How to make your brand with bigger impact, make it smaller

This is a post coming late.

I was accompanying my sick little one for the whole week. During this week, we went on grocery shopping several times at Coles because of its recent miniature collectables promotion.

It is a successful marketing campaign attracted great media attention. Some of my friends have collected miniatures, posted collectables they have got on social media, and I even heard people selling individual collectables for $15 each on eBay just two days after launch.

Meanwhile, I’m thinking loudly whether this “make it smaller idea” can be applied to an Australian brand which Chinese consumers may not be familiar with.

For not well-known brands, the marketing promotion in China is costly, regardless it is through traditional advertising or through social media, KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) channels.

For example, the cost of a one-time 10 second commercial during peak hours (8-10pm) on CCTV (China Central Television Advertising, equivalent to ABC) is over AUD 25,000 on average.

Promotion cost on social media is even higher.The quote with a famous Wechat KOL (3-4 million followers) is about AUD 200,000, including a one-time Wechat headline article, an offline campaign, and KOL’s social network (Weibo) resource sharing.

Having said that, short-term miniature collectables campaign as a cost-effective option could be utilised by an Australian new brand to enter China.

The question is, can they copy the same campaign Coles did in Australia?

The answer is yes and no.

“Make it smaller” campaign may still work in China because kids are easily attracted by interesting collectables and will push parents into shopping in order to collect more.

However, those brands Coles promotes are familiar household names to Australian families. That’s why both parents and kids love it and may keep it for a longer time.

To the contrary, a new Australian brand may not carry such familiarity to Chinese kids or parents. There must be something else to convince them to keep this for a bit longer.

My suggestion to this is that, miniature collectables designed for Chinese market in this case can convey valuable information to parents, while keep the cute shape and good quality to attract kids to play with it.   

Consider the miniature collectable campaign of two types of Australian consumer products.

One of my Daigou (Overseas personal shopper) friends complained that she is always bothered by simple questions from customers in China, such as infant milk powder stages, how to prepare a feed, nutrition etc. She has to post same information every 2 or 3 days on social media or individual chat in response to this.

A miniature milk powder tin equipped with basic information, such as stages, feeding method and nutrition information might help in this case. It becomes a toy for kids to have fun and improves the brand awareness with more exposure to consumers while kids are playing. More importantly, it provides practical product information to the consumers instantly.

Another interesting experience happened when I was shopping with my mom in an imported product supermarket in China. I noticed that she always chooses one type of Australian beef steak. She said to me,” because I don’t know exactly what’s the other portions are and have no idea to cook them.”

Like my mom, most of the Chinese consumers are not familiar with beef cuts names that we use in the western world, let alone cooking methods. This is possibly the reason of the popularity of eye filet in the supermarket or E-commerce platform.

Will a cute and miniature cattle figure with a cut diagram as below be a good idea?

Australian suppliers can also provide QR code for consumers to check out recipes with different meat choices or tips to choose good quality of beef. This could be a kid’s toy or a practical tool for consumers especially elders to bring along when shopping.

Making the miniature collectables meaningful to Chinese consumers will be the key for unfamiliar brands entering China market. Meanwhile the information that collectables carrying should keep as simple as possible, because it will help the consumers’ purchase decision easier and simpler.