Blog - Marketing China

Blog

Strategy, platform deep-dives, and lessons from real campaigns in China.

Featured

LEGO’s 4,104-Piece Subway Art: Turning Public Transit Into a Brand Showcase in China

🧱 Walk through Shanghai’s Nanjing West Road metro station this month and you might mistake an ad panel for a museum wall. That is exactly the point. LEGO took every single piece from its newest Technic supercar set and laid them out like a lab specimen board, right where hundreds of thousands of commuters pass […]

August 8, 2026

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Food & Beverage

Heytea’s Transparent Craft Store: Why Showing the Process Builds Trust in China

🍵 Every week I look at what is trending on Chinese marketing platforms, and this week one story stood out for a simple reason: a tea brand decided that the best way to sell a drink was to stop hiding how it makes it. Heytea (喜茶), one of China’s biggest new-style tea chains, just opened […]

August 7, 2026

eCommerce China

FREITAG x Taobao 88VIP: How a Micro-Product Made a Premium Brand Accessible in China

🌸 A bag costs several hundred dollars. A flower charm made from the same material costs almost nothing to try. That is the whole idea behind the newest FREITAG campaign in China, and it is worth every foreign brand’s attention this week. FREITAG is the Swiss label famous for turning old truck tarpaulins into bags. […]

August 6, 2026

Chinese Social Media, Kols & Livestreaming

Ba Wang Tea’s Illustrator Collab: Turning Packaging Into Shareable Art in China

🎨 A tea brand just turned its cup sleeve into a tiny art gallery, and Chinese social media cannot stop talking about it. This week’s case comes from SocialBeta, the marketing case library I check every Monday morning to see what is actually working in China, not what agencies claim is working. The brand is […]

August 5, 2026

Celebrities

Starbucks China x Jay Chou: The Celebrity Music Collab Playbook for Foreign Brands

☕ This summer, Starbucks China turned five iced drinks into a playlist you can taste. Each cup carries a lyric, a flavor, and a mood pulled straight from a Jay Chou song. That is the short version of one of the hottest marketing cases in China right now, and it holds real lessons for any […]

August 4, 2026

Case Study

Luckin Coffee’s Viral Pancake Shop Ad: What Hyperlocal Humor Teaches Foreign Brands in China

☕ Every week I look at what is winning on Chinese marketing platforms, and this week one story beat everything else, including campaigns with real budgets. A pancake shop next to a Luckin Coffee outlet posted a seven second video. Luckin answered with a short film. Chinese netizens are calling it the best PR move […]

August 3, 2026

Digital Marketing China

Why Chinese Brands Are Going ‘Light’ in 2026: Less Ad Spend, More Authenticity

🍃 Chinese brands are shrinking their ad budgets, and it is working better than the loud campaigns did. A trend piece from 广告门 (Adquan), one of China’s top marketing trade sites, calls it brands “going light” (品牌开始变「轻」). Instead of hiring a celebrity face and buying every screen in the subway, brands are handing out five-cent […]

August 2, 2026

Chinese Social Media, Kols & Livestreaming

China’s Viral Personality Test Craze: How Luckin, Starbucks and Duolingo Turned a Meme Into a Campaign in Hours

🧠 A goofy AI personality quiz took over Chinese social media this spring, and the brands that moved fastest turned a meme into free advertising almost overnight. Within about a day of the test going viral, Luckin Coffee, Starbucks and Duolingo had each built and launched their own branded version of it. If you sell […]

August 1, 2026

Business in China

Trade Fair In China: How To Get The Most Out Of It?

A trade fair in China is not a place to show up and hand out business cards. It is a short, expensive window to meet buyers you would otherwise spend months chasing by email. Get the preparation wrong and you walk the floor for four days with a stack of cards nobody follows up on. […]

July 24, 2026

Advertising in China

Douyin Advertising Strategies for Foreign Brands

Douyin is the Chinese short video app owned by ByteDance. It is not the same product as TikTok: different app, different servers, different rules, and in 2026 a different scale entirely. In March 2026, Douyin passed 1 billion monthly active users inside China alone, the first short video platform in the country to cross that […]

July 23, 2026

News

Why Was My Website Rejected For A Baidu Ads Account?

Baidu’s verification process for ads is known for its complexity, even when you speak fluent Chinese and have a Chinese business license in hand. If your website was rejected on the first application, you are not alone. In 2026, we see more rejections than five years ago, not fewer. Baidu has tightened almost every layer […]

July 22, 2026

Sectors & Industries

Top Machinery Exhibitions in China (2026) and How to Find Chinese B2B Clients

Why China still matters for machinery companies Olivier Verot is the founder and CEO of GMA, based in Shanghai since 2012. He has spent over a decade helping foreign industrial and machinery brands find distributors and buyers in China. China is still the largest producer, consumer, and importer of machine tools in the world. Demand […]

July 21, 2026