The Weibo star is now raising a new generation of bloggers with his agency, Missionary
The rising importance of social media marketing is unassailable. Increasingly, global brands are working with local social media influencers to target millennial consumers who are—so the countless studies say—less likely to be swayed by traditional forms of advertising and more likely to value the opinion of a social media personality they feel a connection with.
Arguably the market where this relationship between brand, influencer and consumer is most developed—and most widely utilised—is China, where social media celebrities have established an effective set of tools to engage consumers on behalf of brands. Given the exponential year-on-year growth of online connectivity in China, which now tops over 700 million internet users, it's no wonder Chinese social media influencers are now courted by global luxury brands.
Indeed, the term “wanghong”, which translates as “internet famous”, has become a common phrase in Mainland China in recent years. Thanks to the rise of social media platforms, people around the country have been able to carve out lucrative careers based on nothing more than an engaging Weibo or WeChat account.
Among the most prominent of the digital influencers are fashion bloggers. But before we were inundated with KOLs posting selfies, a pioneering social media personality changed fashion commentary in China forever: Gogoboi.
Beginnings
The Shanghai-based trailblazer had a rather traditional start at a magazine, but his career blossomed when Gogoboi, whose real name is Ye Si and who was born in 1983, stepped off that path to become a blogger, which gave him the freedom to talk about fashion the way he wanted. “All day [at magazines] they’d be using words like sexy, elegant, luxurious—it was incredibly boring,” says Gogoboi, who was determined to shake things up. At the tail end of 2010, he made his move, using the hashtag #whowearwhat on Weibo to accompany straightforward, witty assessments of celebrities’ fashion choices, and regularly posting images of stars whose outfits he’d describe as “car crashes.”