Why China’s ‘Chunwan’ Lunar New Year TV show matters to luxury brands

If you are looking for a crash course on “China’s most popular stars of the year”, then play the re-run of the television show Chunwan on a loop.

The annual gala produced by CCTV on the eve of the Lunar New Year festival features celebrities who are regarded not only as the creme-de-la-creme of the nation’s show business royalty, but also people with images that are the most positive and – for lack of a better phrase – “politically correct”.

The 2019 edition of Chunwan, which aired on February 4, attracted a record-breaking viewership of more than 1.13 billion – both in China and abroad.

Just to put things in perspective, the American Super Bowl final – the National Football League’s annual championship game – which aired on February 5, attracted 98.2 million viewers while NBC’s broadcast of the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics opening ceremony was seen by 28.3 million viewers.

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There’s no doubt that luxury brands rely on the celebrity participants to maximise their exposure on one of the world’s biggest televised events.

Apart from industry veterans such as Jackie Chan, Richie Jen and Huang Xiaoming, the roster for the 2019 Chunwan featured a number of millennial idols.

TFBoys – the popular boy band featuring Karry Wang, Roy Wang and Jackson Yee took part in Chunwan for the fourth year in a row. Dilraba Dilmurat, Zhou Dongyu, Angelababy Yeung also made appearances during the television gala.

The celebrities’ influence on brand exposure – even generating sales of luxury products – was jaw-droppingly effective.

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Canto-pop diva Joey Yung, for example, posted a photo of her Chunwan outfit – a red Fendi jacket with furry double pockets matched with Christian Louboutin boots – on her social media accounts and attracted more than 7,000 likes on Weibo and another 9,300 likes on Instagram.

Discussions about one of the hosts of Chunwan, Li Sisi, and her fluorescent lipstick colour, went viral online and topped Sina Weibo’s real-time hot topic list.

The Weibo hashtag “Li Sisi’s lip colour” was viewed almost 500 million times.

Li’s own Weibo video unveiling the lipsticks from Chanel and make-up Forever garnered almost 900,000 views.

Social media exposure aside, the celebrities’ selling power was equally impressive.

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The Strathberry bag that comedian Ma Li wore in a skit during Chunwan quickly sold out on the British accessories brand’s official e-store.

Numerous knock-offs of garments, accessories and even stage props also quickly surfaced on the country’s online shopping platforms.

Speaking of Chunwan’s stellar influence, Guo Pei – the Chinese couturier who has been a Paris Haute Couture Week regular since 2016 and may be best known for dressing Rihanna in the trailing yellow gown at the 2015 Met Ball in New York – has been creating dramatic customised dresses for the television hosts and celebrities for the gala show since the early 2000s.

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The development of Chinese internet giants in recent years has helped to increase the commercial influence of the Lunar New Year gala, especially among digitally savvy millennials.

The popular “qiang hongbao” – virtual red packets – giveaway attracted billions of viewers to participate using digital apps during Chunwan.

As the main sponsor of this year’s Chunwan, Baidu gave away about 900 million virtual red packets to viewers.

According to Baidu, the company recorded 20.8 billion global engagements with Chunwan viewers on the Lunar New Year’s Eve.

The popular Chinese short video app, Douyin is the latest tech company to jump on the Chunwan bandwagon following Tencent and Alibaba – the e-commerce, internet and retail conglomerate that owns the South China Morning Post.

This year, Douyin used its platform to feature Lunar New Year-themed video filters and short videos of festive greetings from celebrities including millennial idols such as singer-actor Kris Wu and Taiwanese singer Angela Chang.

The hashtag gathered more than 12.9 billion views on Douyin.

Chunwan’s omnichannel promotions, set to capture highly targeted millennial generation audiences that are digitally savvy, familiar with mobile payments and highly engaged with celebrity influencers, can certainly provide useful insights and case studies for luxury brands.

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