The logic of creating new year products: riding on emotions, the principle of hot sales, advertising effects, and strengthening brands

New Year products have the function of advertising and brand promotion. For enterprises, New Year products are more about making a splash rather than increasing profits. So how can we make New Year products the same as "hot-selling products"? Let's take a look.

On December 27, 2022, Pop Mart’s new product line, the New Year’s Prostrate series of new products, were launched nationwide for the first time at the Beijing apm Pop Mart theme pop-up store. This is Pop Mart’s first holiday limited theme series product.

It is understood that the new Spring Party Posture Series launched by Bubble Moe Grain includes 8 IPs including MOLLY, DIMOO, LABUBU, etc., with a total of 13 designs. The colors combine the characteristics of the New Year, mainly in gold, Chinese red and milky white.

It is not only Pop Mart that wants to stand out during the eye-catching New Year holiday. Many companies are already gearing up. In summary, New Year products actually have a natural sense of urgency in terms of time, because they are marked with the logo of a certain New Year and can most likely only be sold in that year.

Secondly, more New Year products actually have an advertising effect. In the New Year traffic pool, it is natural for them to be mentioned and promoted . New Year products remind consumers of the brand's existence and innovation.

Therefore, it can be summarized that New Year products have the following characteristics: short validity, advertising effect, and brand promotion function.

It can be said that for businesses, New Year products are more about attracting publicity rather than increasing profits.

Therefore, New Year products need to be "explosive". The logic behind creating New Year products is exactly the same as that of creating "explosive products", like fireworks, the more brilliant the better.

Most companies will focus on two points: the unchanging New Year's red and the zodiac sign of the year, and they will most likely repeatedly use the New Year's mood in their marketing techniques.

01 Maintaining the focus on the concept of “red”

Companies that focus on the "red" rather than the "zodiac" for New Year products are at an advantage, because the zodiac has a sense of urgency, and the color red is the same every year. Therefore, the "red" theme is more clever for New Year products, but not all products can have a red theme every year, and not every product necessarily has a "New Year red mood."

“New Year’s red emotions” are generally: warmth, tenderness, friendship, and reunion. Therefore, Quanmianshidai, whose products have inherent warmth attributes, has been heavily leveraging New Year’s emotions in its product launches during the New Year.

All Cotton Era’s 2023 New Year red products are launched. As the Spring Festival approaches, All Cotton Era’s brand spokesperson Guo Jingjing released a Vlog, telling about her new year’s "all cotton" complex.

From the "three cotton pieces" of childhood to the new year cotton products of the whole family, life has changed, but the ritual of the New Year has never changed. Talking about the New Year, Guo Jingjing recalled in the short film that when she was a child, her parents would always prepare new cotton clothes, new cotton shoes, and new quilts for her during the New Year. The warm feeling is still fresh in her memory.

Quanmianshijie formulates its own New Year marketing strategy based on its own emotional positioning of "warmth" and "care". It deeply touches the emotional switch in marketing content and product selection. What Quanmianshijie wants to express is that their products are not just a set of warm clothes, but the New Year's love from parents.

Different from competitors’ marketing settings of the year of birth or resistance to cold, Quanmianshijie focuses on the “emotional card”, with a hidden purchase scenario of “gift boxes” given by elders to younger generations.

Bring a soft cotton towel to your family, a base set to welcome good luck with comfort, warm and eye-catching cotton outdoor clothes, each carefully selected cotton red product is full of love.

Most of the people who buy Cotton Times are "moms", so reunion and family affection are very appropriately embedded in the consumer's psychological account, making consumers pay for it. This is more of an "emotional card" targeted at middle-aged people.

In addition to warmth, the New Year's mood is also festive, which covers almost all products. Gap, a world-renowned American casual clothing brand, has released a new Chinese New Year series for 2023 - "Prosperous New Year".

In this series, the exploration of Chinese zodiac culture is continued, sweeping away the old year and bringing new and interesting style designs, carrying Gap's enthusiasm and good expectations for the oriental festivals.

In addition to the festive and warm mood, as a traditional festival, the New Year also has a cultural need for "inheritance". It is not entirely an emotion, but should be considered a "fundamental" . The word "Fu", couplets, and big red lanterns are not just emotions, but more of a gene.

These genes not only affect domestic brands, but even overseas brands will add Chinese elements to pay tribute to the Chinese New Year.

