KOL Marketing in China: Why It Works and How To Do It Right

In less than a decade, Chinese consumers have moved from contributing three percent to global personal luxury goods consumption to becoming the largest luxury consumers in the world, accounting for more than 30 percent of global luxury sales.

This rapid rise has hardly gone unnoticed by the western luxury brands who are lining up to gain as much as just one percent of market share of the immense opportunity. A common oversight, though, is that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of brands fighting for that same one percent of this most competitive market for luxury.

Rapid consumerism, super short innovation cycles, the breakneck speed of the evolving digital ecosystem, and a continuous shift in consumer preferences maintains a continuous knowledge gap that requires marketers to play catch-up in digital strategy and implementation in China.

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People feel a sense of proximity to the KOLs owing to a strong interaction the influencers build with their followers

Given the unique social media landscape and hyper-competition, ‘using’ influencer, or KOLs, as they are called in China, is seen by many luxury brands as a high return and a relatively less risky strategy of penetrating this highly competitive market.

“People feel a sense of proximity to the KOLs owing to a strong interaction the influencers build with their followers,” said Vincent Marion and Sophie Coulon of Francelysee (an authority regarding French products within F&B in China) when commenting on why KOL marketing works in China. “Followers feel a sense of community and trust the influencer to share accurate information with them”

Though many luxury brands have found success in the Chinese market by collaborating with KOLs, there have been many failed attempts, too. Sometimes, luxury brands make the mistake of approaching it as a shortcut to success or as a “quick win” strategy, executing one-off campaigns without a clear vision for collaboration. Miffed by the poor returns on top line, it can then be tempting to write off the channel completely.

We think collaborating with KOLs is a relatively nascent medium and the expertise of ‘how to work’ with these influencers is still developing in both the supply and demand sides. KOL marketing is neither a fad nor a dying niche and is very much here to stay — and only growing.

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