Us

Last Friday my wechat screen was all in a sudden occupied by friends’ photos with a common subject of ‘我们’ (we).

I had a Baidu search and found the reason. (Google doesn’t work in this case. In terms of search results in China Google is far less accurate and helpful.)

Fan Bingbing and Li Chen, the two film stars, leaked their status of relationship to the public early this year. Unlike most of the other celebrities, the couple has been making their relationship open to the public. They mentioned each other on Sina Weibo and interact with each other.

On Friday morning Li Chen posted a photo of the couple with the headline of ‘我们’ (we) on Sina Weibo. One minute later Fan Bingbing shared the post on her Sina Weibo page with the same subject of ‘我们’ (we). 

This is a high key statement of relationship between themselves and the message was immediately spread over online across different platforms. What's amazing was soon afterwards, people online started to show their photos with their friends or families with the same subject of 'we'. Posters were created with standard headline of ‘我们’ (we). Instead of gossiping or blessing the couple, Chinese netizens were celebrating and show-off their own sweet relationship at the same time.

Media teased the emerging trend as 'we style' sweep.

Brands doing real time marketing join in the celebration as well.

Durex’s post: You!!!!! Bingbing has Li!!

Xiaomi: We. We have Li and Fan.

McDonald: Bingbing, awesome!

This emerging 'we' celebration amazed me for several reasons. 

Chinese netizens seems to be very much into entertaining celebrations. They love the chance to help them speak out their emotions and thoughts which are often hidden inside. They love the chance to allow them show off their wit.

Chinese netizens love to tease celebrities, especially those who often use PR approach to raise their profiles. Celebrities such as Fan Bingbing have been actively creating topics such as has she ever had plastic surge to make her look pretty to attract people's attention and raise their top of mind awareness in the market. Instead of worship them, Chinese audiences are quite enjoy having fun by sharing the contents with witty comments or even creating funny contents on their own. 

The participation of brands is also becoming a norm. Durex responded within 10 minutes with its own posts. The the brands mentioned also responded within hours. What they won is the favorability from their fans about about wittiness of the brand. The real time response also created better synergy with their fans for the celebration. Number of share of these posts are much better than most of the other posts during the day.