Luxury footwear brand mou partnered with TONG Global to strengthen and popularise its presence in China during a three-year-long partnership. 

TONG, the expert China social media and marketing agency, was brought into this marketing project with the aim of both positioning mou as a market-leading British shoe brand in China, driving traffic to mou’s e-commerce outlets, and increasing purchase intent through reputation growth, celebrity, influencer, and creative activations across all digital platforms, including Xiaohongshu (Rednote).

The foundation of any strong brand identity in China is arguably having a strong digital presence, and more specifically, a social media presence, backed by trusted voices. TONG ensured this is the case on mou’s Rednote, Douyin, and WeChat channels, linked to its Tmall storefront.

Influencer Strategy: Trusted Recommendations and Seeding

TONG worked with Chinese influencers and key opinion leaders, and created a monthly seeding campaign for mou, which resulted in a regular flow of trusted personas posting mou’s products to millions of followers. On average, mou products reached 182k monthly impressions through this seeding campaign alone, resulting in 1.8 million impressions over the course of just one of the years of collaboration with the brand.

Creative Approach: Storytelling and Identity Marketing

Several creative campaigns were launched to enrich the brand image of mou. Influencers from across China were photographed wearing their mou shoes in a variety of environments, for the “Travelling with mou” campaign, building a narrative of versatility across different settings through real-life storytelling and content.

Separately, for an ‘identity marketing’ campaign, TONG interviewed influencers with diverse hobbies or professions, including snowboarding, playing the electric guitar, and baking. 

By exploring their personalities and personal sense of identity, and linking these insights to why each influencer chose to wear mou, TONG built out aspirational identities that consumers wanted to emulate in the campaign’s luxury fashion-editorial style. By aligning the product with these aspirational personas of the chosen influencers, the campaign successfully increased consumer purchase intent.

Extending Reach: Celebrity Endorsements

A core pillar of TONG’s strategy to enhance mou’s reach and boost desirability in China was a celebrity engagement programme. In order to secure talent, we partnered with agents, photographers, and stylists with access to high-profile actors and models, ensuring mou was placed and styled correctly. From streetwear candids to posed shots, mou obtained photographs of the most trusted faces in China wearing their products, such as internationally renowned Chinese supermodel, actor, singer, and fashion icon Hu Bing (胡兵).

Working with celebrities with a combined follower count of more than 61 million, this celebrity endorsement campaign extended mou’s reach beyond conventional digital promotion, reaching a wider audience than ever before.

Successful luxury brand growth in China relies on more than official brand communication channels. Leveraging celebrities, influencers, and building out desirable identity personas provides consumers with multiple entry points to the brand – crucial for any fashion brand looking to build an authentic, desirable identity in the market.

A key to success with this kind of campaign is finding authoritative voices that are matched to the brand. For mou, this meant supporting the luxury positioning and having an aligned audience with mou’s core target. Careful curation of talent across a wide range of backgrounds allowed consumers to trust the brand and envisage themselves as customers. 

TONG’s partnership with mou resulted in the success of the luxury footwear brand’s growth in China and a strong long-term market presence, with multiple creative campaigns earning millions of impressions each.

• Brand visibility: Millions of impressions across influencer and celebrity content built strong awareness among Chinese consumers.
• Defined cultural identity: The carefully curated KOLs, KOCs, and celebrities built a rounded and defined brand presence. Products were showcased in a variety of culturally relevant content and in settings appealing to a wide array of consumer personas, delivering both wider reach and deeper brand loyalty. 
• Follower growth: Built sustained growth across Rednote (Xiaoungshu), WeChat, and Douyin through creative content and paid advertisement, alongside community incubation and influencer collaborations at key marketing moments.