Looking back on the past six months, we are able to observe a shift towards more rational consumption on one side and a year-on-year growth of 8.2 percent in total social retail sales on the opposite. It’s clear that customers are increasingly pursuing the next quality of life and are willing to pay more for happiness.

As consumption reflects people’s desire to enhance their life quality and spend more on happiness, “find out how to buy” and “what to purchase” have develop into questions of interest for a lot of fashion and luxury enthusiasts. In response to this trend, various brands have shifted their focus to “content seeding.”

There are countless quality products with potential to succeed, but to develop into hit items that capture and retain the market’s interest, they need appropriate strategic support.

Based on the tracking of name marketing within the important categories of luxury goods (watches, jewelry, shoes, bags), we have now observed that many luxury brands, represented by Longines, Roger Vivier, Tod’s and others, are leveraging Xiaohongshu to create their “big hit products” with the platform’s thriving content ecosystem and high-potential luxury consumer groups. Xiaohongshu currently has over 260 million monthly energetic users and has develop into an important platform for luxury brands within the “content seeding” link. Why are luxury brands investing more in Xiaohongshu? How can brands accurately goal customer groups and highlight product strengths on this platform? What form of content communication strategy needs to be adopted to win consumers’ hearts? In an exchange with WWD, several luxury brands provided answers.

1. Online hub for high-potential luxury consumer groups

As a platform where thousands and thousands of users share real experiences, Xiaohongshu is further evolving. Searching on Xiaohongshu has develop into a vital step for consumers when making purchasing decisions. Consequently, Xiaohongshu has develop into an indispensable guide for many individuals to seek the advice of before they make a purchase order.

Amongst Xiaohongshu’s user base, 70 percent are from the post-90s generation, and half of them reside in tier one and tier two cities. These statistics paint a transparent picture of Xiaohongshu’s user profile: well-educated, high-income young individuals living in urban areas. With a solid educational background and refined taste, they’ve the next level of interest and engagement in fashion, beauty, and lifestyle topics. As considered one of the groups most desperate to pursue a prime quality of life and display high purchasing potential, this younger generation strongly aligns with the potential customer profile of luxury brands.

In the course of the 2023 autumn/winter series release period of the 4 major fashion weeks, the search trends for “fashion week” on Xiaohongshu increased by 352%. Amongst them, there have been as many as 1.31 million themed notes related to watching fashion shows, and related terms comparable to #learnstylingtipsfromtherunway received much attention. Users created greater than 130,000 notes to interpret and imitate fashion show outfits. Currently, many luxury brands recognize that their core user group is quality-conscious consumers, and the characteristics of this group naturally resonate with Xiaohongshu users who enjoy consumption and value quality.

To speak more accurately with goal audiences, WWD has observed that many luxury brands have regarded Xiaohongshu as a core social media platform for brand spanking new product promotion and have developed a set of widely known strategies. They start with recent product key promotion days, displaying splash screen ads on Xiaohongshu to achieve numerous high-net-worth users on the location, increasing exposure and influence and setting the stage for online communication. They then use themed content because the technique to goal potential user groups and sustain user engagement. Finally, related content in each the “explore” and “search” pages is further beneficial to extend user penetration.

2. A thriving content ecology fosters recent trends

The recognition of urban camping from last 12 months has not subsided. This 12 months, numerous urban young people have began sharing their urban travel routes and spring casual outfits with the #Citywalk tag.

This group of urban young people loves fashion, socializing, and sharing. They’re willing to explore diverse styles and concentrate to the standard and details of their outfits. Users have created a wealthy range of original notes, and recent topics and trends quickly emerge and grow on Xiaohongshu, which has develop into a life-style trendsetter for younger generations. In keeping with data on Xiaohongshu, Citywalk-related notes increased by 270 percent from January to April, driving the sharing of urban travel outfit content.

Many brands have participated within the Citywalk trend, including Longines. In a communication with WWD, Longines stated that it interprets different wearing styles in various life scenarios, breaking the boundaries of watch products, and incorporating the favored Citywalk trend on Xiaohongshu. As a brand with a history of 191 years, Longines is willing to collaborate closely with the most recent and trendiest content community to interact the brand new generation. As a go-to destination for young people to collect lifestyle inspirations, Xiaohongshu enables brands to predict and leverage trends and achieve high engagement content seeding.

Within the “Spring Leisure Guide” jointly launched by Longines and Xiaohongshu, each parties strengthened user awareness in five cities including Guangzhou and Shanghai through the “Brand Spring Map” and encouraged users to create leisure content comparable to “Chinese-style afternoon tea with Longines watches” to showcase a relaxed interpretation of this watch series. In the course of the campaign, spring travel notes in various scenarios and styles were directly linked to the Longines Primaluna series. With so many “Longines Primaluna Girls” sharing their delightful spring encounters, the “Longines Primaluna Watch” has risen to the highest of the Longines brand search rankings.

It’s price mentioning that Xiaohongshu’s “reverse funnel model” strategy was adopted within the product seeding process. It accurately positioned Longines brand audience and feminine watch category audience because the core audience. Then, they combined the “spring travel” scenario with fashion-related life scenarios comparable to Citywalk and spring dates to create user demand for “traveling with watches”. Then, high-quality notes were redistributed to more users’ feeds to achieve a wider range of general luxury goods audiences, achieving the twin effect of “style expansion” and “scenario expansion.”

