Chinese Sports Brand Hong Xing Erke Sees Surge in Popularity After its Donation to Henan Flood Relief
Recently, Henan Province has suffering from heavy rainfall, especially the city of Zhengzhou which was devastated by flooding. Many companies have donated money to support relief efforts. For example, Alibaba contributed 150 million RMB, ByteDance, Tencent, Meituan and Pinduoduo donated 100 million, and Sina donated 20 million. Among these donations, one company stands out. It is Hong Xing Erke, a Chinese sports brand.
On July 22, Hong Xing Erke posted on Weibo saying the company donated 50 million RMB for Henan. The post has 9.5 million likes so far and it quickly became number 1 on the hot topic ranking board.
What happened? Why did Hong Xing Erke’s donation receive such overwhelming passion from people? What can brands learn from the situation?
On The Crazy Night of Hong Xing Erke’s Livestream
According to Huitun Data (灰豚数据), a Taobao livestream monitoring platform, the average views of Hong Xing Erke’s livestream during the past 6 days before its Weibo announcement was only 11k, while the views on July 22 reached 2 million. The sales amount that it achieved that night (10 million RMB) was way more than what it had done on the day of 618 Shopping Festival.
The craze continued to July 23. The number of viewers rose to 7.5 million and received more than 50 million likes, which was way more than top live streamer Viya’s performance that day.
In the livestream, many products were quickly out of stock. And because there were too many people watching, the livestream froze sometimes, and was not able to load images of products.
Live streamers were telling viewers to shop rationally, and to only buy what they need. But viewers were too enthusiastic, and they wouldn’t listen to live streamers. When the live streamer told them that if the shoes don’t fit their feet, they can return them. And people responded to her saying, if their shoes don’t fit their feet, that’s their feet’s problem not the shoes’, and they will make their feet to fit their shoes.
Viewers were even asking when Hong Xing Erke would start selling their down jackets, that the air conditioner is making their home so cold. And if the brand doesn’t prepare to sell down jackets, they can just send them ducks and they will start pulling out feathers and making their own.
One man said he bought a whole set of clothes for his son offline at a Hong Xing Erke store and his son didn’t like them. He said he decided to change a son.
I mean, this is really crazy! For the first time ever, I saw so many people support a brand! And not even a trendy one.
Why Hong Xing Erke?
This is because of contrast, in two ways. 50 million RMB isn’t a small number, yet you didn’t see the news on Weibo’s hot topic ranking board. Instead, the ranking board was filled with “xyz celebrities donated 500k or 1M RMB for Henan” and other companies’ contributions. However most of these companies, bought themselves onto the ranking board to promote their brands. So, they gave money, but they wanted to be praised for it, so it didn’t seem sincere. Compared with them, Hong Xing Erke donated 50 million but it was being low-key and other that posting on its own Weibo account it wasn’t trying to promote itself for donating.
The other comparison comes from the most liked comment in Hong Xing Erke’s Weibo post, saying the company was about to bankrupt but still made such generous donation. In 2020, the revenue of Anta, a domestic sports giant, was 35.5 trillion RMB, while Hong Xing Erke earned 2.8 trillion, yet they both donated the same amount of money.
Being low-key and being generous quickly gained the brand lots of attention and consumers’ sympathy, respect and trust.
Hong Xing Erke Has Been Underperforming in Recent Years
The brand was founded in 2020 in Fujian Province. Its slogan shows great ambition: To Be NO.1, yet from its performance during the past several years it seems it still needs to work a lot harder to achieve this goal.
With the competition from international players such as Nike and Adidas, together with the growing popularity of other domestic sportswear brands such as LiNing and Anta, Hong Xing Erke has been struggling to keep up. Many cite its lack of creativity. For a long time, people linked its shoes with plagiarism and outdated fashion.
To combat this, instead of improving products and marketing, the brand changed markets, targeting lower tier cities. The average prices for its products range from 150-400 RMB, which is also more affordable compared with other sports brands.
Brand Livestreams Have Become a Forum for People to Express Their Feelings
From the Xinjiang Cotton Scandal (when many people were flocking to Nike and H&M’s livestream to criticize them for what they have done), to KANS’ livestream and to Hong Xing Erke’s livestream, we can see that livestreaming has become a platform for consumers to express their feelings towards brand’s responses to cultural events.
In terms of KANS’ and Hong Xing Erke’s cases, one of the reasons why they’ve received massive support from consumers is that they both quickly responded in the correct manner to a trending public affair.
A recap of KAN’s case – It was evoked by a top Chinese celebrity Kris Wu’s scandal. Before the scandal, Kris represented many international brands such as Louis Vuitton, Bvlgari, Porsche, and many FMCG giants such as detergent brand Liby and instant noodle Master Kong. KANS was not as eye-catchy as the other brands that Kris represented.
However, it is the first one that bravely stood out and said it would terminate its partnership with Kris. Compared with some of the brands that hesitated to do so, KANS’ quick reaction earned itself attention and favorable impression. Together with the push from its two live streamers that night, KANS has greatly promoted itself from the PR crisis.
Back to Hong Xing Erke’s case. Its low-key and generous behavior encouraged many people to support the brand in its livestream. What also impressed consumers was that the live streamer kept telling them to shop rationally, and don’t buy anything not needed.
Both brands’ CEOs went to their livestream afterwards, to express their gratitude and to show their faith in Chinese brands. Having CEOs show up in livestream somehow personalizes brands and it makes sure that brands are leveraging the sudden attention.
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