Big brands and Lunar New Year: Caring or cashing in?

Lunar New Year is celebrated by more than two billion people around the world  — a market that big brands are competing to capture with targeted product lines and advertisements during the festival.

Advocates say while the efforts are noted, lip service once a year is not enough to gain their trust or their dollars.

Madelyn Chung, founder of The Represent Asian Project, said there was a time any reference to her culture from mainstream brands felt like acknowledgement or inclusion because as a young child, she never saw herself represented in their messaging. But in recent years it has begun to feel cursory and tokenizing.

“It started to strike me as — something seems off. It feels disingenuous, it feels like it’s really just commercializing or capitalizing on a cultural tradition that’s really important to a group of people,” she said, referring to the increase in Lunar New Year brand campaigns in the market.

Same product, new package

Chung said a lot of brands tend to repackage an existing product — like a lipstick or clothing — with the appropriate colours or symbols for the festival and offer them up as Lunar New Year specials.

“This year, we’re seeing a lot of tigers because it’s the year of the tiger,” she said. “I think because the tiger is such a cool animal, we’re seeing a lot more pieces of clothing with tigers on them from brands who maybe didn’t really do much for Lunar New Year before.”

Chung also points to what she calls a lazy way for a brand to partake in Lunar New Year celebrations — curating by colour.

“[Some brands] will say ‘this is our Lunar New Year collection’ and it’s literally every product that they own that’s red,” she said, as red is considered auspicious for the festival. “You can do better than that.”

Wilfrid Laurier University marketing professor Brad Davis said many brands who indulge in such practices are simply bandwagon jumpers.

“Whatever the social movement is, if they see another brand that’s had success [doing this] they will emulate that,” he said. “Usually, they can’t carry it off because it’s not genuine, it’s not authentic.”

Davis said such campaigns tend to feel shallow and are often inconsistent with the brand’s established personality. He points to a mobile company’s special data plan for Lunar New Year, calling it a stretch.

“Yes they may have an Asian customer base, but I don’t see the correlation with the brand,” he said.

Bad for business

Davis opines a brand’s clumsy attempts at cashing in on culture can lead to damaging long-term consequences and erode credibility.

“It is perceived or can be seen as insulting to the customer base,” said Davis. “Now of course there is social media, and so if a customer feels insulted they are immediately tweeting it out and posting it, and it becomes a rallying cry for many, many others. And as soon as you see that, then that is the only way people will then see that ad.”

Chung feels when very little research, thought or sensitivity goes into a Lunar New Year product line or campaign, it leads people to question the company’s motives.

“The Asian community has had a really, really tough year in terms of all of this anti-Asian hate, violence and violent attacks,” she said. “You think back to these brands and think, ‘what have they been doing for the Asian community up until this point?” she asked.

However, Davis adds that the mainstream market is much more diverse than it was years ago. He said it is possible for a brand to offer a “tip of the hat” to a community without it seeming inauthentic.

“[In that case] I don’t think they’re making claims [about supporting] diversity that are over the top — it’s just recognition of a cultural event,” he said. “But you really better be on solid ground when you start making claims about how you’ve championed diversification or this is part of your organizational culture.”

How it’s done

Chung said consumers are now much more savvy and demanding of authenticity from the brands they choose to frequent and align themselves with.

When it comes to campaigns for Lunar New Year, she said it’s not enough for companies to simply release products or undertake initiatives for the sake of optics, but lacking substance.

“[Consumers consider whether] any Asian creatives were a part of this. Did a brand hire an Asian artist to design some sort of tiger imagery to put on a piece of merchandise or did they just slap a tiger on a sweatshirt?” she asked.

Chung adds that if brands target specific cultural groups to sell their products, they must back up their profit-making activities with concrete allyship.

Davis echoes those sentiments, saying brands must “walk the talk,” not only with their public facing personas, but behind the scenes as well.

“What does your boardroom look like? Is it a diverse boardroom?” he asked.

“Are there people of colour in top management positions? Or are they just capitalizing on a cultural tradition in order to make bank?” added Chung.

She added that it is also important to have representation at every level of the campaign — from the idea to the execution, including not only the faces on the brand images, but also the makeup artists, stylists, photographers and so on.

“If they do not have people of colour and people who know these experiences and traditions, then they’re going to get it wrong,” she said. “Representation is as important, if not more important, off-camera and behind the scenes than it is on camera,”

Both Chung and Davis emphasize the importance of a charitable component to the campaign in order to tangibly demonstrate solidarity with a group or cause.

“Being able to donate the proceeds from that [specific] collection to a grassroots organization is really, really important and meaningful,” said Chung.

She pointed to an upscale Canadian women’s fashion brand as one she felt had put genuine effort into their Lunar New Year collection, partnering with an Asian artist based in Jakarta to design a line of red sweat suits with Asian motifs that felt representative and authentic.

In addition, Chung said she was really impressed with an initiative by a Canadian luxury department store chain that enlisted Asian creatives to author and illustrate a Lunar New Year children’s book that is written in English, French and Mandarin.

“All of the proceeds from that are going to Project 1907, which is a Vancouver-based organization made up of Asian women who are looking to elevate underrepresented voices,” she said.

She also highlighted a Canadian luxury outwear brand that collaborated with a Chinese-Canadian cultural platform to create a capsule collection. Director/photographer Justin Woo of Kim’s Convenience fame shot the campaign images.

Davis adds that it is obvious when a brand has genuinely made an effort, adding that there is an intangible quality to authenticity which is hard to define, but very easy to spot.

“Sometimes the manner in which it is done indicates that it was either very well thought out and genuine or not,” he said. “[It is] a pretty good indicator of whether this is really part of that corporate culture or whether it’s a one-off marketing idea.”