A marketing campaign brief obtained by WIRED reveals how the Chinese app is trying to capitalize on its sudden international popularity.

Anti-paywall link: https://archive.is/Ngi8v

As TikTok’s future hangs in the balance, Xiaohonghshu, better known as RedNote in English, is trying to capitalize on its newfound popularity by partnering with US influencers who can help promote the company and bring more Americans onto its platform. The Chinese lifestyle and travel app, which has over 300 million mostly monthly active users, surged to the top of US app store charts last week as the TikTok ban approached.

In a campaign brief obtained by WIRED, Solare Global, a New York City-based marketing agency, pitched creators on making sponsored posts for RedNote, featuring videos of themselves telling their followers about the Chinese app’s sudden rise in the US. The brief asked creators to describe “how fun and engaging the app is” and “emphasize its user-friendly design and international appeal.” It also instructed them to share their own RedNote accounts and encourage their followers to join them on the platform.

  • shirro@aussie.zoneEnglish
    171·
    1 day ago

    That was obvious.

    Option 1: a nation of predominantly anti-intellectual xenophobes organically discover a foreign language community and embrace it or option 2: a bunch of influencers from an existing platform are recruited to promote a competitor to a bunch of addicts looking for another fix. Social and mainstream media universally promoted the incorrect narrative.

    I wish US citizens didn’t look so much to authoritarian states like Russia and China when they have old friends who they worked and faught alongside for years. These friends have been happily enjoying the benefits of social democracy despite an onslaught of anti-democratic propaganda, much of it from US citizens and their media.

    Which brings me to the other narrative that pisses me off. That Chinese media are a national security threat but Meta and X are not. Lets be real. It is all the same shit. Any organized effort to manipulate mass opinion: politics disguised as religion, social media, conspiracy theories, cults etc have the potential to derail rational political debate, elevate populists and hand the keys to a generalissimo and it always leads to mass graves. Left or right doesn’t change the outcome which is shit. We all have to take some responsibility to fight back against this influence. Engage with people who are sucked into this shit and encourage them to disconnect.