Insights from China: How Foreign Brands Can Capitalize on Traditional Chinese Festivals

What's Inside

There are a number of culturally meaningful festivals in China – many of which offer excellent opportunities for branding or promotions.

Spring Festival, commonly referred to as Chinese New Year, is the most important festival of the year. Families gather to celebrate in a series of festivities that spread across several days.

We’ve seen Luxury brand Gucci launch a festive-themed collection with images from the 1933 United Artists’ short “Three Little Pigs,” for the year of the pig. The collection consisted of wallets, watches, handbags and sneakers.

Maybelline released a make-up collection that includes a mahjong set that replaced the traditional symbols on the tiles with lipstick, New York City icons – and the Maybelline M logo on the back.

Tory Burch introduced a collection for Qixi Festival (“Chinese Valentines Day”) consisting of four special handbags, a case for business cards (very popular in Asia), the brand’s signature ballet flats in pink and red blocked colors and stripe prints – modeled by popular Chinese model Liu Wen.

Starbucks also launched a tea set gift box in collaboration with hinese luxury fashion brand Shang Xia, offering modern products with a contemporary twist on traditional themes.