first task of which should be an assessment and repositioning of the brand. In doing so, they’ll ensure the significant investments to follow respect the nuance and sensitivities unique to every individual market—that, in this rapidly burgeoning market, can sink a brand as fast as it can propel it. Walmart Returns to TikTok With a Shoppable Beauty Livestream