Past Vancl campaigns include superstar icons like Han Han presenting their down-to-earth personalities and bargain-happy shopping behaviors. Now, Vancl has launches a Star program online, encouraging netizens to create and promote their own virtual Vancl shops online. Using Vancl products and their own self-styled photos, users can create their shops and promote them to friends and online communities with one click sharing to Sina Microblog, Douban, Renren, and Kaixin001. Virtual shop owners are incented with 10% of all sales that their shops generate. Brand founder, president and CEO of Vancl Nian Chen declared that he will set aside 1 billion RMB this year as bonus for participants of the Star project. A great way to get youth involved in the brand, encourage word of mouth and check out youth’s styling and merchandising methods. Kudos!

Star participants merchandise and promote, Vancl takes responsibility for sales and fulfillment. Check out Vancl Star: http://star.vancl.com Vancl, a Chinese fashion brand launched online in 2007 has since become one of the top 4 B2C companies in China (reported by iResearch).

Using online promotions on sites including youth-focused Douban and Sina Weibo (Chinese Twitter), the Shanghai Committee of China’s Communist Youth League recently promoted a movie series that fits square into youth’s nostalgia craze. The event, dubbed Red Memory showcased classic odes to Shanghai including the films “Shanghai’s Today and Yesterday” (1975) and “Shanghai, Oh, Shanghai” (1980). To amp up the vintage atmosphere, the movies were shown using old-style projectors.

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Although Han Han’s Party (magazine) may be over, another young mainland writer has set her sights on creating a magazine focused on writing. Annie Baby, one of the most popular female writers in China since the release of her short story collection Goodbye Vivien in 1998, is taking on a new project this month as chief editor of a new quarterly mook O-pen, 大方 in Chinese. *If you aren’t familiar, mook is a Japanese hybrid, created in magazine format but sold as a book.

Known for her descriptive and emotional narratives, Annie Baby has crafted a reputation among the young literary set in China, particularly those on the edges of society. And this time, she indicates that O-pen promotes a pure and open way of thinking, an attitude of respecting writing and concentrating on reading. In the future, O-pen will be covering influential writers and works worldwide. The debut issue of O-pen includes an exclusive translated interview with Japanese author Haruki Murakami from the magazine Thinker (考える人in Japanese).

An eight minute long video “This Year I Am 27/ 28 (今年我二十七八岁)” is drawing attention online for describing the confusion felt by the 80s generation in China. Resonating with netizens, the video has already been shared more than 30,000 times on Sina’s microblog, attracting over 1.3 million views on Youku and 4,000 comments.

The video maker, Sizhe Wu, is also a member of the 80s generation. He came across a poem while surfing on Renren.com. Inspired, Wu made a video based on the poem and dubbed it himself. A sampling of the lyrics below:

I don’t shop without a plan but check my balance at the end of each month – (I check) how much credit card debt I have covered, how much money I have spent, how much I have left, for it’s time to save for a house.

I start pursuing my dream, not crying for trivial things and not giving up in the face of small troubles.

Coca-Cola’s Glacéau Vitamin Water was introduced in top tier cities in China market last summer and has been spotted at several fashionable events to help slowly grow its image among trendsetters. Perhaps inevitably, we spotted a twin offering from Nongfu Spring called Victory Vitamin. The packaging and flavors are almost identical to Vitamin Water but at half the price.