I was invited to speak about China’s influencer and celebrity marketing scene for an American Chamber of Commerce event not long ago. The opportunity was intriguing, but I haven’t actually spent much time or energy involved in China domestic marketing in a while. So I proposed to AmCham that I instead speak on how Chinese brands are using influencers and celebrities globally as this is something I’m very tuned into. The presentation went well, so why not do a write-up on what I covered?

Celebrity KOL Marketing in China… Now Global

Things started out simple. You get a famous person, pay them a lot of money to endorse your product, get them to take some jolly photos with your product. Jackie Chan for instance, with rich thick black hair, representing a men’s shampoo brand.

That, or maybe just get some smiling musician to hold your cold medicine box.

In a lot of ways, this very basic form of celebrity endorsement hasn’t changed in China. Except maybe now, it’s often times boys who push the beauty products.

You also get this type of advertising from multi-national brands in China, working with local celebrities. And it’s not like this type of advertising is unique to China anyway.

Nowadays, you see a lot of Chinese brands doing this type of advertising globally. One of the first big ones was the Gal Gadot Huawei collaboration, famous for the ‘Tweet from iPhone’ incident. Thanks to her, every Chinese phone brand is now on their toes when Tweeting.

And speaking of Chinese phone brands and celebrity endorsements, Neymar Jr famously endorsed the sleek Oppo Find X during World Cup Russia 2018. And this brings us to our next topic…

Oppo, Vivo, & Celebrities Holding Phones Next To Their Faces

The ubiquitous phone brand ad in China: a famous person holding a smartphone next to their face. Wow, right? How creative. How original.

This model of advertising has been notably exported by Oppo and Vivo in South and Southeast Asian countries. India is the most notable of these markets.

Oppo and Vivo hoardings are incredibly common in India. These two brands are so ridiculously visible, a cultural moment has occurred and the memes have followed.

With celebrity phone ads so visible and so generic, how could memes like this not be made?

Vivo and Oppo also had a marriage of sorts in India, when their celebrity spokespeople Ranveer Singh and Deepika Padukone tied the knot toward the end of 2018. And of course, the memes followed.

Phone brands are the center of a lot of India’s memes. The market is so huge and still growing, the battle for market dominance results in a lot of advertising, which in turn comes with a cultural reaction.

Not sure what this is trying to say about Samsung 😆

The ads have evolved from the whole phone-next-to-the-face approach. Bollywood movie star Aamir Khan was featured in some cute TV spots for the Vivo V9 launch in 2018.

Aamir even Tweeted the campaign videos to his 24 million fans.

Can’t say his social media manager is all that inspired, given the very meta advertising world reference to the campaign.

What often happens when brands go global is greater local autonomy. This has really been the case for Vivo in India. Their modes of influencer collaboration evolves. One campaign Vivo India has been running with is the National Geographic Traveller India Lenscape campaign. Vivo equips talented photographers with their smartphone devices. These photographers then travel to scenic landscapes or vibrant cultural events and snap really nice shots with the devices.

While some of these photographers may not have a lot of fans, such as Nirvair Signh Rai’s humble 13.2 thousand Instagram followers, Nat Geo Traveller India has an additional half a million fans on IG.

Their work combined brings a lot of credibility to Vivo. It’s extremely straightforward from a product promotion perspective too. A professional photographer takes amazing shots with a smartphone device, backed by the well-established Nat Geo IP. Hey, I could take amazing photos with that phone too!

Missed Opportunities With Neymar Jr

Neymar Jr isn’t very well-liked.

But TCL is an official sponsor.

He was the center of World Cup Russia 2018’s most talked about moment. So many memes and parodies were made about Neymar’s great falling-over act on the World Cup pitch.

He may not be liked, but he’s one of the most meme-able footballers. So much humor was made at Neymar’s expense during that World Cup.

And when this is the cultural reaction to Neymar during the World Cup, that sponsorship is a lot harder to take seriously. Especially with TCL’s messaging: a brand chosen by legends.

But could Neymar be more likable if he didn’t take himself so seriously? Take this visual below for instance. This was the visual for a social post on the TCL Corporation account. And in all transparency, my team did this post.

What we wanted to do was something more like this.

But predictably, TCL wanted to play it safe, and I don’t think Neymar would have liked it either. But doing something like this actually would have gotten more people to like both Neymar and TCL. It was a real missed opportunity.

Fast-forward to January 2019, more missed opportunities. We were hoping to take advantage of the Neymar buzz during each scheduled match with social content, but he got injured and was out for 10 weeks. Wasn’t much we could do with him as a result.

Then shortly after he got back in the game, he punches a football fan in the stadium. Granted it wasn’t a very hard punch, it still caused a lot of alarm for the league and sponsors alike.

