Ad Campaign Featuring Brand Ambassador Fan Bingbing
Actress Fan Bingbing is the face of the Alma handbag in China (Image: iFeng)
One month after appointing actress Fan Bingbing as the brand ambassador for its Alma handbag, this week Louis Vuitton began promoting four color schemes aimed squarely at the mainland China market. The brand’s official Sina Weibo page features the handbag in four colors in particular — imperial yellow, royal blue, ivory, and deep indigo — that reference everything from the Qing Dynasty royal court to ancient porcelain in Chinese culture. While the Weibo page is calling these colors “China exclusives,” they are apparently available globally as well.
Facing more intense competition, and perhaps looking to fight “logo fatigue” and consumer apathy — the brand currently has around 40 locations in China — Louis Vuitton is likely looking to Fan Bingbing and the colorful Alma bag to inject new life in 2013. In recent months, the seemingly ubiquitous Fan has seemingly never been without one of the handbags, being spotted by paparazzi at movie premieres, events, airports and on the street toting an Alma in every conceivable color.
On the surface, Louis Vuitton’s strategy for promoting the Alma line is quite clever. With more low-key and less logo-heavy (yet still recognizable) designs proving the most popular at the moment, LV’s current marketing salvo — which includes microsites on the offical brand site as well as Weibo — and partnership with the heavily photographed Fan Bingbing all have the potential to do very well, given the current state of the China luxury market.
Four special-edition colors promoted in the mainland China market (Image: Weibo)