Dior launches a red zodiac bracelet for the Chinese New Year every year. The designer must be aware of the Chinese custom of wearing a red string during their birth year, so he specially selected a red woven wristband. This design caters to the consumption characteristics of the Chinese people.

As the New Year approaches, the Burberry brand has selected colorful cashmere scarves and new purse styles. As the main products for the Chinese New Year, products mainly in pink and bright red have captured a share of the Chinese luxury market by catering to the colors. It can be seen that the "New Year Red" is very popular among the people.

In fact, red New Year products are more about conveying emotions, because when we see red, we will unconsciously feel "lively and warm". In fact, as long as the product can evoke these emotions, it is quite pleasing to launch a red product appropriately.

02 Focus on the Year of the Rabbit

In addition to red products, there are also products related to the zodiac sign of the year.

As the Spring Festival of the Year of the Rabbit approaches, more and more citizens are buying New Year's goods in offline supermarkets. Red envelopes, stickers, dolls, clothing, gold jewelry, etc. with rabbit elements have become hot-selling items in the New Year's goods market.

Products with rabbit elements take center stage in major supermarkets, including the prosperous Year of the Rabbit red envelopes, cute rabbit gold jewelry, adorable rabbit dolls, and heart-melting rabbit cakes, which make citizens unable to resist buying.

But not all products can be considered high-quality New Year products if they have a rabbit on them. They also need to be innovative and new.

For example, Honor also prepared a New Year custom "auspicious rabbit" for consumers, adding an adjective to the word rabbit, which expresses the whole meaning of "auspicious" New Year, instead of throwing a rabbit and asking consumers to pay for it. The brand highlights the exclusivity of the "year" through the time node and uses auspicious content to make its own brand more vivid.

Of course, Honor launched the "Lucky Rabbit" more to promote its own products. The "Lucky Rabbit" is a mascot-like traffic-generating product. Honor's customized "Lucky Rabbit" for the New Year is scattered in Honor experience stores across the country. With the help of Honor products and the powerful capabilities of MagicOS smart experience, consumers can catch their own New Year "Lucky Rabbit".

This "lucky rabbit" is a brand promotion. For example, Starbucks' rabbit coffee pot with the slogan "full of New Year flavor" and "full of auspicious words" attracts and caters to consumers. It not only enters the New Year gift list, but also helps Starbucks get closer to Chinese consumers.

With the rise of Generation Z, the word "attitude" has been mentioned repeatedly. Generation Z also has its own zodiac year, so the clothing products in JORDAN's New Year's zodiac series are aimed at Generation Z and are also emotional. However, it is not the conventional New Year's emotion, but the rebellious attitude of "not accepting the zodiac year", which is an innovation.

For the apparel products in JORDAN’s New Year’s Destiny series, the upcoming 2023 Lunar New Year of the Rabbit can be described as the “Year of the Flying Man”.

The number ending in "23" makes this year symbolic of the JORDAN brand, and the Year of the Rabbit is also the "birth year" of Michael Jordan and the brand's new generation of athletes Luka Doncic and Li Tianrong.

2023, the "Year of the Flying Man", symbolizes the continuation of a new chapter for the JORDAN brand after its 25th anniversary of entering the Chinese market. The brand will continue to break through and deepen its presence in the Chinese market, and write a fearless new chapter with Chinese consumers.

In traditional Chinese culture, the "Benmingnian" is often associated with many taboos. However, in the context of the current new generation of popular culture, the term "Benming" represents a long-lasting love.

This time, the JORDAN brand extracted key elements from the word "Benming", continuing the brand's ever-soaring genes, and launching the JORDAN New Year series of products with the fearless attitude of "Benming has the final say", in order to encourage young people from all fields to fearlessly follow their own destiny despite the taboos of the Benming Year.

Rebelliousness is also a kind of emotion, which means that the zodiac sign can be arranged and combined with emotions that are not "New Year emotions" and will still create new sparks.

To celebrate the Year of the Rabbit 2023, KENZO's artistic director Nigo has carefully designed a complete men's and women's ready-to-wear collection inspired by the lively and playful rabbit.

The collection presents the rabbit motif in a bold, cartoonish style, with rich visual colours and exquisite craftsmanship, applied to appliqués, embroidery on suede jackets and knitted items, and stitched with flat embroidery, three-dimensional embroidery or chain stitching techniques.

