From Commodity to Companion: Storytelling and Emotional Labor in Jelly Cat’s Social Media Marketing
Abstract
Jelly Cat is a British plush-toy brand popular among youth for their unique branding strategies worldwide. This paper aims to understand how they use social media promotion on Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok) to turn common merchandise into emotional companions. By comparative thematic analysis of videos from the brand’s official, physical-store, and user-generated accounts, this study discerns two complementary narrative modes. The official account uses fantasy-based storytelling to anthropomorphize the toys in order to generate intimacy and affection, while store and user accounts use realism to stress the authenticity of the real products, quality, and rational consumption. Combined, this collective story creates a marketing chain that incites desire, trust, and purchasing decisions. The results show that Jelly Cat effectively synthesizes both emotional and functional appeals on Douyin, and how narrative and affective labour can be deployed to localize global brands in China’s digital consumer culture.
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