Neymar gets suspended from some matches, TCL wants to avoid him as a topic. Missed opportunities all around.

Choosing a celebrity spokesperson as a brand is very risky. Neymar ain’t cheap and he has a lot of brand collaborations. In the end, they all suffer.

How Zaful Does Social Marketing

Ever heard of Zaful? They make bikinis. And other clothes. But mostly bikinis.

They’re based in Shenzhen and run a very extensive influencer marketing operation. The strategy: find just about every incredible looking woman on Instagram and offer them a sponsored bikini shopping haul in exchange for content & cross-promotion.

The Instagram hotties don’t necessarily need to be that popular either. Many of them have fewer than 10,000 fans.

Zaful also works with quite a few YouTube fashion haul girls too. One of which is Kendra Rowe, who has about 200,000 subscribers, with additional fans on platforms such as Instagram.

But check out the comment section on any of Kendra’s YouTube videos. Are thirsty guys the real audience for an online bikini store? The comments are really something. You even get guys time-stamping all of the hottest moments of a given bikini try-on video.

Kendra also has a subreddit dedicated to her. Reddit is a treasure-trove for softcore and hardcore porn, and Kendra’s subreddit falls into the softer variety of these community-driven boner factories. I doubt many of the visitors to Kendra Rowe’s YouTube, Instagram, or subreddit are in the market for a bikini anytime soon.

When you start looking for more female audience oriented fashion haul YouTubers, you’ll find that Zaful comes up on their video topics. But not always in a flattering way. In fact, one YouTube search for Zaful will lead to top results about it being a scam.

Patricia Bright’s video about Zaful is the most visible of these anti-Zaful videos from YouTube influencers. She was contacted by multiple people at Zaful, where presumably none of these people contacting her were aware of the other contacting her (this kind of poor talent outreach practice seems common for Zaful).

Patricia was offered a lot of money to do a collaboration video, but she ended up turning it down because she found them to be unprofessional. She instead decided to do her own non-sponsored video about their swimsuits, and it wasn’t very positive.

This might explain why so many small-time Instagram babes are working with Zaful these days. The more established influencers are wary due to Zaful’s poor talent management practices and sketchy reputation.

How TikTok Blew Up In The West & How It’s Sustaining

TikTok reached cultural relevancy worldwide in fall 2018 with PewDiePie making multiple videos about it. I wrote quite a bit about what led up to this here right before they hit the big times with PewDiePie’s massive audience.

To recap, TikTok started in China, known locally as Douyin (抖音).

They made a big push for global user acquisition in 2018, running programmatic ads all over YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook.

And people noticed. They often didn’t like what they saw.

Then came the memes.

It was an Attack of the Memes.

Then came the ‘Hit or Miss’ girl, also known as NyanNyanCosplay. She made a video on TikTok with the most iconic segment of iLOVEFRiDAY’s song, Mia Khalifa.

The video went viral. One reason was a lot of guys thought she was a guy dressed up as a girl, but still quite cute. This video really brought out the Futanari fans.

But NyanNyanCosplay is in fact a girl, and a lot of people became obsessed with her. The video spawned some odd addictions, outlined by an online commenter below.

The ‘Hit or Miss’ girl became the global face of TikTok in the fall of 2018, and the memes followed.

Daily sessions for TikTok rose worldwide.

App downloads spiked in the US.

By November 2018, Jimmy Fallon was talking about TikTok on the Tonight Show.

People were using TikTok, whether ironically or not.

It was memes that brought TikTok front and center, whether they were positive or not.

And meme culture got one of YouTube’s biggest influencers to talk about TikTok without sponsorship.

But memes eventually get stale.

Star power now helps keep TikTok alive. As TikTok was becoming a regular topic for PewDiePie videos, Cardi B was doing an official collaboration with them.

TikTok got Cardi to utilize its interactive video features in a rap battle against her husband Offset. As the platform is largely music-driven, 2 famous rappers dueling it out with their unique mode of user-interaction was quite fitting.

TikTok became a media darling into 2019, with the likes of Jennifer Lopez using it to promote NBC’s World of Dance.

TikTok is probably the most successful product out of China to work with celebrities and influencers — many of which don’t even need to get paid to mention the brand.

Learnings

While celebrity advertising has stayed consistent in many ways, the avenues for collaboration are now almost endless with social media and the digital landscape — that is if you and your celebrity partner are brave enough to take risks. Celebrity collaborations are a big investment. Things can easily fall apart, including your investment. Be mindful of an influencer’s audience. Who needs a million fans when they aren’t your target audience? Meme culture is very powerful. It can create or accelerate cultural moments that get influencers and media talking without the paying.

Thanks for reading!