Double V. Consulting handpicks and analyzes 3-5 interesting Chinese marketing campaigns in this monthly series. We mainly cover consumer goods categories, including beauty, fashion, food brands, etc. We highlight brand campaigns distributed on Chinese digital platforms — WeChat, Weibo, Xiaohongshu, Tmall, Douyin, and beyond every month.
Crossover Marketing Strategy integrates different elements of various products and brands across multiple industries to show a unique lifestyle and aesthetics, thereby winning a larger group of audience.
In September, we selected 3 enlightening crossover marketing cases for you.
CASE 1: 999 × WPS Office Wishing Pool
Video by Weibo @999感冒灵
Life under COVID-19 isn't easy. Recently, the Chinese medicine brand "999", which implies "longevity", and the office software brand "WPS Office" jointly created a "999 Wishing Pool".
It is a nostalgic Bulletin Board System built with Excel, including columns like Wishing, Lucky Drawing, Gossiping, Q&A, Graffiti, etc.
The easy, fun, and retro use of Excel breaks the stereotype - Excel is not only used for tedious data but also as a tool for multimedia creation and communication. "999 Wishing Pool" is widely forwarded, generating trending topics, and improving the user stickiness of WPS Office and brand popularity for 999.
Double V. Comments:
WPS Office supports real-time co-authoring, which brings it a solid private traffic base. By resonating with Gen-Z, the Excel of "999 Wishing Pool" was forwarded a lot, which made WPS go from private traffic to public traffic and also made the brand 999 win a good impression of consumers.
CASE 2: DHC × Minions Blind Box
Video by Weibo @DHC中国官方微博
The Minions is about to release a new movie - Minions: The Rise of Gru. To warm up for the movie release, the Minions and DHC, a Japanese skincare brand that loves to use yellow as product packaging, co-branded a limited edition blind box of DHC Deep Cleansing Oil, combining the Minions and the Chinese zodiac.
The lid of each bottle is a Minion with the characteristics of the Chinese zodiac, so adorable that it makes ladies want to gather the whole collection. The combination is very much in line with the brand image of DHC - youthful and vital, helping DHC attract new customers and bringing young female audiences to the Minions' new movie.
Double V. Comments:
When blind boxes are flooding the market, they are no longer refreshing. So for the two overseas brands, DHC and The Minions, it is a good choice to incorporate Chinese zodiac elements with blind boxes to achieve brand localization. Because every Chinese have their Chinese zodiac sign, there will be customers joining this zodiac lottery to get their zodiac or even to collect the whole 12 zodiac patterns.
CASE 3: Xianyu × "Seafood Market"
Video by Weibo @闲鱼
The APP Xianyu, the leading online marketplace for second-hand items under Alibaba Group, launched a Crossover Marketing campaign with "Seafood Market". However, the "Seafood Market" is not an actual marketplace for seafood. "闲鱼 (the APP)" and "咸鱼 (salted fish)" are homophones of "Xianyu" in Chinese, plus the APP Xianyu's icon is an adorable little yellow fish, gradually "Seafood Market" became the APP Xianyu's nickname. So the Crossover is humour using a homophone, and Xianyu × "Seafood Market" is, in fact, an offline version of the second-hand goods marketplace. To be precise, in English, we should call it "Xianyu Treasure Market".
Stepping into the market, we can see electronics products, toys, luxury goods, and antiques displayed in places such as sushi train tables, fresh food stores, and aquariums. To make the market more fun, resale reasons and bargain quotes were also printed on various stickers and posters with playful, funny, and trendy design elements.
Double V. Comments:
A simple and memorable name is conducive for marketing. Xianyu has gained a wave of attention by naming its offline store in a fun way and designing its materials with many user catchphrases, caring about Internet culture to increase consumer loyalty to the brand. In this case, we can learn that crossover marketing is not only a combination of two or more cross-industry products, but sometimes the use of homophones and slang also forms a creative brand image.
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