Top luxury WeChat campaigns of 2018. A lot of luxury brands went further with WeChat in 2018, whether that meant launching a mini-program, utilizing “Moments” ads or livestreaming. For example, Sergio Rossi offered consumers ultra-customization with its shoe customization WeChat mini-program, Burberry held a 24-hour flash sale that saw nearly half of the available products sell out, and Michael Kors leveraged WeChat Moments ads to target overseas Chinese consumers in New York City for an exclusive campaign. Read More


WeChat to be the platform for autonomous vehicles and related "Internet of Vehicles" solutions. Tencent has been quietly establishing its presence in the auto sector with investments both in major auto manufacturers and in related auto service companies. This is part of Tencent’s new strategic focus on business services on the Cloud. Tencent’s investments are specifically related to EVs and what is termed the Internet of Vehicles. It is based around developments the company is making in AI. As with its other major revenue drivers, this will be based around its WeChat platform. Read More


WeChat mini-programs attracted RMB 4.3 billion in funding in 2018. According to a recently released Newrank.cn report, from January 1 to December 14, 2018, WeChat mini-programs attracted RMB 4.3 billion in funding, as part of 130 different funding rounds. This is 6 times more than the amount in 2017. Most of the investments were focused on companies in the e-commerce and service sectors. 85 percent of the investments made in WeChat mini-programs are Round A or below; however, for early-stage investments they were relatively large with at least 50 percent of the funding rounds exceeding RMB 10 million. Read More


WeChat’s ‘Red Envelope’ gamblers can now be charged with running illegal casinos
Chinese authorities have stepped up their crackdown on organized illegal gambling that makes use of WeChat’s “red envelope” feature. WeChat first introduced the immensely popular feature in 2014. Unlike regular money transfers on WeChat, red envelopes allow users to hide the amount being transferred until the recipient completes the transfer. Chat group members may also send red envelopes that can be opened by multiple people, each of whom receives a different, randomized amount.
 
Inviting gamblers into WeChat groups, and setting up gambling games involving red envelopes for profit under certain conditions could qualify as “opening a casino” under China’s criminal law, said the Supreme People's Court, China’s highest court. Read more here and here


Luxury brands’ Christmas WeChat campaigns
During this year’s holiday season, Swarovski and Stella McCartney created custom WeChat mini-programs. To promote its Advent calendar gift set, Swarovski primed consumers with a virtual Advent calendar. Every day, the virtual Advent calendar gave users access to different interactive mini-games. Once the game was completed, users would be given a card. Once all seven cards were collected, users could receive a holiday gift from Swarovski. Stella McCartney, on the other hand, focused on growing brand awareness with a photo editing mini-program full of branded stickers and effects. It also gave users the chance to win prizes. Read More
 

CCTV Finance worked with Tencent’s TiMi T1 studio to create the mini-program game ''Go Fighting! Balls!''
 
It’s a simple game. Players can use their finger to control the ball as it moves forward on a path, hitting hearts to collect points and attempting to elude barriers that would cause the game to end. While the ball is rolling forward, players pass through dated archways that reveal stories of China’s reform and opening up.
 
If you can get past the game’s unfortunate (albeit hilarious) English name, the game is full of symbolism: fast moving balls to represent the rapid development; eluding barriers reflects the Chinese people’s courage to move ahead and overcome difficulties.
 
The game is not only meant to help people reflect on the past, but to encourage them to continue moving at a fast pace into the future.
 
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Zepeto is the latest product from South Korea’s Snow Corporation (whose parent company Naver also owns the Snapchat-like app Snow and the popular Asian messaging app Line). It became an overnight sensation in China this December and is still going strong.
 
Zepeto lets users create a 3D character of themselves (but cuter!) using facial recognition software. They can then customize every last detail of the avatars from hairstyles and virtual outfits down to the shape of their freckles. This level of detail and number of options keeps users infinitely entertained.
 
Once their avatar’s ready to go, they can head into a virtual world to interact with other avatars, from real-world friends to strangers, and even celebrities.
 
Since the app became popular, WeChat Moments has become flooded with people sharing group and couple Zepeto avatar photos. But it hasn’t stopped there. Numerous WeChat influencers have created Zepeto tutorials or have shared their Zepeto IDs and are using it as another means of interacting with their followers.
 
And WeChat isn’t the only platform talking about Zepeto. There are already over 7,200 posts on the topic on popular social commerce app Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book).  

Read More
 
Example of WeChat KOL Zepeto tutorial

In its latest system update on December 21, China’s top social messaging app WeChat unveiled a new feature called “Time Capsule,” which allows users to post instant videos of less than 15 seconds that only appear on individual users’ homepages for 24 hours. The new feature is similar to the “Stories” feature offered by a wide range of Western social media apps like Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook.

Users can either upload their existing videos or record new ones through Time Capsule, then add descriptions, emojis, music, and location information. The options are still relatively basic compared to Instagram Stories. Viewers of videos can tap on the bubble icon to let friends know they have opened it.
 
Read more here and here.

How the Time Capsule feature will shift the dynamic of WeChat influencers, from Chinese fashion media Ladymax (in Chinese).



 

 

WeChat has changed the “Like” button at the lower right corner of an Official Account article to “Recommend.” Recommended posts will appear in a new tab called “Wow” in the Top Stories section, which features an aggregated feed of Recommended posts from your personal network.
 
Arnold Ma, CEO of Qumin shares the potential he sees for the features: “The new like/share feature is a very smart move by WeChat to further encourage users to share/discover more content. Most of WeChat interaction is in messaging, pay, and Moments. ‘Top Stories’ were brought in initially to have a better place for discovering articles – but pick-up has been low. More so, the ‘Like’ button never had a true purpose, it was kind of just there…Merging the two seems like the perfect solution.”
 
This feature may help with declining article open rates by increasing the chances of content discovery and giving the article social proof.
 
Read more here and here. 

 

Spot an update or new feature? Let us know at lauren@jingdaily.com