Wine Australia enlists ‘China’s Kardashians’ to promote Aussie wine

Wine Australia has employed two Chinese social media stars, dubbed the ‘Kardashians of China,’ to promote Australian wine online to a growing number of female wine drinkers.

Chufei and Churan, the two Chinese social media stars, have been enlisted by Wine Australia to promote Aussie wines

The two stars, Chufei and Churan, were brought by the trade organisation to Australia for a two-day whirlwind trip to Australian wineries and tourist spots last week, while they live-streamed the whole trip to millions of their followers on Tmall, Alibaba’s retail platform.

The twins were paid a total of AU$34,000 for the two-day boozy trip packed with food and wine tastings.

The marketing campaign comes as Tmall was launching its annual ‘September Nine’ promotion, where 576 million Chinese consumers will have more than 100,000 international wine and spirits brands to choose from, as reported by the Australian Associated Press.

Speaking about the partnership, Wine Australia’s general manager of marketing Stuart Barclay said that it would help draw more younger online consumers, especially female drinkers, adding that recent data suggested that China’s online consumers are rather fairly divided between two genders.

The twins told the AAP, “most of our fans are women so we share lots of recommendations together”.

This is part of Australia’s marketing campaign from the AU$50 million Export and Regional Wine Support Package (the AU$50m Package), which aims to drive demand for wine exports and showcase Australia’s wine tourism to key markets in Asia and the US.

China is Australia’s biggest and most valuable wine export market at the moment. Exports to the country including Hong Kong and Macau grew 55% to AU$1.12 billion in the past 12 months ending in June, accounting for 40% of Australia’s total export value.