How Lunar New Year became a marketing moment

Calling all who celebrate Lunar New Year! Gather your family, friends, red envelopes, and…brands?

The Year of the Fire Horse is officially upon us, and in honor of the holiday celebrated across Asian diasporas, a plethora of companies—from beauty brands like Lush Cosmetics to drinkware brands like Stanley 1913 to luxury fashion brands like Burberry, Staud, and Dior—have rolled out dedicated product lines and marketing campaigns targeted toward the Lunar New Year, with brands across industries embracing the color red, interpretive horse designs, and other festive nods.

Some brands have celebrated the cultural holiday for many years, especially in Asian markets, but some creators and marketers told us they have noticed an uptick in Western brand participation, as well as a general increased interest in Asian culture and commodity (take, for example, the “You met me at a very Chinese time in my life” trend on TikTok). The difference between celebration and overcommodification can be a thin line to walk, and is something brands that choose to lean into Lunar New Year should keep in mind, according to Amanda Lee Sipenock Fisher, diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging lead at Lush Cosmetics.

“If you have this end goal, let’s say, for brands who are looking to participate in Lunar New Year, to meet more of their East and Southeast Asian customers…and to do so in a way that’s really meaningful, I think when it lands well, [it’s] because you can tell that people with an authentic and real perspective were a part of every single part of the process,” Fisher told us.

Team effort

For brands like Lush that choose to highlight Lunar New Year, planning starts well in advance of the holiday. Fisher said that planning at Lush began about eight months before its December product launch, which gives the company time to tap into its internal employee resource groups to help inform the design and invention process of its bespoke product line.

This year marks the brand’s fourth time creating an allocated LNY line, and Lush’s collection features limited-edition bath bombs, shower gels, massage bars, and other body care items designed with festive colors and culturally significant ingredients like mandarin and camphor. To land on these details, Fisher said Lush leans heavily on its Co-Create program, which calls on employees who have personal connections to certain holidays to serve as in-house experts.

“They’ll weigh in on everything from the actual product ingredients and names [to] the stories, and it’s a really hand-in-hand process,” Fisher said. “There’s a lot of weight given to our staff’s experiences and ensuring that the feedback and the ideas they have are really put across accurately and with a lot of cultural relevance and input.”

Brand efforts for Lunar New Year can sometimes unite teams across continents, a rather fitting side effect of such a wide-spanning holiday. Stanley 1913, the brand that produces the often-viral Stanley cup, follows the lead of its APAC team for cultural insights, and putting together its limited-edition products is “truly global work,” according to Yu-Nien Chang, GM of APAC at Stanley.

“About four years ago, we all came together like, ‘Okay, how do we plan this thing around the world?” Chang said. “As we are a global brand, we don’t want to portray the brand differently, but at the same time, we need to nod to the culture.”

Stanley’s 2026 Lunar New Year collection includes a version of its popular Quencher tumbler featuring a red stallion for its US market, plus other culturally significant color variations for other markets, like a blue-and-white version designed to honor Korea’s celebration of Lunar New Year, Chang told us. Design is a key part of how Stanley interprets and hopes to honor the holiday, and Chang said keeping its choices elevated is essential for both Lunar New Year and the brand.

“[With our designs], we have to take kind of more of an emotional level [look at] like, ‘What are we trying to say?’” she said. “What is the most important theme or meaning that we want to come across?”

Culture exchange

While both Lush and Stanley have invested in Lunar New Year for the past several years, both Fisher and Chang said it seems to be growing as a space for brand celebration, especially in the US.

“My hypothesis is that it’s probably something a bit new,” Chang said. “At the same time, we do have, I think, a big size of community in the US that’s celebrating this, and I think hopefully people are more open to each other’s culture.”

Lunar New Year isn’t Stanley’s biggest holiday for sales, Chang said, but it serves as a moment where the brand can show up in a conversation that customers are already having. And there’s certainly interest in the product line: Stanley’s LNY Quencher cups are currently sold out on its website.

Fisher said continuing that conversation across brands and industries is something that hopefully can continue.

“I think the intention there is beautiful, and we should encourage it,” Fisher said. “What carries it well to the finish line is ensuring authenticity through pure collaboration with the people who know it better than anyone else.”