Xiaohongshu Spring Festival IP Strategy: Boost Engagement in 3 Steps

In recent years, people have been looking forward to the arrival of the Spring Festival, looking for hope and embracing tradition with new enthusiasm. Xiaohongshu launched the "Celebrate the Spring Festival with Heart" IP marketing campaign, turning Xiaohongshu into a digital "Spring Festival Gala" that combines tradition and innovation, which meets the public's expectations and yearning for the Spring Festival.

The marketing results are impressive: more than 6 billion impressions, more than 500,000 new notes, and more than 300,000 interactions. In addition to these numbers, Xiaohongshu's marketing campaign also shows how brands can use cultural resonance, interactive strategies, and platform-native strategies to increase engagement. This article unpacks the framework behind Xiaohongshu's success, analyzes its key drivers, and provides actionable insights for marketers.

Flat lay Chinese New Year atmosphere greeting card mockup image

1. Xiaohongshu IP Marketing Strategy Framework

1. Platform-level IP upgrade

Xiaohongshu's Spring Festival marketing broke through the traditional holiday marketing model and built the platform into a multi-dimensional IP ecosystem. Brands made full use of this strategy and created an immersive experience with its customized theme scheduling and data-driven content creation professional capabilities. The strategy was redefined through four key upgrades:

2. Main venue + sub-venue integration

The centralized "main venue" platform played a role in content aggregation, bringing together popular content such as New Year's Eve dinner, New Year's outfit, etc. At the same time, the "Spring Street" built offline in five cities including Shanghai and Beijing cleverly became a connection point for online and offline interactions, promoting the linkage and integration of online and offline. Mengniu, Watsons and other brands have achieved remarkable results by deploying gamified red envelope giving activities, and achieved a 150% increase in customer traffic in offline stores. During the event, the brand used QR codes as a connecting bridge to successfully link offline activities with digital content.

3. Celebrity greetings and interaction level

Opinion leaders and celebrities actively participated, such as in the Wanglaoji emoji can event, they delivered personalized New Year greetings to users. The event also integrated dynamic functions such as emoji generators to enhance fun and interactivity.

4. Local life sub-IP

Xiaohongshu and Penfolds jointly launched sub-activities such as "New Year Dry Food King", which fully utilized the platform's advantages in the field of lifestyle content. By learning the presentation of this event, to ensure that these sub-IPs can accurately reach and impress niche groups with needs for food, travel, gift recommendations, etc.

5. Offline and online integration

Pop-up devices such as Yili’s “Organic Favorites” gift box have set QR codes, and consumers can directly jump to the e-commerce shopping page of Xiaohongshu after scanning the code.

2. Success Drivers

1. Cultural and emotional fit

This event contains two rich emotions:

After years of restrictions and constraints, users are eager to have a pleasant shared experience and hope to rediscover the joy of life through interaction. “New Chinese” aesthetic trend: retro filters, traditional patterns and DIY creation craze perfectly match the Z generation’s love for the integration of cultural heritage and innovation, triggering deep resonance.

The reason why the Wanglaoji emoji campaign was successful is that it modernized traditional elements, cleverly transformed the herbal tea brand into a medium for conveying humor and creativity, and presented it to the public in a refreshing way.

2. Interaction Strategy

Xiaohongshu successfully increased user engagement through gamification strategies:

Red Envelope Game: Watsons and other brands launched red envelope games with discounts as rewards to attract user participation, effectively increasing user retention time by 40%.
AR technology application: In offline activities, users can unlock digital coupons through pop-up windows combined with AR filters, cleverly combining fun and practicality.

3. Omni-channel collaboration

In this event, the online and offline cycle linkage played a key role:

QR code redemption mechanism: Consumers can scan the QR code in physical stores to unlock exclusive digital content, achieving seamless connection from offline to online. Geolocation pop-up function: With the help of localized activation strategy, relevant information is pushed through geolocation pop-up windows, which successfully promotes a highly relevant interactive experience.

3. Results & Implications

1. Results

Xiaohongshu’s Spring Festival IP promotion campaign achieved remarkable results, demonstrating the platform’s ability to increase brand awareness and commercial performance. The following key indicators highlight the success of the campaign:

Brand Exposure: The campaign exceeded 6 billion exposures, and more than 10 hot topics were on Xiaohongshu’s hot search list. Collaboration with more than 300 celebrities and KOLs expanded the promotion’s coverage and used their influence to create authentic, user-centric content.
User Engagement: The integration of gamification elements, such as Watsons’ red envelope distribution, increased user retention time by 40%.
Sales Impact: The campaign translated engagement into tangible business results. Yili organic milk sales grew 186% year-on-year, and Wang Laoji limited edition emoji cans sold out within 72 hours.

These results validated the effectiveness of Xiaohongshu’s IP ecosystem strategy, ensured ROI was maximized for participating brands.

Topkee’s social operation services can support and promote and resonated strongly with young audiences.Topkee’s advertising services played a key role in this, using precise positioning to increase engagement. Through various interactive methods, Xiaohongshu’s e-commerce traffic can be increased and conversion rates can be improved.

2. Strategic Significance

The event provided actionable insights for brands and platforms aiming to replicate its success:

For Brands:

Cultural co-creation: Brands cannot be limited to a cookie-cutter promotion model, but need to be deeply integrated into the platform's native IP. By closely integrating the brand's core information with important cultural moments, the brand can demonstrate authenticity and audience relevance in the event, successfully enhancing brand influence.
Interactivity is the key to driving growth: Adopting gamification design and user-generated content-centric strategies are important means to increase user engagement. The video production and copywriting services provided by Topkee can help brands create interesting and appealing interactive content, effectively inspire users to actively share, and further expand brand communication.
Omni-channel collaboration: The model of connecting online through QR code fully demonstrates the necessity of integrating offline and online.

The product influence tools provided by Topkee can help brands track various online and offline touch points to ensure that the user experience journey from offline to online remains consistent and smooth.

For Platform:

The necessity of investing in hybrid experiences: Xiaohongshu’s “Spring Street” offline event fully proves that the integration of offline and online can effectively improve user engagement. The platform should focus on using AR technology, QR codes and other tools to connect online and offline areas and create a richer user experience.
Unleashing the value of data agility: Through real-time analysis of user-generated content (UGC) combined with algorithmic promotion. Platforms can learn from this model and provide similar tools to brands to help them quickly adjust and iterate their strategies.

In summary, this event shows that the key to success on Xiaohongshu lies in three major factors: cultural resonance, interactive innovation and data accuracy. Brands interested in tapping into Xiaohongshu’s potential should adopt an IP-centric strategy and have tailored solutions from experts who are familiar with the platform’s unique ecosystem to achieve their brand’s growth goals. The end-to-end services provided by Topkee cover content creation, advertising, social CRM and other areas, which can give brands a competitive advantage in these areas.

Conclusion

Xiaohongshu’s Spring Festival campaign proves that cultural relevance, interactivity, and data agility are the pillars of modern marketing. When brands incorporate festivals into their IP ecosystem and leverage Xiaohongshu ads, they can achieve deeper communication and resonance with consumers.

Need help building your own IP-driven campaign? Consult Topkee’s experts to apply Xiaohongshu’s strategy to your brand.