Press Release, November 15, 2022
The marketing and innovation consultancy TD Reply used Chinese social media data to investigate which fashion brands were able to attract the most attention (buzz) during Singles’ Day 2022. The French luxury brand Louis Vuitton manages to outshine other brands by a wide margin. Adidas generates more buzz than Nike, but lags significantly behind Chinese competitor Li-Ning.
During Singles’ Day in China, the world’s biggest shopping festival, fashion brands do their best to attract consumers’ attention with attractive discounts, spectacular PR stunts and other marketing activities.
The Berlin-based marketing and innovation consultancy TD Reply, which operates an office in Beijing since 2010, measures which brands attract the most attention every year on the occasion of Singles’ Day. The measurement is based on a digital metric called buzz – which represents the number of mentions of a brand in discussions on social media, e-commerce, and other online platforms. A brand’s share of the total buzz for a particular category (such as fashion brands) says a lot about how much attention the brand is able to generate relative to the competition. This metric can be a good indicator of brand visibility and the effectiveness of marketing activities, particularly in the context of important events such as Singles’ Day.
Louis Vuitton successful with boy band as brand ambassadors
The French luxury brand Louis Vuitton clearly won the battle for attention this year. With a 17.1% share of the total buzz, it generated almost twice as much attention during Singles Day activities as second-placed Italian luxury shoe and bag specialist Tod’s (9%). Saint Laurent comes in third position (3.6%).
The specialists in TD Reply’s Beijing office attribute much of the buzz generated by Louis Vuitton this year to two activities: the recent opening of the first Louis Vuitton restaurant in China in the city of Chengdu and the partnership with the boy band Teens in Times, which Louis Vuitton has picked as brand ambassadors. In the Chinese market, partnerships with well-known influencers, the so-called key opinion leaders (KOL), play a key role. The communities of leading KOLs, which are much larger than the communities of Western influencers, usually respond very positively to the business partnerships of their idols. As a result, these partnerships are among the most important marketing instruments for companies with ambitions in the Chinese market.
It is important to note, however, that Louis Vuitton has been one of the most popular non-Chinese brands in China for years thanks to its good understanding for Chinese cultural codes and sensitivities. In 2020, for example, the Chinese public reacted overwhelmingly positively to Louis Vuitton’s decision to hold the “SEE LV” exhibition in Wuhan – a comparatively insignificant city in terms of economy and the probable place of origin of the COVID-19 virus.
Li-Ning gets more attention than Adidas and Nike
Chinese sportswear brand Li-Ning lands in a strong fifth place with a buzz share of 3.1%, but drops two positions compared to last year. It performs considerably better than competitors Adidas (1,3%) and Nike (1%).
Adidas still manages to garner significantly more attention than last, when it could only claim a 0.3% share of the total buzz.
JD ahead of Tmall
On the shopping platform side, JD.com outperformed its main competitor Tmall.com in terms of attention this year. For example, JD.com received 43.1% of the share of total buzz with its Singles Day promotions, while Tmall.com only gained 24%.
Last year, Tmall.com (42.8% at the time) was still narrowly ahead of JD.com (38% at the time).
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