Any travel brand on top of its marketing strategy is no doubt comfortable working with influencers who specialize in travel and tourism. But beyond this pool of travel influencers are social media mavens across a wide range of categories with tremendous untapped potential to work their content magic to reach new audiences.
4 China Marketing Experts: How Can Brands Use Traveling Influencers?
Over the last decade, collaborations between luxury brands and contemporary artists have gone beyond mere artistic partnerships towards a new kind of luxury branding.
PARIS â Art and fashion have always developed side by side, for fashion, like art, often gives visual expression to the cultural zeitgeist. During the 1920s, Salvador DalĂ created dresses for Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiapparelli. In the 1930s, Ferragamoâs shoes commissioned designs for advertisements from Futurist painter Lucio Venna, while Gianni Versace commissioned works from artists such as Alighiero Boetti and Roy Lichtenstein for the launch of his collections. Yves Saint Laurentâs vast art collection, recently auctioned at Christieâs in Paris, testified to his great love of art and revealed the influence of a variety of artists on his own designs.
In the 1980s, relationships between luxury brands and artists were advanced when Alain Dominique Perrin created the Fondation Cartier. In the Fondation Cartier pour lâArt Contemporain, a book marking the foundationâs 20th anniversary, Perrin says he makes âa connection between all the different sorts of arts, and luxury goods are a kind of art. Luxury goods are handicrafts of art, applied art.â
The Fondation Cartier pour lâArt Contemparain building in Paris
Any travel brand on top of its marketing strategy is no doubt comfortable working with influencers who specialize in travel and tourism. But beyond this pool of travel influencers are social media mavens across a wide range of categories with tremendous untapped potential to work their content magic to reach new audiences.
We asked four travel and hospitality industry marketing experts in China how theyâre seeking an edge by working with traveling influencers outside the travel and F&B; space to explore new opportunities offered on platforms like Xiaohongshu and Douyin.
Widen Your Traveling Influencer Pool
For hotels, working with traveling influencers has typically meant seeking out influencers focused on fields such as travel and F&B.; Thatâs now changing, as China marketing experts see opportunities to target customers whose main interests may be focused on other content categories.
Hotels are starting to work with lifestyle, fashion and fitness influencers to reach a wider audience. âWe donât just want our customers, or an influencerâs followers, to know about the hotelâs rooms or restaurants, but also the experience and lifestyle a hotel brand can provide,â says Susan, a PR manager at a luxury international-brand hotel in Beijing (who preferred not to use her real name) tells PARKLU. âItâs important to reach the ârightâ target audience by working with traveling influencers covering different industries.â
Of course, much of the work of influencers covering fashion, fitness, and other industries âwill intersect with travel,â says Starry Chen, of Asia-based luxury lifestyle and travel PR agency, Petrie PR. âBy working with influencers in various related industries, a PR agency can help clients increase their visibility and influence among a wider range of people,â she says, adding that influencers can use collaborations with travel brands as opportunities to enrich their own content. Many influencers themselves are broadening their own coverage, from specializing in one field to adopting more of an all-around approach.
Travel brands could also find that traveling influencers who operate outside the traditional travel beat are enthusiastic and receptive collaborators, in contrast to travel influencers who might be jaded by familiarity with the industry.
âTravel KOLs have probably been numbed and spoiled by offers and deals from other over-spending travel companies over the years,â says Jeremy Webb, Senior Vice President of Ogilvy Beijing. âItâs less likely you can put together a deal thatâll genuinely impress them. Maybe a tech or fitness KOLs might be swayed by whatever youâve got to offer.â
While choosing traveling influencers from a broader pool of content categories, brands must still choose carefully, evaluating potential partners for their suitability and likely effectiveness. âThe audience of a KOL is as important as the KOL,â says Webb. âWhat brands need to do is to check there are enough of their potential consumers among the fans of that KOL. There usually are.â
Join Luxury Society to have more articles like this delivered directly to your inbox
Stay Relevant and Authentic
China marketing experts identifying traveling influencers for possible partnerships will consider the relevance of an influencerâs content or follower base. Follower numbers are important, but brands should pay attention to the degree of engagement an influencerâs content inspires. An influencer who has millions of followers, but whose content provokes low engagement rates from followers, may not deliver the results the brand hopes for.
Quality of content is another crucial factor, especially for high-end brands. The tone of an influencerâs content should also chime with the brand, says Susan, the hotel PR manager. âWe need to choose an influencer who âspeaks the same languageâ as the brand,â she says.
