Asked 100 Times: How Miss Choice Leveraged Xiaohongshu Ads for a 168% Sales Surge
The revival of traditional brands on Xiaohongshu has become a notable phenomenon in China’s digital marketing landscape. A prime example is Miss Choice, a legacy pasta brand that successfully repositioned itself among younger consumers through a strategic Xiaohongshu Ads campaign. The brand’s "Lao Fang Cheng Braised Noodles" campaign garnered over 850 million views, demonstrating the platform’s immense influence in reshaping consumer perceptions. This success story highlights how Xiaohongshu serves as a critical bridge between traditional brands and the digitally native Gen Z audience. The campaign’s success was not accidental—it tapped into the growing trend of sustainability among young consumers. According to a McKinsey China survey, 64% of Chinese consumers prefer sustainable and eco-friendly products. The platform’s unique blend of user-generated content, influencer collaborations, and data-driven insights enables brands to craft narratives that resonate deeply with modern consumers.
I. Marketing Background and Challenges
Traditional retail brands like Miss Choice faced significant challenges in transitioning from offline dominance to digital relevance. For decades, these brands relied on brick-and-mortar sales and conventional advertising, but shifting consumer behaviors demanded a new approach. Younger audiences, prioritize authenticity, visual appeal, and social proof over traditional branding tactics. Miss Choice’s core demographic had historically been consumers aged 35+, but to sustain growth, the brand needed to attract Gen Z and millennials through Xiaohongshu Ads. The challenge was twofold: breaking through the noise in a saturated fast-food market and repositioning a legacy product as trendy and desirable. Xiaohongshu’s community-driven model provided the perfect solution, offering a space where brands could engage users through storytelling rather than hard selling.
II. Strategic Actions for Campaign Success
Miss Choice’s campaign leveraged Xiaohongshu’s Dandelion platform to identify and collaborate with influencers whose aesthetics aligned with the brand’s rejuvenated image. The strategy focused on the KFS (Key Opinion Leaders + Feeds + Search) model, ensuring content reached users at multiple touchpoints. Key to this approach was optimizing search visibility—targeting high-intent keywords like "Henan cuisine" and "homestyle noodles" to capture users actively seeking such products. The brand also tapped into trend analytics, noting the rising popularity of regional flavors among young food enthusiasts. By aligning the braised noodles with nostalgic, home-cooked narratives and amplifying them via Xiaohongshu Ads, Miss Choice differentiated itself from competitors promoting generic "spicy" or "sour" flavors.
III. Execution and Tactical Approaches
The campaign’s execution involved a phased content rollout, with Xiaohongshu Ads scaling top-performing posts. Initial efforts focused on micro-influencers to build grassroots credibility, with creators sharing authentic reviews and recipe ideas. As engagement grew, Miss Choice amplified top-performing posts through targeted Xiaohongshu Ads, ensuring maximum visibility. The brand also capitalized on multi-scenario content, showcasing the noodles in diverse settings—late-night snacks, office lunches, and social gatherings—to highlight versatility. Seasonal trends played a role too; the campaign coincided with peak "comfort food" search periods, further boosting relevance. Notably, the brand avoided overly polished ads, instead encouraging creators to share unfiltered experiences, which Xiaohongshu Ads helped amplify organically.
IV. Data-Driven Results and Performance Metrics
The campaign’s impact was measurable across several KPIs. Search volume for "Lao Fang Cheng Braised Noodles" surged by 100%, while the brand’s visibility in the noodle category rose by 150%. Most impressively, off-platform sales increased by 168% year-on-year, proving that influence extends beyond digital engagement. User demographics shifted dramatically, with 18–25-year-olds becoming the largest buyer segment—a stark contrast to pre-campaign trends. The official campaign hashtag achieved 11 million+ exposures, and UGC reposts multiplied organic reach. These metrics underscore how Xiaohongshu Ads’s ecosystem drives both brand awareness and tangible sales conversions.
Topkee’s targeting system, which meticulously screens user tags, combines behavioral and life-stage data, and identifies high-conversion audiences. This ensured content creators aligned not only with the brand’s heritage-and-quality messaging but also with the platform’s most engaged demographics. Topkee’s localization expertise further refined this alignment by tailoring content to regional user preferences, enhancing cultural resonance. By combining specialized targeting, trend-aligned creativity, and real-time optimization, Topkee’s infrastructure ensured brands’s sustained relevance—demonstrating how their enterprise account management, precise ad placement, and multi-dimensional analytics converge to transform campaigns into measurable successes.
V. Reasons Behind the Campaign’s Success
Three factors were pivotal to Miss Choice’s success. First, the Dandelion platform enabled precise influencer matchmaking, ensuring content creators aligned with the brand’s heritage-and-quality messaging. Second, the campaign tapped into Xiaohongshu’s "nostalgia marketing" trend, where young consumers crave authentic, culturally rooted products. Third, real-time data from Xiaohongshu’s Little Red Star tool allowed the brand to refine messaging based on user feedback—for instance, emphasizing "no artificial additives" after analytics revealed health-conscious queries. This agility in adapting content ensured sustained relevance throughout the campaign.
Topkee’s data insights played a pivotal role: note analysis identified top-performing content by monitoring views, likes, and shares, while information flow promotion leveraged Xiaohongshu’s popular resources to sustain conversion momentum. The integration of search ads on community results pages and video stream promotion for single-column placements ensured omnichannel visibility. These metrics collectively validate how Topkee’s expertise in professional account certification (including Blue V verification and customized homepage optimization) and precise orientation (via gender, age, and region filters) transformed ecosystem into a dual engine for brand awareness and sales conversion. The campaign’s success underscores the synergy between Topkee’s diversified operation teams—spanning video production, note creation, and ad placement—and unique capacity to bridge digital engagement with offline commercial outcomes.
VI. Case Study Comparisons
Miss Choice’s approach shares similarities with Asahi Vipshop’s eco-friendly campaign, which also relied on Xiaohongshu’s trend insights to align with sustainability-focused users. Both brands leveraged niche community interests (regional cuisine for Miss Choice, upcycling for Asahi) to stand out. Conversely, Yili Yogurt’s cherry blossom-flavored drink campaign focused purely on capitalizing a seasonal trend without deeper narrative-building, resulting in shorter-lived buzz. This contrast highlights the importance of combining trends with authentic storytelling for long-term impact.
VII. Long-Term Brand Impact and Future Recommendations
Beyond immediate sales, the campaign redefined Miss Choice’s brand identity, making it a case study in legacy-to-digital transformation. To sustain momentum, the brand should continue collaborating with mid-tail influencers to maintain topicality. Regularly updating content formats (e.g., short videos for new recipes) and monitoring emerging trends like "slow living" could further entrench its relevance. Additionally, leveraging Xiaohongshu’s e-commerce integration for limited-edition launches would harness the platform’s full funnel potential.
Conclusion and Key Takeaways
Miss Choice’s revival exemplifies how traditional brands can thrive on Xiaohongshu by blending data-driven strategies with authentic storytelling. The platform’s unique ability to connect products with cultural and lifestyle trends makes it indispensable for brands targeting China’s youth. For businesses seeking similar transformations, partnering with experts who understand Xiaohongshu Ads’s nuances—from influencer dynamics to algorithm hacks—is crucial. Ready to unlock your brand’s potential? Contact our team for a tailored strategy.