Freshness is also a subtle emotion, but such zodiac products are novel.

There is also the last type, transnational sentiment, which combines the national characteristics of the product itself and integrates into our country's market.

For example, in Gap's 2023 Chinese New Year series, in addition to using the representative "Chinese red" color, the adult and children's styles also incorporate the zodiac rabbit into the overall design and styling.

The interesting collision of American leisure and Chinese elements is trendy, playful and eye-catching, injecting an eclectic leisure attitude into the New Year, aiming to encourage contemporary young people to bravely express their self-assertion and burst into a shining new self in the New Year.

With classic red and black as the visual guide, Gap's 2023 Chinese New Year series includes a variety of fashionable items such as sweatshirts, long sweatshirts, baseball jackets, etc. The most eye-catching element is the "Bugs Bunny" symbolizing good luck. It is extremely agile and casual, adding fun to the products. Full blessings are injected into the items to bring new blessings to consumers in the new year.

The 2023 Durian Mango Moment integrates the color "red" into the emotion of "fun". It wants to have fun with everyone. What else can we do if we don't have fun during the Spring Festival?

The first is the "hand-torn blind box gameplay, each grid is a small dessert", each with 20 desserts. This year's Durian Mango Moment Year of the Rabbit gift still follows the blind box gameplay used in Christmas gift boxes. The whole box has 20 small grids, each of which can open a different small dessert, all individually packaged for easy storage. Each tearable small card also has a New Year's blessing, which is suitable for family and friends to poke and have fun together when staying up late on New Year's Eve.

The "Get Rich Gift Box· Fortune, Longevity, Happiness and Wealth" is based on the classic New Year red, with gold as an auxiliary. No matter how you look at it, it is very high-end and full of New Year flavor. The Get Rich Gift Box is more suitable for young friends, more lively and novel.

“Year of the Rabbit Gift Box·Limited God of Wealth Rabbit Design” Friends whose zodiac sign is the Year of the Rabbit can choose the God of Wealth Rabbit Gift Box. This packaging is much more complicated, with the accumulation of various ingots, copper coins, auspicious clouds and other elements. It is a prayer for good luck in the Year of the Rabbit and also a blessing to all the baby rabbits.

Exclusive for the Year of the Rabbit, the Durian Snow Rice Cake Year of the Rabbit Gift Box also includes the Snow Rice Cake Year of the Rabbit. The box is opened in a drawer style, and contains 8 Durian Snow Rice Cakes, 3 mousse cakes, as well as Year of the Rabbit playing cards, Year of the Rabbit red envelopes and other peripheral gifts.

If there is any breakthrough in this year's zodiac IP, it is the addition of emotions.

03 Review of New Year IP products over the years

In addition to the zodiac and the color red, what other New Year products have taken the lead and left a strong impression on the publicity during the Spring Festival?

First of all, it is traditional Chinese cultural creation, which constantly explores the connotation of ancient culture and cleverly embeds it into the entire product, making everyone feel interesting.

Tang Yifang has put the Year of the Rabbit's New Year's good luck into a "box", which includes the soft and cute Tang Baibai, the rosy Dazhanhong rabbit, and the smart Dongfang rabbit. The Guochao Chinese Red mini suitcase gift box can also be carried on short trips, full of fun and practicality.

The design of the New Year Couplets Gift Pack is based on "Ladies with Flowers in Their Hair" by Zhou Fang, a famous Tang Dynasty painter. The Tang White Rabbit has crossed thousands of years and transformed into the lovely "Tang Baibai", walking towards us in a chubby image, plump and luxurious, bringing blessings to thousands of households in six different colors.

There is also a visual feast brought by the Ma Ruolong rabbit lanterns. In addition to the rabbit lanterns, you can also unlock new ways to play for the New Year. The smart and cute "Oriental Bunny" image on the mask breaks the dullness, adds vitality to the New Year and protects health.

Tang Art Studio & Bian Dian jointly launched the "Da Zhan Hongtu" Rabbit Year Hand-made Figure, which is inspired by the "Three Rabbits with One Ear" in the Dunhuang murals. Five different electroplating processes are used to interpret the traditional Chinese Rabbit God image, and different New Year greetings are written in Chinese style brush fonts behind the Hongtu. Not only are the images of famous Tang Dynasty poets Li Bai, Liu Yuxi, Du Fu, and Du Mu integrated into the amulet, but there are also exclusive Journey to the West handmade plaster fluid ornaments.

