Opinion: 4 Lessons brands can learn from Manchester City’s Lazy Chinese New Year Marketing
It’s Chinese New Year in just over a week, which means luxury and sports apparel brands around the world are putting the finishing touches on their plans for the Year of The Rabbit. Sadly many brands leave Chinese new year planning to the last minute and end up with a half hearted effort that alienates the very loyal consumers they seek to delight., We’ve found a great example of a weak execution dampening what was a good initial thought and willingness to engage with Chinese consumers. We are of course talking about the recent collaboration between Puma and English champions Manchester City’s ‘Year of the Rabbit’ capsule collection which was released this week.
Kevin de Bruyne, Erling Haaland and Ederson pose in the Puma CNY jersey
The range, which includes a match jersey (unlikely ever to be worn in a match) and a tracksuit, incorporates motifs from China’s Lunar Rover, the Jade Rabbit, which successfully landed on the moon in 2013. Presumably this is a rather clever attempt to link the Chinese New Year, celebrated more widely as Lunar New Year, with Man City's anthem Blue Moon. The collection was launched via English-speaking social media platforms and features a promotional video with City supremos Erling Haaland and Kevin de Bruyne, as well as a lucky waving cat and a Chinese model shopping in Chinatown!
4 Lessons Brands Can Learnt from Man City’s CNY Kit Launch
Before we dive into the lessons brands can learn from this relatively weak launch, we feel it right to give some credit to City for trying. They at least recognised that Chinese New Year was an opportune moment to engage with their enormous Chinese fanbase. According to Global Web Index data, 76 million Chinese fans support Man City as their main club, and this is also reflected by their 8 million+ fans on Weibo.
City and their shirt manufacturer Puma worked well to identify a motif that Chinese people around the world are proud of, their world-leading Taikonaut / 宇航员 programme. They also called the collection a Chinese New Year collection as opposed to a Lunar New Year collection. . A seemingly small distinction but one that Chinese fans appreciate - Lunar incorporates the celebration in a wider Asia context whereas the former term implies a personalisation approach to the Chinese market specifically. But City and the City Group have never, at least in recent years, been about just trying. Their successes on and off the pitch make them a commercial force in sport, and much like Haaland, Mahrez and co., they aren’t here to make up the numbers but are here to win. We can now move on to the lessons that the Cityzens as well as other brands can learn from this activation.
A closer look at the moon-themed capsule collection
Lesson 1: Localisation requires deeper insight
The campaign video for the collection rightly utilises Puma and City’s brand assets, its logos and the City players. There was however no direct nod to the Jade Rabbit Moon Rover, itself an interesting initial observation, which was a missed trick. Localising a brand for a specific community segment is tricky, and requires sound insight that must go deeper, beyond the good initial thought City had.
The location of one of the scenes in the promo video is a Chinatown convenience store, in Manchester, which is the most cursory nod to a remote link to Chinese culture and comes across as oversimplified and lazy. A die-hard Man City fan living in Chengdu will either not recognise the link, or at best will perceive it as an odd choice for making a cultural connection. A localised approach to engage fans and grow brand equity requires deep consumer research to better understand motivations, which should in turn inform creative positioning. The Blue Moon / Lunar New Year association itself is a good one, but the lack of Chinese language, a real Chinese story behind the kit launch, or Chinese talent involvement (beyond a single model) reflects surface-level insight at best. At Hot Pot, our proprietary Cultural Insight Community gives our strategist and creatives unparalleled access to real Chinese fans and consumers both overseas and in China, allowing a deep representative read of the Chinese market for any brand positioning.
Lesson 2: Animal collections are no longer enough - depth, collaboration and above all meaning is key.
Apparel brands across the spectrum, irrespective of what ‘year of’ it is, often fall into the trap of viewing Chinese New Year as a simplified cash cow. Fashion brands have long thought that slapping a rabbit, rat or tiger onto a bag or jacket is enough. Unfortunately in this case, just adding a rabbit onto clothes, and a weak execution and brand story, creates a weak impact overall. Both aspects, the product and the marketing, lead to an underwhelming positioning. Poor responses to this approach in the past from Chinese social users on RED, Weibo and Douyin have built a case for a more meaningful approach behind the animal’s placement in a campaign, and we’d echo this.
Hoppy Days for Moschino
Luxury house Ferragamo’s 2023 collection is a good example of this approach, with its rabbit taking on a deeper red tone to symbolise the rabbit’s mystical qualities in Chinese folklore, or Moschino’s use of Warner Bros’ Bugs Bunny IP to build cultural hype. Bottega Venetta’s campaign film supporting its collection eschews animals and builds into themes of returning home, a theme commonly understood by a Chinese population (in and outside of China) returning to their families at this time of year. Where brand equity in China doesn’t exist, brands should consider partnership with local creatives, as coffee brand Nespresso have done for their CNY collection with illustrator Angel Chen.
Nespresso’s partnership with local creative Angel Chen
Lesson 3: Activation across Chinese language platforms can capitalise on or commercialise organic demand
Initial responses to City’s capsule collection on RED and other Chinese language platforms have been positive, which makes it odd that (so far, it should be stressed), there is no sign of paid activity on Chinese platforms to boost sales of the collection. Perhaps one reason is that City are not actually slated to play in the kit, but regardless, either a coordinated Key Opinion Leader (KOL), or paid media approach across relevant Chinese youth platforms, would likely deliver a strong return, especially given the popularity of football in general amongst Chinese fans, and the strength of the City brand. Time will tell and without access to City’s sales results it is hard to tell, but a lesson would be to consider a paid campaign to target Chinese consumers, especially for global brands who are presumably looking to build equity with a valuable Chinese segment. City could build a campaign directly engaging Man City fans in China by getting super fans to tell their own CNY stories, which could then be played on their Western and Chinese social media platforms.
Close, but no cigar for City
Lesson 4: Strategy is not execution: start planning across multiple buying moments for the Chinese segment
Despite their shortcomings on this occasion, Manchester City should be commended for their attempt to engage with Chinese consumers in a meaningful way. However, one-off activation videos alongside animal themed collections at Chinese New Year are too common, and miss the bigger strategic view. The Chinese fan and buyer, both overseas and in China itself, is an always-on opportunity to delight, engage and convert across multiple buying opportunities, This must be delivered with a deep insight into the channels and content formats they are engaging with. Strategy is not an execution at Chinese New Year or Mid Autumn festival, and it is our belief that meaningful brand work in China and for Chinese needs to start with deep insight and planning to deliver the best impact.
If these lessons served as food for thought, and you’d like to start creating meaningful, commercially successful work, get in touch with our team at Nihao@hotpotchina.com
