In the next two-plus months, Christmas, New Year's Day, Spring Festival, Valentine's Day, and other important and dense holidays will arrive one after another. These holidays share a common feature: they are peak periods for gift-giving among close relationships and high-interaction social ties. At this critical moment, WeChat has launched a new feature—WeChat Stores' "Gift" function. On December 19, WeChat Stores officially began grayscale testing of the "Gift" feature. As long as products meet the rules, the "Gift" function will be automatically enabled, and the product detail page will publicly display the "Support Gift" entry. Users only need to click "Send to Friend", pull up the "Confirm Gift" page, select the style, and view the amount. When they select a friend on the "Send Gift" page and complete payment, the gift will be automatically sent. The gift recipient will see the gift message in the chat conversation. They just need to click the gift message, fill in the shipping address, and tap "Accept Gift" to officially receive the gift. With just a few simple operations, WeChat's social attributes are upgraded again, and the era of universal stores has arrived. What does this mean for brands? Unlocking full-domain traffic, making scenarios more vivid Before the Spring Festival in 2014, the WeChat development team changed the name of a button on the "Red Packet" interface from "Random Red Packet" to "Lucky Money Red Packet." This change became a hallmark feature of WeChat red packets and achieved great success, significantly increasing user activity and interactivity during the Spring Festival. In 2015, WeChat cooperated with the Spring Festival Gala to launch the "Shake" red packet. On New Year's Eve, the total number of WeChat red packets sent and received exceeded 1 billion, and within two days, it completed what Alipay had taken 10 years to accomplish—binding 200 million bank cards. This not only helped WeChat complete the most difficult step in mobile payment—binding bank cards—but also became a social game. Users increased interaction and fun by sending and grabbing red packets, changing the way users socialized during the Spring Festival. Ten years later, the launch of the "Gift" function in WeChat Stores, compared with the red packet function, has stronger social attributes and is also one of the key paths for WeChat to connect full-domain traffic and achieve a closed loop between social and e-commerce. Driven by the socialization upgrade of consumer behavior, connecting social and e-commerce traffic In traditional e-commerce models, traffic acquisition generally relies on platform recommendation algorithms and search traffic. This process is often one-way, lacking user interaction and social linkage. The biggest feature of the "Gift" function is that it organically combines social behavior with e-commerce purchase behavior, breaking the closed traffic pool of traditional e-commerce platforms. The act of "giving gifts" itself is a form of sharing, with strong social attributes. It not only greatly enhances user participation and effectively reaches potential consumers, but also stimulates word-of-mouth communication among users. Consumers' social behavior is closely combined with merchants' sales behavior, forming a two-way traffic flow between social and e-commerce. The "Gift" function can leverage users' private domain relationships to drive traffic to WeChat Stores. This logic is similar to the WeChat red packet that exploded during the Spring Festival in 2014, which quickly drove the frequency of WeChat Pay usage. Therefore, after the two-way traffic is connected, the WeChat platform will also quickly drive the frequency of WeChat e-commerce usage. Enhancing users' emotional connection in scenarios On this basis, the act of giving gifts becomes a natural and logical thing. "Gift-giving" is based on emotional connection. Unlike traditional e-commerce shopping scenarios, this WeChat function closely combines products with consumers' emotional needs. Social function + emotional release, shortened path, and further amplified emotional value. When consumers shop, they are no longer simply solving their own needs, but rather deepening emotional connections with friends and family through the act of giving gifts. However, gift-giving is usually considered an action only during special holidays. Moreover, categories we frequently consume in daily life, such as snacks, dairy, and beverages, have high frequency and high traffic characteristics, but the products themselves often lack sufficient emotional stickiness. Consumer purchases are often based on functional needs rather than emotional drives. But if it happens in the WeChat social scenario of "gift-giving," where users initiate actively, it is more inclined to emotional interaction, giving emotional value to this consumption behavior. For example, a bottle of healthy drink, a small portable skincare product, or a pack of high-end tea can all become gift objects through this function. When consumers give these products as gifts to friends and family, they not only convey their pursuit of health or a better life, but also enhance the emotional connection between users. This scenario-based social interaction not only makes the scenario concrete but also more vivid. Innovative marketing models, mastering consumer behavior data In today's era, marketing methods have undergone tremendous changes. In the past, brand communication required carefully crafted advertising creatives, huge advertising budgets for placement, and strong advertising brainwashing and media bombardment to push to consumers, driving brand exposure and awareness, so that people would notice and remember them. But now, for brands to stand out, they must first design topics and content that users are interested in, find solutions in specific scenarios, carry out precise communication, and trigger resonance and diffusion in social circles. The "Gift" function of WeChat Stores may be an emotional bond in this scenario. With this bond, innovative marketing models can enhance brand premium through emotional value and further expand communication momentum. Enriching brands' innovative marketing models in scenarios The author observed that on the day the "Gift" function was launched, some leading snack brands began recommending the "Gift" function to users in WeChat communities, and mentioned that in the next few important holidays, they would focus on launching more gift box categories in WeChat Stores, while also increasing high-frequency, small-packaged snack products to increase consumers' daily purchase frequency, making "gift-giving" a daily behavior. This is what we call providing solutions for users in scenarios, developing and designing products based on the WeChat social platform, creating a beautiful user experience, and making gift-giving high-frequency. This demand is not difficult to achieve. Brands can use this function to carry out marketing activities such as limited-time discounts and holiday-exclusive gift packages; they can also add emotional blessings to products, such as a cup of hot drink in winter or an ice cream in summer. Therefore, WeChat's "Gift" function provides brands with new marketing ideas and growth points. In the context of social e-commerce, brands can not only connect full-domain traffic through this function to promote the momentum of brand and product communication, but also enhance consumer participation and loyalty through more interactive and emotional social scenarios. Closed-loop traffic, precise grasp of consumer behavior data Secondly, the "Gift" function will also provide data support for brands, enabling them to understand consumer behavior and preferences in a timely manner. Through the gift-giving function, brands can track consumers' gifting behavior, analyze who buys and sends products, to whom, and when. This data not only helps merchants accurately grasp consumer needs and preferences, but also further optimizes their own product and service strategies. From a traffic perspective, the "Gift" function of WeChat Stores also improves the efficiency of traffic acquisition for brands. In the process of giving gifts, consumers inadvertently complete brand communication, get widespread recommendations in their social circles, and brand information is also passed on to more potential customers. This not only gives brands a second exposure in consumers' social circles, but also, through WeChat's huge social network, brands can quickly cover a broader user group. Although it is still in the "grayscale" testing stage, many merchants are eager to try it, saying: Social e-commerce is a big market. Like WeChat red packets, it naturally has social attributes and emotional value. During the Spring Festival, it may bring a carnival of social e-commerce. So, who can build an e-commerce ecosystem on the WeChat platform and truly activate the consumption chain in the e-commerce ecosystem through social relationships? We will continue to observe.