Key takeaways:
- Louis Vuitton collaborated with Wallpaper magazine for its CNY campaign video, paying tribute to the fish lanterns of Zhanqi, Anhui.
- It’s the third of a series of traditional festival campaigns hosted by the Maison and the magazine since last year.
- Since last year, brand x lifestyle/art magazine x intangible cultural heritage has been an increasingly common format of cultural marketing in China.
Spring Festival being inscribed as a UNESCO intangible cultural heritage (ICH) was one of the biggest highlights for this Chinese New Year (CNY). Not only did local authorities try to boost cultural tourism by emphasising local customs for the biggest festival of the year, but brands are also doubling down on ICH marketing, especially regional and ethnic ones, including luxury brands such as the French luxury label Louis Vuitton.
Brands are doubling down on ICH marketing, especially regional and ethnic ones
Louis Vuitton has been at the forefront of hyper-localisation in China, with city-centric campaigns in Shanghai and Beijing in 2023 and 2024. This time, the French Maison teamed up with Wallpaper magazine for an ICH campaign for the Chinese New Year of the Snake.
Year of the Fish?
Collaborating with design, fashion and lifestyle magazine Wallpaper, Louis Vuitton travelled to Zhanqi, Huizhou in Anhui Province this CNY for a short film called “Year of the Fish” accompanied by a series of photographs. The campaign is focused on the local ICH “fish lantern”, a large paper lantern in the shape of a fish.
The video documents local artisans crafting the lanterns in the daylight, from their bamboo wicker frameworks and pasting paper shells to lighting them for the special festival. When the evening draws near, the lanterns light up, and the fireworks begin. The fish lanterns signify celebration and its hometown during the season. Fish (鱼, yu) is also important for the CNY across the country because it has the same pronunciation as “余” (surplus, yu), so it often signifies a prosperous new year in CNY symbolism.
The campaign is an extension of Louis Vuitton’s brand image as a luggage maker. In fact, the campaign is part of its luggage-centric marketing, exemplified by the hashtag “take LV on your trip” (#带着LV去旅行#), which has accumulated 150 million views on Weibo, China’s Twitter equivalent.
Travel and celebrate together
This CNY, of course, was not the first time Louis Vuitton collaborated with Wallpaper in China. During the last CNY and Duanwu festival, the French Maison travelled along with the magazine to Yongzhou, Hunan and a Miao ethnic group village in Guizhou for short films and photoshoots, with the hashtag “travel and celebrate together”.
The film from last CNY was rather simple, focusing on the drumming and dance of local Yao people with a message on travel. The Duanwu video last year, however, solidifies the format of this travel series with more prominent features of LV luggage and a deeper introduction to the ICH subject matter. The Duanwu campaign, of course, puts focus on the Dragon Boat in the Guizhou village, as Duanwu is often called the Dragon Boat Festival in English.
On the cover of magazines
Brands collaborating with a lifestyle or fashion magazine to document a local ICH is gradually becoming a set format for traditional festival marketing, especially for international luxury brands. Similar to Wallpaper, magazines such as ELLE and Shang Cheng Shi have both hosted this type of campaign before. However, these mostly involved more parties.
The brand x magazine x ICH campaigns usually feature a celebrity host. Both ELLE and Shang Cheng Shi offered cover spots for the A-listers such as Gong Jun and Lay Zhang. The ELLE x CHAGEE one even recruited Xi Xing Le designer Renee to make it a four-way collab.
Wallpaper and Louis Vuitton arty and luxury lifestyle-centric campaign does harness more coolness from the locations and ICHs
However, for Louis Vuitton, the star should be the luggage and bags so the involvement of celebrity ambassadors might complicate the message too much. As the tagline of the collab series says, “travel is art”. Celebrities will likely take away from the messaging with a more entertainment-centric tone. Not to say that collaborating with A-list actors will dilute the brand image, but the Wallpaper and Louis Vuitton arty and luxury lifestyle-centric campaign does harness more coolness from the locations and ICHs, similar to the Maison’s hyper-localisation podcasts.
Need to boost your China strategy? Dao Pro delivers bespoke insights on marketing, innovation, and digital trends, direct from Chinese sources. Find out more from our Dao Strategy Team here.
