How adidas “won” 2021 Chinese New Year marketing
Chinese New Year (CNY), the Year of the Ox, falls on February 12 in 2021. It is China’s most significant holiday for gift-giving and, this year, adidas has been lauded for its omnichannel, gamified marketing campaign, targeted at all those who partake in the annual festivities.
According to Jing Daily, adidas got the cultural tone “just right” with 2021’s campaign theme, “Make auspicious CNY wishes come true”. Reportedly, the brand used “traditional cultural motifs commonly seen in Chinatowns worldwide, but with a highly nuanced and localised perspective” to win hearts and minds.
In contrast to adidas’ 2020 CNY campaign, which was set in the ancient Tang Dynasty (618-906 CE), the brand’s 90-second 2021 television commercial embraced “today’s fresh, modern China” by following young protagonists back to their hometowns for the holiday, thereby ensuring visual scenes which came “alive with the atmosphere of small-town CNY celebrations”.
The commercial featured a celebrity cast of all ages (including Jackson Yee, Eason Chan, Liu Yi Fei, Zhang Jun Ning and child actress Wang Sheng Di), which allowed the campaign to resonate with a broader demographic of viewers.
Behind-the-scenes features were released on social platforms, such as Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok), creating potential for “dynamic conversations” among audiences. Celebrity “greeting videos” featuring special-edition products further gave the campaign a “personal touch” and helped boost the campaign’s social awareness, Jing Daily said.
Moreover, adidas employed “hints of indigenous culture” as design accents, such as on special-edition CNY 2021 performance, kids and Originals trainers, which were designed with traditional emblems such as fish, oxen, pixiu (“mythical hybrid creatures”) and qilin (Chinese “unicorns”) in mind. Some Originals editions included a stitched inner pocket under the tongue, “representing good fortune”.
Highlighting the gamification element to the campaign, physical and virtual coins were also rolled out, in order to heighten product launches and, ultimately, audience engagement. The “lucky” coins were made available to both online and offline consumers of adidas’ CNY products.
Downloaders of the adidas app were able to scan their coin to enter an in-app interactive game, the aim of which was to win prizes (such as “invaluable” offline celebrity “workshops”) and collect individual “wishes” from featured celebrities. Those who shared their wishes were able to obtain extra prizes.
Adidas’ online-to-offline strategies - created by a “local”, Chinese marketing team - made its CNY 2021 campaign “highly relevant” to targeted audiences, Jing Daily concluded.
Image: screenshots of the mobile game on adidas’ mobile app. Credit: Jing Daily.
