Spring Festival Marketing for 20 Years: Brand Ads Have Become Promotional Videos for Intangible Cultural Heritage | Marketing Observation

Text｜He Zhexin

Editor｜Qiao Qian

On January 3, 2019, Burberry launched a global photography campaign. It planned to release an advertising video with the theme of a family portrait to celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year.

This marketing campaign was full of sincerity. In addition to inviting Zhou Dongyu, Kou Zhenhai, Zhao Wei and some well-known models, Burberry also invited the famous photographer Ethan James Green, who has collaborated with luxury fashion brands such as Alexander McQueen, Calvin Klein and Marc Jacobs, and has also shot the covers of fashion magazines such as VOGUE and i-D many times.

At that time, China was still the single market with the fastest growth of luxury goods in the world, and the Spring Festival marketing was a battleground for every brand. Data from the marketing agency Criteo shows that the goods purchased by Chinese shoppers to welcome the Lunar New Year cover multiple categories, which will increase the average daily sales of fashion goods by 70%.

Burberry described the final product as depicting a scene of family reunion, "bringing together family members of different generations to celebrate the festival... The classic items, printed plaid scarves, urban outfits and the brand's iconic trench coat complement each other."

Image source: Burberry

However, after the advertisement was released, the comments were not good. People questioned that the solemn atmosphere conveyed by the Burberry advertisement was incompatible with the Spring Festival. "I can't see what the sullen models have to do with the Spring Festival", "Such a strange family portrait makes me goosebumps". Domestic fashion media said that Burberry's Spring Festival marketing is just another failed case of Western luxury brands in China that completely missed the point.

Within just one day after the advertisement was released, the topic "#BurberryChineseNewYear" had more than 500,000 reads and 74,000 comments on Sina Weibo, most of which were negative. Burberry later withdrew the advertisement.

In 2002, the Renwu Year of the Horse, Nike launched the zodiac special edition for the first time on the classic shoe model Air Force 1, thus kicking off the Spring Festival marketing. Since the #BurberryChineseNewYear incident, the marketing style of brands for the Spring Festival has changed drastically and become very cautious. Every year at the end of the year, brands seem to be completing a 'assigned composition', requiring them to interpret the distant Eastern traditional culture in a short period of time. The 'answer sheets' they finally hand in often make the viewers jump back and forth between curiosity and tolerance, with mixed feelings.

After the Dior 'Horse-Face Skirt' incident in 2020, consumers have become more sensitive to the commercialization of Chinese traditional symbols. The Horse-Face Skirt is a traditional Chinese skirt, usually composed of wrinkled fabric and a unique skirt shape, and is named for its shape resembling the facial features of a horse. In the series launched by Dior, this skirt was used as part of the brand's spring and summer series. However, many people believe that Dior's understanding of its traditional culture when designing and presenting this skirt is too shallow, and there is even suspicion of cultural appropriation.

How to determine cultural appropriation? It can be seen whether the brand only takes but does not give. For example, is the series simply a copy of the original design? Are there designers from the birthplace of the culture involved? Has an item with special cultural value been turned into a meaningless or historically valueless decoration and then sold as a luxury item at an astonishing price? It is hard to imagine how the Dior series would be presented in a new and inspired posture if it were led by a Chinese designer.

Perhaps due to the numerous failed cases, luxury brands have gradually moved to another 'extreme' - they have become preachers of traditional culture, hoping to show respect for Chinese culture with one-to-one documentary shots: These advertisements are often realistic in style and beautiful in shots, and the interviewees are either ethnic culture experts or gray-haired artisans. At the same time, the brand itself is completely invisible. Except for the large English LOGO at the beginning, these advertisements can be mistaken for part of a series of traditional culture documentaries.

LOEWE has been shooting a series of documentaries about Chinese traditional craftsmanship since 2019

As the first officially recognized Intangible Cultural Heritage Spring Festival, the 2025 Year of the Snake has given brands that have been struggling with Spring Festival marketing every year a template that will not go wrong. We see a group of brands collectively using intangible cultural heritage as the background, emphasizing Chinese traditional craftsmanship to convey the flavor of the New Year: LOEWE, Tiffany & Co., Bottega Veneta... You can think of several luxury brands that are doing well are all included.