3. Scenario design and value communication under style trends

Nowadays, style trends have gotten increasingly prevalent, from “quiet luxury” to “dopamine style,” from “mental style” to “Maillard color pallet.” When consumers are faced with a alternative, they often prefer products whose brand tone and value expression are more according to their very own. Brands need to speak their values in specific scenarios.

For instance, Italian brand Tod’s promoted its classic T Case bag on Xiaohongshu, while communicating its brand values. They attracted attention through the recognition of stars Liu Shishi and Xiao Zhan and keywords related to handbags. They combined the presentation of high-quality product-related notes to spread the Italian aesthetic style from core audiences with needs comparable to “commuting” to broader audiences with scenarios comparable to “style for the workplace”.

In WWD’s conversation with Tod’s, we learned that their content seeding strategy achieved a fusion of product characteristics and brand core essence. Starting with the Italian aesthetic of “softness and strength,” it matched the product features and brand spirit. By leveraging branded content, combined with influencer notes and splash screen exposure on Xiaohongshu, Tod’s achieved multi-dimensional content seeding. As well as, it targeted the “workplace” sector, cultivated scenarios, collaborated with independent women within the workplace and fashion bloggers to create T Case Bag related content, and utilized keyword placement to extend brand awareness and reach within the skilled workplace sector. This strategy effectively captured the eye of goal customers and achieved brand image constructing and value communication in the method.

Along with “the workplace”, Xiaohongshu users also concentrate on sentimental scenarios related to “essential life events”. In keeping with Xiaohongshu data, “wedding shoe recommendations” is a hot topic for brides-to-be, maintaining a stable and high search frequency. Take Roger Vivier, a brand renowned for its luxurious and aesthetic style, for example. Its classic product, Flower Strass, holds a significantly high emotional value on Xiaohongshu. Roger Vivier presented significant life events comparable to weddings on Xiaohongshu, narrating memorable stories across the heels, infusing them with an exclusive sense of formality for essential moments. At the identical time, this product gained substantial attention through celebrity events and endorsements, driving business exposure and establishing a robust association between Flower Strass Heels and “life’s essential moments.”

Roger Vivier revealed to WWD that its user profile aligns well with Xiaohongshu users. These users are women who lead exquisite lives, possess excellent taste, and excel in diverse fields. On Xiaohongshu, Roger Vivier’s audience is female users aged 26 and above residing in high-tier cities. These women are luxury goods consumers with a requirement for dressing for various occasions. In addition they are inclined to share stories about their Roger Vivier high heels on Xiaohongshu. These shares often relate to major life events comparable to weddings, allowing the brand vision of “wearing Roger Vivier brings forth highlight moments” to resonate with individuals.

4. Achieving scientific content seeding across all scenarios and channels

Because of Xiaohongshu’s “content seeding” ecosystem, luxury brands are increasingly embracing the platform.

The important thing driving force behind their success is Xiaohongshu’s thriving content ecosystem and high-potential luxury consumer groups, which enable brands to exactly reach their audience. The platform is principally based on user-generated content, forming a socialized knowledge-sharing and consumer experience-sharing platform. It attracts quite a few affluent young users, who’re also the goal customers of luxury brands.

The platform completes dual-domain coverage through “feed distribution” and “search page landing,” combined with diverse circle-breaking tactics comparable to the “reverse funnel model,” penetrating users’ entire journey on the platform and enabling brands to locate core customers.

During content seeding, quality notes are amplified through business traffic to realize word-of-mouth content accumulation. This process enables brands to speak product information, engage with users, and drive brand image constructing. The brand tone and value are also successfully conveyed.

From a market demand perspective, young consumers pay more attention to authentic experience sharing and select brands they discover with. Xiaohongshu provides a platform for each sharers and types, facilitating deep connections between them.

As well as, brands discover recent trends and hot topics through Xiaohongshu, promoting probably the most promising variations amongst multiple products and creating “star products.” Meanwhile, brands further understand which products or trends have more topicality through data evaluation of user interactions. They accurately anchor consumer sentiments with eye-catching “star products” and proceed the seeding process in Xiaohongshu’s ecosystem. This sparks consumer interest and completes a closed loop of “Xiaohongshu seeding, full-channel conversion.”

Within the rational consumption era, our aspirations for a greater lifestyle continue to grow. Nonetheless, people seek “crush moments” but pay more attention to authentic experience sharing and brand identification. Subsequently, Xiaohongshu has develop into an important platform for luxury brands to interact with consumers, establish resonance, and construct trust.

As well as, luxury brands collaborate with Xiaohongshu to create a recent marketing approach – Xiaohongshu as a field for communicating brand tone and reaching high-potential consumers. This approach establishes deeper connections between products and users and realizes full-scenario, omni-channel “product seeding”. It also helps brands higher interact with consumers and convey the brand image, tone, and value proposition.

This art of “seeding” is each the spreading of name content and the creation of star products. Meanwhile, each product is a gateway to the brand’s unique universe, where Xiaohongshu’s life-loving followers are guided by their curiosity and desire for beauty.