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Every country has its own type of advertising. This not only reflects the market structure of the country, but also the media landscape, legislation and competitive position. But most important of all is the culture. How do ‘people’ think about morality, humour, ethical issues, the division of male/female roles, the vulnerability of young people?

After The Oldest Rainbows (with the Netherlands as the winner in 1992) and The Dutch Rainbows (in which mainly casualness plays a role), now a look into the Chinese marketing kitchen in the field of rainbows.

The situation

You understand, China is in few ways comparable to Europe, also in the field of marketing – and certainly not when it comes to LGBT or Marketing the Rainbow. The earliest data on relationships between people of the same sex in China date from the Shang Dynasty (approx. 16th to 11th century BC). At that time, homosexuality was largely viewed with indifference and usually treated with openness. Confucianism, on the other hand, had more difficulty with it. And during the Cultural Revolution, homosexuals were subjected to public humiliation and long prison sentences. The latter two trends still resonate.

While China decriminalized homosexuality in 1997 – and only declassified it as a mental disorder four years later – discrimination against the LGBT community remains evident in many aspects of society.

But in the meantime, China has also become attached to the value economy. The Chinese rainbow economy is worth around 700 billion euros annually and includes around 75 million people. In addition, younger generations are susceptible to the diversity that a brand radiates.

Censorship

One area where LGBT is severely underrepresented is in advertising. Marketers tend to stay away from rainbow-themed content to avoid running afoul of Chinese censorship.

The Chinese government was still largely following what seemed like a hands-off approach in 2015, characterized by the popular Three No’s policy: “no approval, no disapproval, and no promotion.” But starting in 2016, the policy became stricter. Online content, especially content depicting LGBT people, is subject to heavy and often arbitrary censorship in China. In recent years, censors have muted social media discussions, banned homosexuality in films, and prevented the online sale of rainbow-themed items. Still, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the issue is getting some attention in marketing there.

The beginning

It started in 2014, so before the “turnaround year” of 2015. AdAge wrote: “LGBT Marketing Comes To China,” when travel agency Spring Tour targeted gay couples. But a breakthrough failed to materialize.

What was striking was that in the same year, a survey by the Chinese Journal of Human Sexuality found that 85% of the nearly 1,000 respondents supported gay marriage, while only 2% were against it. Not long after, Foreign Policy reported: “China’s new billion-dollar target market: LGBT youth. As social conservatism fades, tech companies and advertisers are trying to show their tolerant side.” At the same time, they said that only 5% of rainbowers were out of the closet. A difficult target group, then.

Prison

In 2014, we saw something fun again from Master Kong, the largest producer of instant noodles in China. They released this commercial for their new cookie product. The prison routine of “dropping the shower soap” may seem a bit cliché, but this video has gone viral on the Chinese internet. Who would have thought that you could be saved from an inevitable gang rape by three crackers and two layers of creamy filling?

This is not the form of Marketing the Rainbow where a brand targets the LGBT consumer. But the other branch of that sport, namely the use of gay icons or jokes. I approve of this, because at that time, although not very original, it was daring.

Misunderstandings

The cultural difference is reflected in creative, social and also political terms. This also regularly leads to bloopers in ‘regular’ campaigns. Luxury fashion brands Versace, Coach and Givenchy all apologized for making alleged insults to Chinese national sovereignty with T-shirts that listed Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macao as separate countries. Dolce & Gabbana was boycotted for racially offensive messages on social media.

Brands on social media

Balenciaga presented a campaign with old-fashioned images that were reminiscent of the flashy style that was fashionable in the Chinese countryside twenty-five years ago. The hashtag “Balenciaga’s Qixi campaign is too tacky” was viewed more than 200 million times and discussed 23,000 times. In an online survey, 95,500 respondents said and found it tasteless, while 7,700 said they found it fashionable.

Now this wasn’t even a sensitive topic like gay marketing, but you can see that you can easily burn your fingers there. So it’s important to include cultural sensitivities in your creativity.

Hook-ins

Of course, events and festivals are used to hook-ins. For example, in China there are no fewer than 3 ‘Valentine’s Days’: in addition to February 14, they also have their own version, Qixi. This festival is celebrated on the seventh day of the seventh month on the Chinese calendar. It goes back no less than 2600 years in history, so even the communists couldn’t erase that.

And then there is also the 520 Festival since 2020, which is celebrated on May 20 (5-20 in American). 520 sounds a bit like wǒ ài nǐ, which means ‘I love you’ in Chinese. Love everywhere, then. Where 520, which originated from cyber culture, is mainly used for Gen Z by the top luxury brands such as Gucci and Valentino, Qixi offers more of a platform for everyday brands. Although… Italian fashion brand Bottega Veneta had a clear rainbow theme in their commercial for Qixi in both 2022 and the year after.

Budweiser, Qixi 2016 and 2019

And Bud also used Qixi as a moment for diversity in their advertising. Even before The Scandal (see Get woke, don’t go broke), Bud had a beautiful clip for Qixi in 2016. The video, with the slogan ‘Love is Natural‘, shows different types of relationships, including those between multicultural and gay couples. “We don’t care,” says one of the people who appear in the spot. “Follow your own path and don’t pay attention to what others think.”

In 2019, they did it again with a digital-first campaign celebrating “all kinds of love.” New York-based news outlet SupChina said, “The Chinese internet is in love with Budweiser’s Qixi ads featuring same-sex couples.”

