Luxury goods taking advantage of the Year of the Snake is too abstract!

As the Lunar New Year approaches, the festive atmosphere becomes more intense, making this node with profound significance of family reunion and cultural heritage a golden opportunity for brands to show their presence and grab the market. However, it is not easy to break through in the marketing melee.

If you want to stand out in this strategic marketing node, you need to find breakthroughs in content creativity, marketing methods, etc., in order to achieve double-volume growth.

Just as brands are trying every possible means to stand out, we find that this year’s luxury goods marketing leveraging the Year of the Snake is hard to describe, with netizens constantly complaining that it is too abstract.

01

Prada, the Year of the Snake is a good time to queue up

What has been discussed a lot recently is that Prada invited many celebrities to shoot the Snake Year promotional posters for the brand. The theme of the communication material is “We, The Snake”. The “celebrity” lineup is strong, including spokespersons Jia Ling, Li Xian, Ma Yili, brand ambassadors Ma Long, Yang Shuyu, models Du Juan, Ju Xiaowen, Zhao Lei, as well as architect Hu Rushan, artists Peng Wei, Zhang Enli, etc. Its partners include actors, athletes, models, artists, architects, etc., which shows how much importance the brand attaches to this marketing.

Once released, comments from netizens came in, with mixed reviews.

Even the abstract red human figure was played around with by many netizens, starting the UGC journey for the Prada brand.

Prada’s concept film draws inspiration from the “snake crawling” and aims to highlight the brand’s uniqueness through a more “spiritual” movement. The real-life celebrities and the winding red human figures are very similar to the characteristics of “snake” crawling, cleverly echoing the brand’s marketing theme of “We, gather together in the Year of the Snake”.

In this series of works, Prada abandoned the common rendering techniques of atmosphere and scarcity used in luxury goods, and even did not set up complex scenery, but instead adopted an abstract and simple expression method. This seemingly bland visual presentation actually reflects Prada’s unique visual language – image and minimalism. The brand transformation has enabled Prada to successfully break away from the traditional marketing model of luxury brands and communicate with the audience in a more direct and pure way, making its visual language more distinctive and persuasive.

02

GUCCI: Romantic New Year

If Prada impresses users through visual language, then GUCCI is well versed in scene marketing. It chose to work with brand spokespersons Xiao Zhan and Ni Ni to launch a unique New Year advertising image blockbuster. The advertisement does not have a single line of dialogue, but uses layers of progressive music and pictures to connect the two reunited people together, bringing out the sense of ambiguity. While allowing people to experience the New Year atmosphere, it also highlights the specialness of GUCCI in Chinese traditional festivals.

It has to be said that GUCCI is a master storyteller. The brand uses the Chinese New Year as the background and a window to cross the boundaries of time and space, realizing the switch between the past and the present, innocence and maturity. When the two people look at each other affectionately and smile, the sense of story is maximized.

From a marketing perspective, GUCCI proposed a new marketing direction for brand products – New Year gifts by recreating the lively scene of a family celebrating the New Year. In most people’s minds, luxury goods represent personality and quality life. The brand’s marketing in the Year of the Snake shows that luxury brands are also starting to seize the New Year gift scene. The reshaping of the high-end luxury image has helped the brand to compete in the consumer market, killing two birds with one stone.

It is obvious that GUCCI has insight into contemporary consumers’ yearning for high-quality life and pursuit of individuality, and has used joyful and peaceful New Year scenes to build an emotional marketing scene for the brand, accurately conveying the brand’s emotional value and attitude towards life in warmth and romance.

03

LV: The limited edition for the Year of the Snake is hard to describe

If Prada uses creative ideas to express abstract ideas and GUCCI uses abstract methods to express the brand’s marketing appeal, then LV may want to use Chinese cultural elements to embrace Chinese consumers.

Currently, there is no marketing campaign of LV taking advantage of the Year of the Snake in any of LV’s official channels. However, various LV products taking advantage of the Year of the Snake are circulating on the Internet. The most criticized ones are LV’s Year of the Snake ornaments, which look like wooden fish sticking out their “tongues”, baba, etc., and have caused constant controversy.

In addition to the Year of the Snake ornaments, some friends also pointed out that in order to further open up the market in China, LV launched several series of products, including “New Year Selection”, “Year of the Snake Limited Edition”, “Year of the Snake New Year Limited Edition”, and “Year of the Snake Special Series”. The unique and ingenious designs made many people shout that they could no longer hold on to their wallets.

As the old saying goes, if the mountain doesn’t come to me, I’ll go to the mountain. LV used controversy to “lure the snake out of its hole”, which aroused the curiosity of the public. They wanted to see how LV’s marketing in the Year of the Snake would be different. On Xiaohongshu, there are more than 140,000 notes about “LV Year of the Snake Limited Edition Ornaments” and more than 190,000 notes about “LV Year of the Snake Limited Edition”. It can be seen how popular it is.

Although netizens say that LV’s limited edition for the Year of the Snake is “difficult to describe in a few words,” in my opinion, LV’s Spring Festival marketing strategy this time is “difficult to describe in a few words and worthy of more brand research . ”

Written to the end:

From the way luxury goods actively embrace the Chinese New Year, it is not difficult to see the changes in luxury marketing in recent years:

On the one hand, luxury brands are also constantly breaking out of their comfort zones and adapting to consumer demand. Luxury goods have always been recognized by consumers for their design, quality, craftsmanship, and scarcity. Faced with diversified and personalized consumer demands, luxury goods have also begun to embrace change and explore new design concepts and marketing methods, especially by taking advantage of the Chinese New Year, which has helped brands find an emotional connection with Chinese consumers.

At the same time, various forms of exploration and marketing can also bring Chinese consumers a more diversified and culturally rich shopping experience , achieve interaction and communication with Chinese consumers, and help enhance the brand’s global competitiveness and attractiveness.

On the other hand, it pays tribute to traditional Chinese culture and demonstrates global innovation. As one of the most important traditional festivals of the Chinese nation, the Spring Festival contains cultural connotations and folk traditions that are self-evident. The marketing strategy of luxury brands taking advantage of the Chinese Spring Festival is not only a tribute to traditional Chinese culture, but also an innovation sought by the brand in the context of globalization. In addition to attracting Chinese consumers, it also helps the brand establish a more positive, inclusive and open image worldwide.