The second is the "upstart" - the blind box, which appropriately hits everyone's emotions of "mystery" and "curiosity". Anyway, it is as mysterious as possible, and it is meant to have fun with consumers in the New Year. However, the New Year blind box is a typical holiday product and is the most timely.

According to Xiaomi officials, the new Mi Blind Box series "Happy New Year" will be available for pre-sale at 10 a.m. on January 26, 2023. From the pre-sale poster, we can see that there are 9 models in the series, including eight different Mi Rabbits. It is worth noting that there is a "mysterious" Mi Rabbit in the lower right corner of the poster, which may become a hidden limited edition in the series. From the official pre-sale copy, we can see that each Mi Rabbit represents a New Year custom or meaning.

As the "number one" in the blind box industry, Pop Mart launched the "Tiger Leap New Year" series at the beginning of 2022. This series is a set of gift boxes that bring together 15 classic IPs under Pop Mart. It is a good choice for friends who like to collect many IPs.

The Forbidden City also keeps up with the trend and launched a blind box for the Year of the Tiger. This blind box is also based on the image of the tiger of that year, but the difference is that the image of the Forbidden City's blind box is more Q-version and cute, and the names and shapes of each style are more in line with the feeling of the New Year.

Finally, there are some New Year zodiac signs. There are no particularly cute and approachable IPs in our country, so we end up using foreign cultural and creative IPs for local use.

For example, the mouse is an animal that everyone has a bad impression of. If the original image of the mouse is printed on the product, it may cause extreme discomfort to some users. In order to solve the zodiac image problem, many brands have turned to Disney. I believe that no image of a mouse can compare with Disney's Mickey Mouse.

Chow Tai Fook Disney co-branded model, MICKEY MOUSE leads the national trend to come strongly, combining Chow Tai Fook's "red" culture with the classic Mickey circles, wearing blessings to welcome Mickey Mouse's zodiac year in 2020.

SK-II's limited edition Facial Treatment Essence for the Year of the Rat. SK-II has always been the favorite to launch various limited edition packaging. At the beginning of 2019, it quickly became popular in WeChat Moments with a cute little pig tail, so the focus was on WeChat Moments, not selling products. This year, it successfully caught the Mickey Mouse express train and became the fastest-selling beauty product in the 2020 New Year.

In addition to Disney's Mickey Mouse, the IP image for the Year of the Rat, there is also Jerry from "Tom and Jerry". This cartoon can be said to carry many childhood memories of us born in the 1990s. Every time the familiar music sounds, it seems as if we are back in our childhood.

Among them, the image of Jerry is also very popular with the audience.

Of course, in addition to these brands, there are many brands that combine image IPs such as Mickey and Jerry to create joint products.

Although their products are different, if we analyze them one by one, we will find that they are all sending us a message: these co-branded products are IPs that young users like. Even during the traditional Chinese festival - the Spring Festival, Chinese consumers will not reject Mickey Mouse and Jerry from abroad.

In short, the original intention of companies to make New Year products is mostly for publicity, so they can design them in any way that can promote positively, they can take advantage of the New Year mood, they can create the New Year mood, they can have fun with everyone, and they can also bring surprises to everyone.

From this perspective, New Year products are meant to deepen the company’s positive image. The Spring Festival is indeed a very suitable time to do this because everyone is in a good mood and more receptive.

Conclusion

The launch of new products during the Spring Festival is definitely the best time to promote them, but how to stand out and how to innovate are worth serious consideration.

Combined with the previous article, the author believes that the activity-related products "centered around winter romance", "centered around warmth", "centered around the linkage between the New Year and Valentine's Day", "centered around reunion", "centered around family affection", and "centered around brewing tea around the fire" are excellent. In fact, there are many cultural IPs for New Year products that are worth creating and learning from.

Transform product thinking into marketing thinking, and match products with activities. After all, the Spring Festival is the most "fun" and lively festival. The more "fun" the product or activity is, the easier it is for consumers to remember the good things about the company.

The Spring Festival with a filter has arrived, enterprises, are you ready?

Author: Li Jiaman

Source: Public Account: Consumer World (ID: xiaofeijie316), new consumption, new opportunities.