Luxury brands once prided themselves on handmade production. If viewed from this perspective, their move to pay tribute to Chinese traditional handicraft artisans is very reasonable. The problem is that today's luxury brands have long parted ways with their original haute couture dreams, and the starting point for everything they do is just higher profits. Katharine K. Zarrella, a fashion columnist for The New York Times, described that "these pretentious brands" have "debased their image and weakened their appeal... The only way to maintain their image is to raise prices... But the quality has not improved" through low-end celebrity collaborations, rampant licensing and ubiquitous advertising.

Therefore, when luxury brands transform themselves into spokespersons for Chinese traditional culture, it often gives people an unnatural feeling. V. S. Nai Paul, an Indian-born Nobel laureate in literature, pointed out the reason for this: The 'imitation' in the post-colonial era is often manifested as the imitation of culture.

This impulse to imitate is similar to the pursuit of 'intangible cultural heritage' by luxury brands today - it seems to be conveying respect, but it often appears awkward, alienated in the actual presentation, or has nothing to do with the brand itself. Their "cultural marketing" is more of a strategy than an emotional resonance.

When "intangible cultural heritage" has become a necessary option for marketing, the problem of homogeneity also follows

However, as long as the Chinese market is still a place for brands to dig for gold, whether to carry out Spring Festival marketing is not a question worth discussing. After the failure of the polarized attempts at cultural translation, some brands have begun to choose to break free from the shackles of empiricism and make more flexible and localized attempts.

Uniqlo's Spring Festival marketing this year became popular because of the slogan "Happy New Day". Netizens suspected whether the workers had made a mistake. After unintentionally learning the brand's intention behind this seemingly ridiculous promotional slogan - "Live well every new day, and naturally live well the new year".

Uniqlo revealed that the slogan "Happy New Day" hopes to understand the connection between the individual and the whole in terms of wearing: A year is composed of 365 days, and every day is precious. The physical condition and quality of life of every day will have a continuous impact. This interpretation precisely echoes the brand's concept of "Lifewear for a Better Life". Since 2023, Uniqlo has intentionally implemented this broad brand concept. Reflecting on the marketing style, Uniqlo no longer only follows the popular product route, but tries to emphasize the overall brand image of "entering ordinary people's homes".

Therefore, in this year's Uniqlo Spring Festival limited products, although there are indispensable underwear items in Chinese red, there are also more winter regular main products such as dumpling bags, the special edition of "PEANUTS" and light down jackets.

Uniqlo 2025 Spring Festival limited products

Another Japanese brand, MUJI, has also adopted a similar marketing approach. This Spring Festival, MUJI launched a long-term story collection campaign on Xiaohongshu, inviting everyone to share their "life companions", thereby conveying the brand's Spring Festival plan of "Daily necessities, accompany every year", and did not particularly launch any limited editions.

Adidas also chose to work on long-term items: The Chinese-style disc button sports top has a new color; The knitted top uses high-brightness color blocking and knot design, and the presented Y2K style is also eye-catching; The light sports series (sportswear) has launched a waist-cinching windbreaker that combines practicality and beauty; But the T-shaped thin-soled shoes that have been popular for a year have not launched new colors other than red and white, which may be the only regret.

The Chinese-style disc button top is an unexpectedly popular item of Adidas in recent years

The sports brand On represents another school - as a latecomer in the sports market, it is more accustomed to subtraction to present a more lightweight Spring Festival. In the public's impression, neither doing yoga nor running belongs to the category of Spring Festival activities. On did not forcibly link the two together. It chose to disassemble the pronunciation of blessings and integrate the brand name into it. The final promotional slogan of "There is On in sending blessings", coupled with the daily realistic style TVC, stands out among a group of heavily-marketed blockbusters.

In the context of the increasingly complex traditional culture marketing, brands have gradually realized that "cultural marketing" should not just be a marketing battle of superficial efforts, but should establish a real emotional connection with consumers through a more flexible and localized way. From Uniqlo's "Happy New Day" to On's "There is On in sending blessings", these brands interpret the Spring Festival culture in a way that is more in line with daily life and consumers' emotions, presenting a "down-to-earth" that goes beyond ostentatious symbols.