By Susan Owens, Huffington Post
Chinese social media is a revolving door.
Yao Chen. Photo from Getty Images.
Multiple platforms on the mainland mimic Western sites like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, which are banned in China.
In their place are Weibo, Youku and the rapid-fire star, WeChat.
They are the social media platforms that sway consumer choices — and a powerful megaphone for European and American luxury brands.
Dominated by a generation born after 1975, these are the voices of the chattering offspring of the “one-child policy” who find the “big sisters” they might not have, online.
Their conversations endorse and sway each other’s choices and purchases. And while luxury brands were once reluctant to join the conversation, Chinese social media is now a non-negotiable priority of any marketing plan worth its gilt chain.
As luxury brands make complex choices on their preferred social media platforms, a new social site has emerged, called Bomoda, adding a further choice to the vast social media menu.
Mid-November Bomoda’s mobile iPhone app gave voice to a quarter of a million, young Chinese fashionistas who had already signed on for Bomoda’s newsletter.
The hybrid Instagram-Pinterest-like app offered them the ability to “curate,” tag,” and “favour,” the brands and looks they love.
Think: “I am my own stylist, and I can curate and share my wish list.” It also won corporate interest, with companies like Estee Lauder and Coach taking up positions.
On day one of its launch, Bomoda became the sixth most popular fashion app in China.
As a measure of Bomoda’s success, Benedicte Bro-Cassard, a Beijing-based fashion blogger for Le Monde newspaper in France and Vogue China, garnered over 7,000 fans in eight weeks for her personal musings.
Bro-Cassard’s following reflects the mood among Chinese luxury consumers, who are much younger than their Western counterparts, increasingly shop abroad and have a voracious appetite for news and views from fashion’s front row — where Bro-Cassard sits.
Brian Buchwald, Bomoda’s co-founder and a former NBC executive, believes Chinese consumers’ spending power often outstrips their confidence, hence the incessant exchange of information on social media.
Read the full article by Susan Owens from Huffington Post.
