The ‘Paradigm Shift’ Remaking China’s Fashion Ad Industry

It was a global ad campaign for Calvin Klein unlike any other. The PVH Corp.-owned brand had representatives from its teams in various parts of North America and Hong Kong on Zoom, checking in on a shoot taking place in Seoul with girl group Blackpink’s Jennie.

The campaign was a stand-out for several reasons, in part because it was a global campaign being creative directed by Boh Project, a start-up agency in Shanghai, something that would have once been unimaginable.

Until a decade or so ago, global brands would typically run campaigns in China that were conceived and directed with Western tastes, regularly featuring Hollywood celebrities. And though brands increasingly understood the need for local faces to star in China-focused ads, global creatives often flew into the country to shoot and film Chinese celebrities for ad campaigns, or used one of a handful of local photographers or stylists known to Western brands.

As Bohan Qiu, founder of Boh Project, put it, even as more Chinese faces were appearing in ads directed at Chinese consumers, there was still a “cultural disconnection,” highlighting the different interpretations of beauty and aesthetics. “The [way the] Western lens portrays Asian sexiness is slightly different to how we perceive sexiness [for example].”

Improvements had been made but more was needed, something that became clearer to both Western and Chinese creatives relatively recently.

Chinese Aperture

“The paradigm shift was the Dolce & Gabbana China incident [which began with a bungled video campaign in 2018]; that was a wake-up call for all the brands to realise they really had to listen to the China team and find out whether they thought what they were doing was the right thing,” Qiu said.

Against this backdrop, creatives and agencies proliferated around China, each aiming to provide brands with a more nuanced, engaging sense of the local fashion industry, its sub-sectors, sub-cultures, and cultural and historical context.

This was happening as global creatives remain shut out of the country by pandemic-induced travel restriction, causing brands to lean even more heavily on local teams.

“They have to trust us now and they’ve given us huge opportunities ever since [the pandemic started],” Qiu said.

The timing is opportune as the local fashion industry continues to enjoy explosive growth. According to The State of Fashion 2022, a new report co-published by The Business of Fashion and McKinsey & Company, China’s domestic luxury market, for example, is expected to record sales 70 percent to 90 percent higher than 2019 levels by the end of this year, with a further 20 percent year-on-year increase tipped for 2022, roughly doubling total sales in just three years.

“The days are done of one agency covering everything. Brands are typically working with upwards of five agencies to do different things.”

It’s meant swift on-the-ground adaptation for agencies like MediaMonks, the content arm of UK-based digital advertising and marketing services company S4 Capital, which increased its China footprint following a merger with local creative agency Tomorrow earlier this year.

“We get a lot of requests now [for APAC campaigns] to be based in China and run from China,” Kelly Belchere, executive producer of MediaMonks, whose luxury clients include Burberry, Moncler and Hermès. “China is the core creative powerhouse and then the ideas are adapted. It’s no longer global [creative] being adapted for China; sometimes it’s now China being adapted to the rest of the world.”

This has led to the rise of specialist and boutique agencies that provide services for specific needs, from print and film to short video, livestreaming, KOL and celebrity campaigns to the metaverse and related digital fields.

“The days are done of one agency covering everything. Brands are typically working with upwards of five agencies to do different things,” she said.

Global Influence

It might seem incongruous, but at the same time that global brands are taking significant steps to ensure their advertising and marketing efforts in China capture an authentic Chinese point of view, local brands are increasingly looking to internationalise their image.

Domestic fashion brands are looking to work with niche agencies with an international focus such as Stark Visionaire, a new Chinese venture from US-based experiential agency and media platform Visionaire.

“Our field of expertise is merging artists and brands, working with artists, which is a very delicate balance,” Visionaire co-founder Cecilia Dean said. “I feel like brands want to work with artists all over the world, including China.”

For that reason, Stark Visionaire approached local brand Peacebird with an idea for a new collaboration, explains Dean and her partner in the Chinese business, Edmund Chu.

Knowing that Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan had a solo exhibition in Beijing, it struck them that the hyperreal imagery from Toiletpaper magazine, helmed by Cattelan and fellow Italian Pierpaolo Ferrari, would translate well in collaboration with a local fashion brand.

“We pitched it to Peacebird and they really loved it. We didn’t know how they would take it, but they took a gamble on us and so far it’s been really great,” Dean said.

The collaboration will include four capsule collections, campaign imagery shot by Toiletpaper in Milan, as well as a pop-up experience in Shanghai that Visionaire creative directed from New York.

“[Peacebird] sees the value of working with the artists in a really authentic way, that they are getting a level of creativity that they could not get if they did it themselves,” Dean added.

