What’s this “520 day” that intrigues many in China? The term 520, an abbreviation for May 20, denotes an unofficial Valentine’s Day in China. The number “520” phonetically resembles “Wo Ai Ni” or “I Love You” in Chinese.

While February 14 remains the globally recognized Valentine’s Day, the Chinese honor their affection on several other occasions as well, including May 20 (520 Day) and the Qixi Festival. These days are regarded as Chinese versions of Valentine’s Day, with the 520-day holding special significance as it symbolizes “I Love You.”

Despite not being an official holiday, 520 Day has garnered popularity among couples and singles as an opportunity to express romantic love.

Due to the ongoing pandemic in 2020, the “520 Day” celebration witnessed changes with fewer public gatherings. Nonetheless, businesses capitalized on the festival by initiating online engagement campaigns.

For instance, luxury brand Prada, created a campaign using the hashtag #prada520# on Weibo, one of China’s top social platforms. The campaign featured brand spokesperson Cai Xukun and garnered 180 million views as of May 5.

The “520 Day” traces its roots to Taiwanese singer Fan Xiaolan’s song “Digital Love,” where “520” symbolized “I love you.” Over time, “521” was also interpreted as “I am willing,” and “I love you” in China, earning various epithets like “Marriage Day,” “Love Expression Day,” and “Love Festival.”

These two dates, May 20 & 21, serve as annual internet Valentine’s Days in China, echoing the phrases “I (5) love (2) you (0/1)” in Chinese. While they lack historical roots, they are products of commercial promotions in the 21st century.

Despite not being official holidays, the evenings of these days see restaurants and cinemas bustling and prices surging due to Valentine’s Day celebrations.

May 20 is particularly crucial as men utilize this opportunity to express their romantic love for women, often presenting gifts or ‘hongbao.’ Some couples even choose this date for their wedding ceremony.

The difference between 520 and 521 is that the former is largely a day for women, while the latter caters to men. On May 20, men express “520” (I love you) to their significant other. The subsequent day, women reply with “521” to indicate their reciprocation of love.

For marketers in China, these days present lucrative opportunities for promotions. The rising orders of roses, surging sales of chocolates, and full-house hotels underscore the business potential of the “520-day festival.”

A few notable examples of this trend include the most retweeted photo on Sina Weibo on May 20, 2014, and a post by The Economist in 2017 asking “how do economists say ‘I love you’?” The topic #Sweet 520# witnessed almost 4 million discussions and over 1 billion views as of noon on May 20, 2017.

The characteristics of 520 Valentine’s Day include:

1. Fashionable: “520” resonates with the younger generation who find creative ways to celebrate the day, even choosing this date for their wedding. It’s also a popular topic on WeChat Moments and QQ group chats.
2. Younger: Those under 30 years old, who are quick to embrace new trends and spend much of their free time on the internet, are the primary followers of 520 day.
3. Spiritual: Gifts exchanged on May 20 and 21 lean more towards the “spiritual.” It could be a coded message of love sent over the internet or mobile phone.
4. Implicit: Unlike the globally recognized Valentine’s Day, which is for established couples, the 520 Internet Valentine’s Day is preferred by men and women to subtly express their love using digital codes.

5 key trends shaping the Chinese economy, accelerated by COVID-19

Centered around the theme of the ‘Spirit of Nature’, this collaboration draws upon Burberry’s longstanding exploration of the relationship between humans and nature.

The fashion house’s affinity to the outdoors links harmoniously with Honor of King’s character Yao, who embodies the spirit of nature and is able to take the form of a deer – also an expression of the Burberry animal kingdom house code.

In keeping with the fashion house’s signature gabardine, pioneered by founder Thomas Burberry and designed to protect its wearer against the elements, Yao plays the role of a protector for her fellow gamers within Honor of Kings.

Yao’s two exclusive skins have been inspired by Burberry house codes as reinterpreted by Riccardo. Seamlessly blending the physical and digital worlds, Yao’s ‘Spirit of Nature’ new skin draws upon Burberry’s rich heritage and includes references to the iconic House check, the trench coat, and the Thomas Burberry Monogram.

Burberry launched its first luxury social retail store, empowered by WeChat

This skin draws upon the classicism of these Burberry hallmarks and reinvents them into a modern look for Yao to reflect her strong, dynamic and adventurous character.

Yao’s ‘Spirit of Nature’ deer takes a mirrored form, drawing upon Riccardo’s fascination with the concept of duality and the creativity found in two perspectives.

In Honor of King’s first collaboration with a brand on its ‘Legend’ skin offering, Burberry has co-created a ‘Spirit of the Forest and Ocean’ Legend skin for Yao using one of the runway looks from the house’s Spring/Summer 2021 collection ‘In Bloom’ – a collection inspired by thoughts of regeneration, dynamic youth and reconnecting with nature.