The film also benefited from the rise of influencer marketing in China. In an era where consumers are inundated with ads and paid content, they are holding creative campaigns to higher standards than ever before. Not just in terms of technical quality, but also in terms of how authentic the story is.

In addition to this video, Bud also sponsored an LGBTQI event in Shanghai, and commissioned a limited edition set of four beer bottles. Each bottle, designed by Norwegian designer Magnus Voll Mathiassen, features either a man or a woman. If you place two bottles next to each other so that their faces “touch,” it looks like the two figures are kissing. So you can see a man and a woman kissing, two women or two men.

The campaign was a great success, with a total of around 200 news items and more than 2.16 billion impressions.

In addition, the younger generations are susceptible to the diversity that a brand radiates. So you see more and more brands incorporating diversity into their communication. This mainly concerns luxury brands, such as Cartier and Bottega Veneta, but also a ‘brand of the people’ such as Budweiser is becoming increasingly active. Web shops such as Tmall, Alibaba and Taobao have their say, while tech companies and startups in particular are showing their most diverse side to attract staff.

A few examples – also of how it should not be done.

Cartier makes a blooper

In 2020, Cartier launched a video about their Trinity series on social media in China to celebrate Qixi. The theme was “How far would you go for love?”. Of the six people in the commercial, two are clearly heterosexual: the clip shows them having a romantic moment on a roof.

The other four are divided into two couples: two men and two women. But their relationships are difficult to define, as the video only shows platonic activities, such as listening to music together and cycling. This is a typical form of ‘gay tease’. Showing a situation that is open to different interpretations, in order to keep everyone happy.

It was striking that a (luxury) A-brand in China used rainbow diversity. But unfortunately, they had not yet fully understood how to do it. Cartier faced widespread online ridicule for the ad, describing the gay couple in a caption on its online store on Alibaba’s Tmall platform as “father and son, bonded by love, enjoying the journey of life.” The women’s relationship was also downplayed: “Mutual understanding beyond words. Witness our eternal friendship.”

“The buzz surrounding this campaign showed that while Chinese consumers have become increasingly open-minded about ads featuring same-sex couples, the n, marketers are still reluctant to embrace LGBT inclusivity for fear of objections from Chinese censors,” according to The China Project.

“Some may believe that Cartier is just trying to make a few ‘pink dollars,’ but I tend to be more positive when I think that in some way they are supporting gay rights by increasing our visibility through these types of ads,” said Yanzi Peng, director of China Rainbow Media Awards. “Of course, supporting gay rights will also bring economic benefits to these companies – it’s a win-win scenario. Companies need to be bolder and take another step forward.”

A small victory: Dior named transgender icon Jin Xing as the new face of its iconic women’s fragrance J’adore in 2021.

Tmall, 2020

Now, Bud and Cartier are Western brands, with the former having been doing Marketing the Rainbow for about 30 years, but to my surprise, Alibaba’s Tmall also came out with a fun gay ad in 2020.

The video went viral when it was posted on Chinese social media site Weibo by LoveMatters, an organization that provides education and advice on sex and relationships. The clip quickly garnered about 7 million views, with over 100,000 likes and over 5,000 comments that were overwhelmingly positive.

Alibaba told CNN: “Chinese New Year is a time for family reunion and integration, and the ad is a creative expression to celebrate such an occasion.” Although Alibaba does not explicitly take a pro- or anti-LGBT stance, the public appreciated the inclusivity.

In 2015, Tmall also covered its logo in a rainbow for Pride Month, with the text “Love is enough.”

Note: In 2015, Taobao, also owned by Alibaba, sponsored a contest to send gay couples from China to California to get married. The slogan of the contest, called We Do, was: “As long as you have true love, Taobao will help you realize the dream.” Incidentally, this was also done in 2013 by tech startup Meituan, but then to Canada.

Pride Month 2021

In a kind of revival, we suddenly saw several major brands pay attention to Pride Month in China in 2021. Coca-Cola teamed up with eyewear brand Bolon to release a limited edition of colorful glasses made from recycled Coca-Cola bottles. Absolut and Levi’s both had a campaign (with Levi’s doing it for the 3rd time), but also collaborated on a gift box. And Ugg enlisted Jiang Sida, an LGBT celebrity, and two lesbian influencer couples to present their gender-neutral collection “as a celebration of self-identity and love.” Ugg and gender-neutral – I’m not saying anything.

Conclusion

It’s slow, and there’s not much to discover (yet) in the field of Marketing the Rainbow, but the first steps in China have been taken. Despite censorship and watchdogs, explicit or less obvious rainbow campaigns are occasionally being run. Consumers shy away from tactics that feel disingenuous or overly commercial. As demand grows, competition between brands increases, so good marketing is all the more important.

It is striking that the reactions to Marketing the Rainbow are overwhelmingly positive. The Chinese, at least those who are on social media, seem to be quite progressive. But a handful of examples over a period of 10 years, in a country with a fifth of the world’s population is very meager. In any case, the first steps have been taken in the customer journey Representation -> visibility -> normalization -> tolerance -> acceptance -> respect. One expert warns: “While the words of advertising campaigns are of course important, a company’s actions can speak louder. If your brand is not willing to support the community, don’t pretend that you are.” And that is exactly how you prevent pinkwashing.