How retailers can use the Chinese New Year to boost sales? 

The Chinese New Year, also known as Spring Festival or Lunar Year is a time to celebrate with family. Many Chinese bring gifts and red envelopes for their loved ones or reward themselves for the past year. Chinese people living outside of their country or fans of Chinese culture are also delighted about products that are a symbol of good health, luck, and prosperity for the new year.

How do retailers and brands use CNY as a sales and marketing event? We took a closer look.

Content & design

Fortunately, there are plenty of CNY-inspired design options for marketing campaigns in various royalty-free websites to start. 

Each year in the repeating Chinese zodiac cycle of 12 years is represented by a zodiac animal. 2023 is a Year of the Rabbit. According to Chinese superstition, each zodiac animal has its own attributes linked to lucky and unlucky aspects in terms of colors, numbers, elements, or flowers. These components provide great ideas for possible designs. 

In Chinese culture, the color red symbolizes luck for the new year. At Lunar New Year, it’s tradition to give red envelopes with money to family and friends, making this a brilliant design option for special offers, mailings, coupons, or promotions. When it comes to content, concepts such as happiness, family, togetherness, and travel are ideal for marketing campaigns and the design of landing pages, mailings, video clips or visuals. Many Chinese citizens travel home for the celebration to visit their family and friends and spend time with one another. During Chinese New Year, Chinese consumers adore warm, comforting, well-wishing messages. 

Food traditions such as reunion dinners are hugely symbolic and an important part of the celebrations. People whip up elaborate feasts, but also order many meals. It’s another theme that is perfect for campaigns. Many retailers, caterers, and restaurants offer ready-to-cook mixes, menus, gift baskets, food deliveries, discounts, and promotional campaigns.

Shopping events

In recent years, some retailers and brands hosted CNY events in their brick-and-mortar stores. The coronavirus pandemic has made this somewhat more difficult. Asian audiences are known to love livestream shopping, and CNY is a great reason to take advantage of this trend. Livestreams are perfectly suited for the theme of the Chinese New Year and benefit from the interaction with consumers. Finally, social media platforms are not just a great sales opportunity for retailers, but also allow consumers to communicate right before and during the holidays.

This is where campaigns that feature user-generated content can stand out from the competition. How do you celebrate the New Year? What are you eating? Which brand has the nicest products that celebrate the Year of the Rabbit? Which retailer has the best holiday-themed deals? Brands should try to capitalize on this dynamic and window of opportunity.

Do you have a project?

VISEO can support you in this process, email us at marketing-apj@viseo.com.