No Looking Back

What does this mean for advertising in China going forward? Qiu predicts that there will be less reliance on big celebrities and “soulless KOLs with massive followings,” and more variation in casting, ideas and content.

This will be driven in part, he said, by the rise of social media platforms such as Douyin (known as TikTok outside of China), Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book) and Bilibili, which use algorithms rather than relying purely on accounts with large followings to push quality content.

“Clients always tell me they want to speak to the new generation of customers; they want to know who are the new photographer talents and [how they can bring] a fresh social angle,” he said. He predicted that up-and-coming Chinese creative talent, like photographers Leslie Zhang, Theo Liu Xiangyu, Huang Jiaqi and Zeng Wu, will increasingly be in demand from global fashion brands.

Sometimes taking a fresh angle means taking a risk. Qiu said the campaign he is most proud of was one for Calvin Klein in APAC last year — a Boh Project creative-directed campaign featuring LGBTQI talents from Voguing Shanghai, part of the country’s once largely underground ballroom scene.

“It was quite a big deal, the first time putting [openly] LGBTQI people in a major APAC campaign,” when many countries in the region remain hostile to those communities, he said.

For Qiu, no matter what the next step is in the evolution of China’s fashion advertising, the most important thing is that there is no looking back.

“I think we’re in a really good era of being heard and being respected and being treated equally, not just as consumers but as creatives, as minds,” he said. “If you want to make money from us, you have to understand us.”

时尚与美容

FASHION & BEAUTY

Chinese Sportswear Upstart Maia Active Raises $15.7 Million

The Shanghai-based, female-focussed sportswear brand has raised nearly 100 million yuan ($15.7 million) in a series C round of financing, led by Belle International, one of China’s largest footwear retailers. In 2021, the company says its revenue will reach 300 million yuan, representing a 166 percent growth rate year on year. (BoF)

Li Ning Shows Spring/Summer Collection in Tropical Hainan Island

The fashion show took place on a beach in the resort town of Sanya and was accompanied by a music festival. The collection referenced Chinese minority Miao culture and the country’s origami tradition, as well as debuting styles in the ongoing Li Ning x Jackie Chan Kung Fu series collaboration. (Elle China)

科技与创新

TECH & INNOVATION

AI Start-Up SenseTime Delays $767 Million Hong Kong IPO

The company withdrew its plans for a Dec. 17 IPO following the news that the US intends to place the company on an investment blacklist due to its facial recognition work, which the US reportedly deems to be in conflict with human rights. Sources familiar with the situation told Bloomberg News that the company intends to resume preparations for an IPO after updating its prospectus to reflect the new sanctions. (Bloomberg)

Alibaba Fires Woman Who Accused Boss of Rape

The e-commerce giant fired the female employee who claimed her supervisor raped her on a business trip, saying in her dismissal notice that she had damaged the company by disseminating false information, according to the former employee and her lawyer. The news of the employee’s dismissal went viral on Chinese social media, with a related hashtag viewed more than 680 million times on Weibo. (The Wall Street Journal)

消费与零售

CONSUMER & RETAIL

Dalian Wanda Eyes Growth, Plots Mall Expansion

The mainland’s largest commercial property company has sold billions of yuan of assets to help pay down debts in recent years, but Dalian Wanda is once again eyeing growth by way of new retail complexes and movie theatres, in a move sources see as appeasing Beijing’s focus on domestic investment. (BoF)

Cathay Capital Joins With Kering, L’Oréal to Launch China Fund

The Cathay Consumer Co-Creation Fund, established in partnership with Kering, L’Oréal and Pernod Ricard, plans to invest in and incubate early-stage Chinese companies with strong growth potential in the consumer goods and retail sectors. (BoF)

政治,经济与社会

POLITICS, ECONOMY, SOCIETY

Communist Party Members Urged to Have Three Children

An article suggesting it is the responsibility of China’s Communist Party members to help reverse the country’s declining birth rate by having three children went viral in the country. The opinion piece, appearing in China Reports Network, was subsequently removed from the internet. Figures released by China’s national bureau of statistics last month show there were 8.5 births per 1,000 people in 2020, the first time in decades that figure fell below 10. (The South China Morning Post)

Marking 20 Years in WTO, China May Relinquish Some Developing Country Benefits

The day before China’s 20th anniversary as a World Trade Organisation member on Dec. 11, the country’s ambassador to the WTO said China would relinquish a number of the benefits that it has enjoyed under its developing country status within the trade body, while stopping short of forgoing that status altogether. (Reuters)

China Decoded wants to hear from you. Send tips, suggestions, complaints and compliments to our Shanghai-based Asia Correspondent [email protected].