From my last two blog posts, we can see how China uses social media for the government. But this time, we will talk about how China uses entertainment platforms for business organizations to attract more customers to their products.
One of the popular drinking stores in China, MiXueBingCheng, or MiXue Ice Cream and Tea, uses multiple PR strategies to attract customers. One of the most valuable strategies is the store’s mascot, a snowman with a crown. His Chinese name translates to English as Snow King because of the crown.
Picture:
The mascot design attracts most of the young generations in China. It specifically targets college students and minor groups (elementary to high school). During the opening, a specific worker will wear a mascot dress to stand outside and get involved with the people who walk on the street. It makes more customers stop by the store and try their products.
Followed by the Snow King, their social media campaign is one of the best strategies. They have their own Tik-Tok account, and most of their posts are about Snowking, such as new outfits for Snow King or traveling to different parts of China. It also includes regular new product promotions like those at other drink stores and official notification posts like donations to specific organizations. But the most interesting part is not that it is the branch store’s account. They will send funny comments about another drink store. For example, around 2023, a netizen posted that the Starbucks drink he ordered had too many ice cubes and that a fly was accidentally inside the drink. Then some branch store account published funny comments under the video like: “Ohh Starbie, what happened? Trynna fed protein to your customers?” “Is your drink directly shipped from the Antarctic?”. The comments quickly spread out and made more netizens pay attention to MiXue.
So, in summary, I believe the most important part of the PR strategies for Chinese businesses is pretty much like others. But they know what their target audiences are and direct their campaigns to them. In the end, I will put Mixue’s advertisement video below. This is also what they play inside the store every single day when I walked in.
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