Whatever format brands use when collaborating with influencers, authenticity is important. âThe content that we are cooperating on with influencers is based on their own actual experience, and has a strong personal style,â Chen says. âThatâs what clients expect.â
Think beyond WeChat
Finding your target audience starts with considering which social platforms they are on. When choosing influencers based in the mainland, âWeChat public accounts and Weibo are usually necessary, and the WeChat public account is relatively more important,â Chen says. However, China marketing experts value influencers who can publish to multiple platforms, such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu (Little RED Book).
Case Study: Sheraton Qingyuan Lion Lake Resort
The Sheraton Qingyuan Lion Lake Resort, a newly opened hotel located about 1.5 hours driving distance from Guangzhou, has seen growth in popularity primarily due to the buzz generated on Xiaohongshu, according to a PR manager familiar with the brand. âIt has over 600 posts on Xiaohongshu, and people are talking about how to take great pictures in this Arabic-style resort,â she says. âTheyâre crazy about it.â
As a fashion and beauty-focused platform, Xiaohongshu is an attractive outlet for luxury brands, including those in the travel industry, to reach new consumers. One interesting feature for travel brands is that as long as a brand is tagged in a post, or a location tag is added, Xiaohongshu groups that content under the brandâs main listing. This functions in a similar way to Dianpingâs review feature. Consumers can visit the brandâs page and see all of the content related to the brand.
And unlike on Dianping, contributions on Little Red Book tend to be more attractive, featuring Instagram-worthy photos. Reviews from influencers can be effective in raising a brandâs prestige on Little Red Book.
Similarly, Douyin also features a location tag that traveling influencers, brands, and vloggers can use to group content and make it easy for hotels, retailers, and other travel destinations to reach potential customers on the go.
Value Video
When it comes to the content itself, China marketing experts value influencers who can create high-quality videos. âYou need to do justice to the place youâre promoting,â Webb says. âVideoâs a good way to do that, so any platform that makes video easy is good.â
Hotel PR manager Susan says that short videos and vlogs are eye-catching, but their effectiveness depends on the choice of product to be promoted, and the platform the video is shared on. âIf we promote afternoon tea on Weibo and Xiaohongshu, a vlog can easily get more views,â she says.
Chen says Petrie PR hopes to use video collaboration more in the future. âSome of the influencers weâve worked with have started making vlogs, such as [fashion influencer] Mr. Bags,â says Chen. âWe havenât officially worked with Mr. Bags in this format, but when he last cooperated with us, he shared a short video he had taken on the road on Weibo, and the response was very good.â
Case Study: Mr. Bags and Belmond
Petrie PR worked with fashion influencer Mr. Bags on a campaign featuring three clients in Peru, including two hotels â Belmond Monasterio and Belmond Palacio Nazarenas â and luxury train Belmond Hiram Bingham. During the ride on the Belmond Hiram Bingham, Mr. Bags shot and shared a video on Weibo of the trainâs live band, who played a well-known Chinese song for him. âThe video he shared has received over 218,000 views, as of last November, three months after his stay,â Chen says.
China Marketing Experts Focus on Bang for Buck
China marketing experts use strategies to get the maximum mileage from each influencer cooperation. âIncreasingly weâre figuring out ways to re-use the KOLs assets outside of the platform theyâre influential on,â says Ogilvyâs Webb. âA good recent example was with an airline â we ended up using the photo content, including images of the KOL, as billboards at airports. Make those assets work as hard as you possibly can â youâre probably already paying the KOL through the teeth anyway.â
Choosing the wrong influencer can be frustrating, and brands need to be aware of the pitfalls when selecting partners. Some influencers are difficult to work with, while others deliver little value. âThere are a lot of divas out there,â Webb says. âOr as Iâve said before, KOLs that arenât K, have no O and arenât in anyway Ls.â
Chloe, a PR manager at a luxury international hotel in Beijing (who prefers to not use her real name), puts it even more bluntly. âOnly work with qualified influencers,â she says. âSometimes being selective generates higher engagement than being broad.â
Article originally published on ParkLu. Republished with permission.
Cover Image: Pinterest
Passionate about style and design, Jessica has been writing about Chinaâs emerging independent fashion scene and the countryâs creative industries since moving to Beijing in 2011. She spent two years covering the capitalâs dynamic fashion world as style editor of the Beijinger magazine, with her work also featured in publications including Dwell, Design Sponge and artnet News.