From brand strategy to activation

Totem worked with Birkenstock's regional HQ to re-position the brand and re-spark growth in China — starting with getting the brand-audience connection right. Adapting the brand while balancing its global and local identity, audience research and product mapping sharpened the focus on China's fast-growing 'Zen Gen' and framed content and campaigns around health, wellness and living free. Totem also built data-visualisation and analysis systems to evaluate retail and marketing performance.

Totem built New Balance's APAC social strategy in coordination with regional and global leadership — brand and social style guides, content plans and personas — and rolled it out through training with country marketing teams. From that framework we then ran regular strategy, analysis and content planning across the region.

Totem guided a 1.5-year digital marketing transformation across the Swatch Group portfolio in China — Omega, Tissot, Longines and Swatch. Working at group level and brand-by-brand, we built distinct campaign and content strategies, restructured WeChat and CRM, stood up a real-time social command centre and did training across teams to level-up digital performance.

Totem worked with the brand owner to build the Determinant brand for China and global markets — category and competitive research, positioning, strategy and design. We then built the master plan for growth and activation, spanning media, sponsorships and endorsements, influencers and web/app strategy, and supported the brand through launch and beyond. Determinant is a quickly growing player in men's fashion.

Working with LHG's C-level, Totem reviewed Langham's position in China and globally, analysed the competitive set and best practices, and built the strategy — delivered as a 150-page playbook, then training property teams running their own social accounts. The work drew on Totem's global research on hotels x social media, uniquely pairing China and global expertise.

Totem has guided Skechers in China through repeated, long-term engagements — and over that time the brand has grown into one of China's top athletic-footwear names, in many ways outstripping its profile in the US. The work runs on Totem's Brand Growth Template(c) and spans the full stack: brand ID, product-line x audience mapping, channel and campaign planning, and the digital and social campaigns that execute it.

Underneath New Balance's APAC framework sat continuous data work — trend-spotting, audience insight and ideation that fed the personas and content planning. That intelligence was as much the product as the framework itself.

For Estée Lauder, Totem manually reviewed more than 60,000 pieces of content across six countries, six owned brands and four competitors per country — breaking down the exact factors behind what succeeded and what failed. We built the results into a click-through data visualisation that let the client draw real insight into their own strategy and their competitors'. Over three months, it reshaped the client's ongoing digital strategy.

A premium European beauty firm engaged Totem for an audience and competitor report as part of a 2019 investment exercise. Over six weeks we reviewed six brands — the target plus five competitors — across five social and e-commerce channels to map share of voice, competitive challenges and audience-product opportunities. Focus groups and surveys of the key audiences added the qualitative depth.

For The Body Shop, Totem turned 13 markets and 5 social channels of scattered data into one interactive BI dashboard, integrating further data for deeper strategy insight. It tracks keywords by product, symptom and ingredient across search and social listening, so stores can adjust their displays to local trends. Business intelligence, made usable.

Intel is the clearest proof of the thesis behind SOCV: own the right communities, and reach compounds. Totem built and ran Intel's influencer and brand-content strategy across Asia — organized around specific cohorts, chief among them gamers, through the Intel Gaming Alliance, Mobile Go-Getters and vPro CEO programs. Rather than buying broad reach, the work embedded Intel inside the communities that set the category's agenda. Across 13 countries it reached 216M people through 23 ambassadors.

Globally Star Wars is one of the defining franchises of the last 40 years, but in China awareness ran low. Totem launched the franchise for Disney — Episode 7 and Rogue One — orchestrating staged trailer releases across social and video with 40+ influencers, plus O2O campaigns and monthly Weibo/WeChat. The Episode 7 trailer was seen by more than 350 million people in China.

Totem ran Real Techniques' China market entry, brand and social strategy, then its monthly social, KOL and campaign management. The brand was an early mover in live-streaming — including a record-breaking activation with Austin Li on Taobao Live. In five minutes, reaching 2.8M of Austin's 6.3M followers, the stream sold 22,500 units, around US$250K. Totem also orchestrated a brand collaboration with Benefit Cosmetics, which drew 8.9 million unique brand views.

To put Tencent's channels at the centre of fast-breaking World Cup news, Totem built a 24/7 'social war-room' for 2014 — writers, designers and analysts watching every match, ready to respond the moment something happened. With content pre-built for a range of match scenarios, the team shipped 230 real-time posters over 32 days at an average of ten minutes each. They drew 44.4M impressions on WeChat and 510M+ on Weibo, with 100+ top influencers resharing for free.

Under Inditex, Totem ran Stradivarius's monthly social and content — 3-5 short videos and 50+ look-book images a month with KOLs, users and models, reaching 19.73M across Weibo, WeChat, Nice and OTV. For Double 11, fashion blogger 'SunnieLovesFashion' live-broadcast 11 looks via YiZhiBo and Tmall, drawing 3.5M views.

Totem worked with New York HQ and APAC management to guide Stuart Weitzman's re-launch into China — starting with market and audience planning, then China-specific style guides, content and campaigns. The anchor was a series of brand and social videos that positioned the brand for Chinese audiences while holding its global image. Weibo fans grew 300%, the videos drew 5.5M+ views on Youku/Tudou, and brand reach expanded tenfold.

Totem worked with global and regional management teams on digital innovation and transformation for Van Cleef & Arpels in China — from strategy through to implementation. The work paired brand and CRM strategy with data analysis, then built the executional layer: WeChat, H5 and Mini-Programs, chatbot/AI, and the campaigns that ran on top.

Totem created a research series across three of Salesforce's key China verticals — luxury, athleisure and beauty — built to support the growth of the company's CRM solutions and integrations in the market. The three deep-dive reports reached a B2B audience of 60,000+ industry participants.

Totem ran comprehensive marketing for youth-fashion brand 6IXTY 8IGHT through a period of rapid China expansion — creative direction, content creation, KOL and influencer activations, event support and community management. Over the engagement, the brand doubled its China business.

Working with the UK brand owners, Totem led Pizza Express's market entry and localization — audience research and focus groups, the proposition and identity, and the localization of name, logos and fonts. We built the complete marketing plan, brand guidelines and digital and social design. The brand grew quickly and, in late 2014, was acquired by Chinese private-equity firm Hony Capital.

Totem helped inform LinkedIn's China market-entry strategy — TAM and audience research, competitive analysis, and thinking on WeChat integration to fit the local ecosystem. The work weighed LinkedIn's global model against the realities of the Chinese professional-social market.

UK luxury linens brand Christy engaged Totem in 2021 for a comprehensive China market-research and entry strategy. The report ran market and category analysis, audience-group definition, competitor reviews and audience surveys, through to the entry plan itself — giving Christy a clear read on the market, its positioning and where the growth was.

Totem led MinkPink's China market entry — market and competitive research, audience analysis, and the go-to-market strategy, with channel and content planning to launch and run the brand's presence. The team then followed through in activating the brand — a mix of influencers, brand collaborations and retail activities.