Yao’s look draws upon the collection’s mythical marine references and features a statement warm royal blue collarless trench coat and a crystal-embroidered vest. Mirroring the essence of the look, the ‘Spirit of the Forest and Ocean’ Legend deer pulsates blue light through its crystal body.

Building upon the existing partnership between the luxury fashion house and Tencent, this collaboration continues to reflect Burberry’s ambitions to push boundaries through innovation and creativity, enabling the Burberry community to explore the digital realm of Honor of Kings in an exciting new concept.

The exclusive Burberry skins will be available to purchase for all Honor of Kings players in mainland China. The skins will then remain part of the players’ permanent collection.

China luxury consumer behavior study 2020

Companies that value customer empathy and digital experience will also be favored by more customers in the future. The protection of customer data security and privacy is becoming important and urgent.

Here are the 10 forecasts from IDC on China’s future customers:

1. Digital first

By 2021, 70% of organizations will take the lead in turning to digital through automated operations and contactless experiences, as physical interaction has become a convenience of the past.

2. Empathy

By 2025, enterprises with excellent performance in empathy and security on a large scale will surpass 40% of those without the same ability.

3. entertainment consumption

4. consumer-generated video

By 2025, 50% of China’s fortune 500 enterprises’ investment in the consumer-generated videos will see its impact on enterprise income and customer satisfaction.

5. new environment

In 2021, Chinese customers will spend an additional 25% on working with companies whose digital transformation can quickly and easily adapt to the new business environment.

6. partners

7. organizational control

By 2023, 45% of organizations will use standardized workflow to integrate with enterprise applications to regain control over the stability of user-defined applications, thus improving customer data security and providing an excellent customer experience.

8. social responsibility

By the end of 2023, 80% of the large and medium-sized enterprises will formulate or revise the social responsibility statement, and make their customers recognize it again, so as to promote the development of social undertakings.

9. personalized experience

10. privacy value

By 2024, privacy will be redefined as “data value”, and suppliers will provide customer loyalty service programs to exchange consumer data, with 70% of consumers participating

Top 10 forecast of China digital innovation in 2021-2025

It connects the advertisers’ accounts with their WeChat Work (enterprise version of WeChat) accounts in order to better reach out to target groups and to increase customer management efficiency. This, in turn, can help improve customer services and conversion rates.

Making the connecting more efficient

The customer acquisition solution combining WeChat Advertising with WeChat Work can provide advertisers with tools for building landing pages, automatic deployment of multiple customer services and smart optimization.

These tools allow advertisers to acquire customers in a new way and significantly simplify the process of customer reach-out and acquisition. With these tools, advertisers can manage their traffic volume at a more granular level and maximize customer value.

Tools for Building Landing Pages

In order to help advertisers achieve high efficiency in reaching out and acquiring customers, new follow-widgets and pages for WeChat Work are added to the native promotion pages and landing pages.

In this way, WeChat users can quickly and easily follow the advertisers’ WeChat Work account. Advertisers can quickly achieve conversion and track their landing pages on WeChat Work based on the characteristics of the sector they are in.

Advertisers can monitor the number of their followers on their Tencent Ads back-end dashboard or WeChat Work in the process of advertising campaigns.

Automatic Deployment of Multiple Customer Service Staffs

This solution provides advertisers with the ability to automatically deploy customer service staff in order to make their services more efficient.

Advertisers can authorize WeChat Work via the Tool Box in the back-end. After authorization, they can add departments or employees within their organization to create customer service groups.

In the process of advertisement deployment, unique QR codes will be generated automatically for each customer service group. When the user scans the QR code, the system will automatically deploy a customer service staff within the group. The user can then enjoy 1-1 service after adding the operator as a friend on their WeChat.

Smart Optimization

With the new solution and oCPM bidding, it can help to optimize the “Follow WeChat Work customer service account” process, and in turn, can improve the conversion rates for customer acquisition.

Advertisers can rate the process and identify target groups that are more likely to follow, then optimize their advertisements with better conversions.

The new solution makes the process of customer acquisition significantly shorter and improves the conversion rate, allowing them to effectively lower the costs of customer acquisition.

In the meanwhile, the new process fully leverages on the connection between advertisers and users to build a direct communication channel between users and customer service operators. This can allow advertisers to offer users efficient, high-quality, and real-time services.

In addition, advertisers can achieve high-conversion and retain target users in their WeChat Work. These users can be reached and engaged again through WeChat Moments (WeChat’s social networking section) and community management (WeChat Group) in order to maximize their user value.

Currently, this solution supports an omnichannel deployment through WeChat Moments Ads, Official Account Ad, and Mini Program Ads.

Thanks to the 1.15 billion users, the highly efficient smart deployment technology, and the targeted reach ability, advertisers can retain users in their WeChat Work in a highly efficient way. They can then provide these users with more personalized professional service, increase the user value, and achieve business growth.

