Hey Tea (喜茶) Becoming More Than Just a Tea Brand
In an attempt to sustain long term success, wanghong tea brand Hey Tea has slowly been diversifying its product categories, expanding beyond tea to offer bread, ice cream, moon cakes, coffee, Qingtuan(青团) and cookies.
On March 23, Hey Tea (喜茶) introduced two flavors of Greek yogurt, sold at 19 RMB. These two products began selling out quickly. In Shanghai, they usually sell out in the morning. Customers have different responses to the yogurt. Some are saying it is very healthy, and it may be the healthiest item that Hey Tea has ever offered. Some are complaining that Greek yogurt is too thick to stir, and that it doesn’t taste good enough to justify the cost.
Keep in mind, greek yogurt is still a relatively new product category for most Chinese consumers. Right now the most well-known brands in the category are Ambrosial (安慕希) Lepur (乐纯). The yogurt market has been growing at a stable speed of 20% since 2014 in China. In 2017, the market scale surpassed the milk market, valuing at 119.2B RMB, so this appears to be a smart category for Hey Tea to move into.
Read more: 投资牧场、开卖19元酸奶，喜茶你“变”了
Loyal Bilibili Users Disgruntled as More And More Celebrities Join The Platform
Bilibili is known for its strong ACG culture, but is that culture threatened? Recently many celebrities have joined the platform including singer Zhang Liangying(张靓颖), actor Xiao Shenyang(小沈阳) and Yin Zheng(尹正). Longtime Bilibili users understand that the platform is doing this in order to boost its user base, but they are concerned that celebrities’ followers sometimes could be irrational and turn Bilibili to yet another Weibo.
Their worries don’t come out of nowhere. Last year, an Up Zhu (up主: a Bilibili slang term meaning content creators or influencers) made a funny and joking video about Cai Xukun(蔡徐坤, one of the hottest idols at the moment) playing basketball. It received a lot of views, but not long after the video got published, Bilibili was warned that it had violated Cai’s right of reputation and right of portrait and if Bilibili didn’t delete the video, it would be sued.
Cai’s followers joined the fight as well. They wanted to leave Danmu (弹幕: another slang term from Bilibili, meaning bullet messages or comments moving across the screen while watching videos) on the video. But not anyone can leave comments on Bilibili, to be able to write Danmu, they need to become members of Bilibili first. But it’s not easy to join Bilibili. To do so, users must pass a test on ACG culture. But instead of trying to take the test themselves, some of Cai’s fans bought Bilibili memberships on Taobao, which can cost up to 9,000 RMB. (They are crazy!)
And this is what longtime users are worried about, they don’t want Bilibili to become a celebrity chasing or fighting platform like Weibo. They want those mad and crazy fans out of the platform. But Bilibili is obviously not worrying this issue too much as it actually decreased the difficulty of the membership test, worrying longtime users even more.
Read more: 入驻大量明星后，B站终将“饭圈”化？
Louis Vuitton held its first livestream on Xiaohongshu – and it wasn’t great
While they’ve gotten a lot of attention for it, it really wasn’t that great, only 15k people joined the stream and the set was tacky. Chinese Gen Z’er Kejie shared, “I have seen screenshots of the livestream, the poor resolution and the setting totally ruined the aristocratic feeling of Louis Vuitton. It feels like I am watching a cheap Taobao store’s livestream.”
Douyin is banning lucky draws during livestreams
Lucky draws are a common tactic used by live streamers to get audience members to show up and stay in the stream. According to Douyin, lucky draw behaviors include: 1. Live streamers guide users to type words and they take a screenshot. Whoever shows up in the screenshot will be awarded. 2. Oral lucky draw 3. Live streamers guide users to answer their questions and whoever is the first to answer or whoever shows up with the right answer in their screenshots will be awarded. Douyin has said that these behaviors will be banned starting sometime in April or May. Violators will be banned from livestreaming for 24 hours.
Kuaishou is testing private live streams that require a passcode
Kuaishou wants to offer the ability for streamers to be able to select their audience, for example KOLs could invite members of their fan groups only, or teachers could invite their students. The password is single-use and a new one will be generated for each stream.
Douyin is trying to revitalize its socializing app Duoshan(多闪) with new features
Duoshan has been reactivated and it has new functions including video calling and a “what my friends are watching” or “好友在看”. The feature is similar to WeChat’s Top Stories. The difference is, on Duoshan, the contents are videos from Douyin, and on WeChat, the content is articles. Duoshan’s slogan has also been changed to “Douyin’s socializing APP” (抖音好友社交APP).
ByteDance announced it will increase its employees in Wuhan to 5,000
ByteDance will add 2,000 job positions in its Wuhan office, and will hire many university graduates.
Read More:抖音上线投票小程序；快手宣布对品牌进行升级管理；真人版“房似锦”5天卖出2套房｜本周资讯
People are Selling Planes and Helicopters on Alibaba’s Resale Platform Xianyu
On second-hand platform Xianyu (咸鱼), there is a user called Tang Xiao(唐笑) selling a plane worth 400M RMB. While no one has bought the plane yet, another user from Zhejiang Province bought a helicopter on Xianyu for 2.73M RMB.
Luo Yonghoa(罗永浩), CEO of Smartisan(锤子科技), held his first livestream on Douyin
Luo is also referred to as “the first generation of Wanghong(网红)”. In his three-hour livestream, he achieved over 110M RMB sales with 48M viewers (maybe now you see why LV getting 15K viewers in their Xiaohongshu stream isn’t that great.) He broke Douyin’s record for most viewers during a livestream and brought a lot of new users for the platform. It was also many people’s first time to purchase something through Douyin.
Read more: “咸鱼日”直播开卖4亿元飞机、携程梁建章淘宝直播带货｜大播快讯
China Marketing Podcast Episode 68: Programmatic Advertising in China with David Nottingham of iPinYou
Today’s episode features an in-depth discussion on programmatic advertising in China with David Nottingham, the EU general manager at iPinYou, a digital advertising technology company and the largest demand-side platform in China.
To kick off the conversation, David provides an overview of China’s programmatic ecosystem and how it is different from that in the West. Then, the conversation moves to:
Do you need to know about Chinese media to be able to run programmatic paid media campaigns?
Can Chinese media be trusted?
How can you manage ad fraud?
What are the latest trends in Chinese programmatic advertising?
As David points out, it’s hard to talk about programmatic advertising without getting technical. But he did a great job of helping those with little or no background in digital advertising to understand what he’s talking about.
Listen on iTunes, Spotify, or search China Marketing Podcast on your preferred player.
