When many brands focus China commercial efforts around the hotly-contested season of the Lunar New Year, we created a campaign centred around the lesser-known traditional Chinese festival ‘Qixi’, also known as Chinese Valentine’s Day.

The legend of Qixi originates from a romantic love story between the goddess Zhinu and her earthly lover Niulang, separated forever by the disapproving Goddess of Heaven.

Qixi is the one day in the lunar calendar when the two lovers are permitted to cross the heavens and reunite. Taking inspiration from this tradition, we centred our campaign around the idea of long distance relationships, acting as the messenger to deliver the campaign: Long Distance Love Letters from Mulberry.

On 15th August 2015, we launched the campaign on WeChat and Weibo, running for 5 days. Users were asked to follow Mulberry on WeChat, provide the recipient’s information and write their special love message, all within the dedicated WeChat microsite.

Our microsite then generated the message as a handwritten letter image sent directly to the recipient’s WeChat inbox.

Users could also select one of six participating Mulberry stores in the recipient’s location. On 20th and 21st August, over Chinese Valentine’s Day, recipients could visit the selected store and redeem a complimentary Mulberry leather bracelet.

Craft bars were set up in Mulberry stores in Beijing, Shanghai, London, New York, Paris and Toronto, where users could personalise their bracelets with a unique message of love and experience the craft of Mulberry first hand.

We worked with influencers based in each of the six locations to share the campaign with localised fan networks.

Within 72 hours, the campaign achieved 1.01 million impressions across Weibo and WeChat, with a total of 1200 customers visiting the 6 selected Mulberry stores for offline participation - using the craft bar to create personalised bracelets and sharing online.

Mulberry store staff were then able to convert this in-store interest into sales opportunities for the season’s collection.

In a market where luxury brands are often been criticised for not understanding the Chinese consumer, the campaign received praise for engaging in a meaningful way with Chinese tradition, while addressing the very modern challenges faced by today’s generation of consumers. 95% of the comments from consumer were very positive towards the brand with many sharing their campaign experience online.