Helping eCommerce to Capture Long-term Value

With the increasing cost of traffic, the marketing-to-sales eCommerce business model starts to encounter its bottleneck. The difficulty to retain users, together with the long sales cycle for high premium products makes it very difficult to guide users with high-quality products and services in the long term.

Therefore, the operational advantage of being able to constantly increase user value proves to be of great value.

With the new process, users can follow the advertisers’ WeChat Work account and interact directly with customer service staff after seeing the ad, allowing higher effective and real-time services.

At the same time, advertisers can also introduce their products and content directly to users and keep them engaged. Combining with e-commerce promotions such as Double Eleven, advertisers can keep the push marketing content effective.

In addition, thanks to WeChat Work accounts’ ability to post on WeChat Moments, advertisers can timely update users on their products, professional knowledge, and maintain customer relationships in a non-intrusive way.

Targeting users with a certain level of knowledge on the products, advertisers can manage the community through groups in WeChat Work too.

In this way they can efficiently reach out to their customers afterward and provide them with more professional and customized services, therefore improving user engagement and increase their re-purchasing frequency.

Combining with the ability to connect to WeChat mini-programs, advertisers can integrate the online shopping function of the mini-programs into their WeChat Work, providing multiple service windows to customers.

A fashion brand ALFA has successfully reduced the time from acquisition to conversion and its user acquisition cost by 50% with the help of the new WeChat Advertising + WeChat Work solution.

At the same time, their operation efficiency increases significantly thanks to the integration of WeChat Moments and various promotional campaigns in WeChat community. Users in the WeChat groups are highly engaged and frequently re-purchase.

Helping the Travel Sector by Converting Target customers Online

Travel related products usually feature high price and long decision process. Its target customers have high conversion barriers and diverse needs. In order to boost conversion, advertisers from the travel sectors usually need 1-on-1 real-time communication to fulfill the customer’s different needs.

In the future, by converting offline customers online and integrating operation and management online, the travel sector can effectively benefit from this new solution.

In the new process, advertisers from the travel sector can exhibit their brands and promote their products on their native promotion page, in order to attract target customers and retain them on their WeChat Work accounts.

At the same time, with the personalized welcome display, advertisers can send useful content such as product information to their new users in a faster manner, encouraging better user engagement.

WeChat Work provides advertisers with a more convenient online communication tool, enabling real-time communication, and facilitating the delivery of personalized services.

Corporate images are clearer on the WeChat official account, effectively building trust and awareness of the brand. At the same time, advertisers can manage users based on various tags such as destination, travel time and wiliness, and provide users with more customized services.

They can also roll out different promotional information in the WeChat groups and constantly reach out and convert users, allowing a more granular service.

Yunnan Kunming Travel Agency, focusing on Leisure Family Trip, has significantly shortened leads engagement time and reduced their costs with the help of the new process and oCPM model.

Within the trial period, the cost of acquiring a new follower for WeChat Work is near the cost of their mature conversion funnels. In addition, it has profiled their users using tags and promoted limited time offers, group purchase offers in their WeChat groups in order to guide users and achieve better conversions.

With the help of WeChat group promotions, the deposit conversion rate increase by 60%.

The integration between WeChat Advertising and WeChat Work effectively could meet various advertisers’ needs, helping them shorten the acquisition path, reach out, and convert targeted audiences.

WeChat Work allows advertisers to get closer to their users and lower the conversion barrier. At the same time, WeChat Advertising helps advertisers to reach out, convert, and retain target users in multiple ways.

Audi launched its video ad campaign on WeChat Moments earlier today. What’s interesting is that the video played is an Infiniti ad.

Based on discussion from a WeChat Group of advertising professionals, Audi’s spending 30 million yuan working with Tencent Social Ads.

Tencent Ads has issued an apology and shared that the wrong ad creative launched at 9 am today was taken offline at 10:30 am. It was caused by an automobile service company’s careless mistake.

The ad generated 3,959 impressions with a total spend of 202 yuan according to Tencent. But the media coverage about this incident is growing; good news for both Audi and Infiniti.

Based on the provided figure, the CPM is roughly 51 yuan (US$7.2) and Audi’s campaign most likely targets lower-tier cities. As Beijing and Shanghai targeted video ads on WeChat Moments cost about 100-300 yuan on CPM.

And, some influencers are making fun of Audi on China’s social media, which drives more free coverage.

Shuangye, a Weibo influencer with over 1 million followers, published a post, “Audi is indeed a generous company, spending money in WeChat Moments for Infiniti China…”

Some companies are taking advantage of this incident, like Volvo:

#Audi Infiniti# has become a hot topic on Weibo with over 3.4 million views as of writing this post. But neither Audi nor Infiniti has responded yet. It’s a good opportunity for Audi to generate good awareness for its Q8 though the value from from the incident far exceeds Audi’s 200 yuan spent.

Fake fans and manipulations on China social media

Update: Infiniti responded in the evening via its Weibo account: