Emotional value becomes the new racetrack for brand competition

The Chinese market is rapidly evolving, with new brands and products flooding the market every day. Brands are all aiming to differentiate themselves in terms of product functionality, pricing, supply chain, and marketing, which has created a fiercely competitive environment for brands. With new brands pulling no punches to get get noticed, existing brands must strive hard to ensure that they do not fall behind. As competition intensifies, the space for brands to manoeuvre becomes increasingly limited, and can lead to the market looking increasing homogenous.

There are often limits to relevant innovation for product functionality, and a bottom to price wars. However, human emotions are diverse and boundless. Exploring consumers' emotional needs and injecting more emotional value into brands' product in different ways is the key to breaking away from homogeneity. Brands need to consider whether they can more accurately identify consumers' current emotional needs, and inject emotional value into products through marketing strategies.

Colour Marketing

The recent trend of dopamine and “maillard marketing” (named after the process giving of colour and flavour to cooked foods like bread or meat) is not just about colour utility but also utilizes the principle that different colours evoke different emotions, to resonate with consumers. “Dopamine” has received 53 million views and “dopamine outfit” 290 million views on Weibo.

Women’s clothing brand MO&Co collaborated with the Italian fashion brand SUNNEI to hold a week-long "Call Your Friends To The Early Spring Market" themed event. Through the design of visual colors, it showcased the freshness and vitality of early spring, creating a relaxed and fun atmosphere for consumers to enjoy the upcoming new season.

Images from the SUNNEI x MO&Co collaboration. Images: Xiaohongshu/RED

Recently, B&C collaborated with Mardi Mercredi to launch spring-themed packaging bags. The bags featured four colours (Ivory pink, ivory navy, navy pink and blue orange, show on the pic), each accompanied by a phrase related to spring. The post shared by B&C on March 7th has already received over 1.6k likes on B&C’s official account on RED.

B&C’s collab with Mardi Mercredi

CHARLES & KEITH partnered with the Chinese designer brand Short Sentence to present a ten-day joint pop-up store in Shenzhen, titled "T RIDING ON A BREEZY DAY." During fixed time slots each day, consumers could receive the brand's co-branded blue-green striped bags. This bold visual colour scheme attracted people to queue up and participate in the event.

Queues at the Charles & Keith pop-up in Shenzhen

Psychological Healing Marketing

Due to immense life pressures, people are increasingly finding themselves with many negative emotions that they struggle to release. This has led to an emerging trend of "self-soothing" consumption, where individuals seek resonance on an emotional level. Brands should not only attract consumers visually but also support them in action and spirit.

For instance, last year on Qixi Festival, lululemon collaborated with renowned psychologist Li Songwei to launch the "Feel the Love with lululemon" pocket book. Each page contained inspirational quotes for exploring and nurturing intimate relationships, prompting people to pay more attention to themselves, their partners, and love itself.

Countless people shared their pocket books on RED and got thousands of likes, with comments below filled with people expressing their desire to have such a pocket book. The campaign was mentioned over 220,000 times on WeChat the day it was launched. Six months later, people were still talking about it, with 126 yesterday.

Lululemon's "feel the love with lululemon" compaign. The quotes on the packaging are "Sharing little things is a big thing in a relationship."; "Speaking out your weakness makes your relationship stronger." Images: Xiaohongshu/RED

HEYTEA, one of China’s biggest milk tea brands, is also a brand that pays attention to consumer emotions. They previously collaborated with Flow Meditation Studio, integrating their "Empty Tea (Kong Cha)" beverage with the concept of "body emptiness" and meditation's relaxation concept in the realm of mind and spirit. Recently, they partnered with singer Amber for her "No More Sad Songs" themed concert, launching the "Live Joy" campaign, catering to the needs of young people to relax and be themselves.

HEYTEA x Flow meditation collab. Source: Flow official WeChat account.

HEYTEA x Amber “No More Sad Songs” tour. Source: Xiaohongshu/RED