When to start planning a Chinese New Year 2027 campaign in Malaysia
Chinese New Year 2027 falls in early February. The holiday dates are set when the federal and state gazettes are published, so check our 2027 public holiday list before you fix a closing date in your ads. Until the gazette is out, describe deadlines as "the week before Chinese New Year" rather than printing a date.
For most businesses the campaign starts long before the holiday itself. Customers begin booking reunion dinners, ordering gift sets and buying new clothes and home items three to six weeks ahead, and companies place corporate gift orders even earlier because they need delivery before staff and clients leave for the break.
| When | What to have done | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 10–12 weeks before | Offer, budget, stock and production plan agreed; KOL shortlist drafted | Creators and photographers book up; gift-set stock needs lead time |
| 8 weeks before | Creative shot (photo and short video), landing pages and order or booking forms built and tested | Ads cannot launch on pages that are not ready |
| 6 weeks before | Corporate gifting campaign live; reunion dinner bookings open; past-customer messages sent to people who opted in | Company buyers and families decide early |
| 3–5 weeks before | Main consumer campaign at full spend; KOL content goes live; marketplace campaign pages set | This is when most purchase decisions are made |
| Final 10 days | Last-order and last-delivery dates in every ad; spend moved to what is converting | Late buyers need certainty about delivery |
| The 15 days of CNY | Opening hours, open-house and Chap Goh Mei content; reviews requested | Visits and repeat orders continue through the festive period |
The Malaysian campaign calendar 2027 sets CNY against the other festive and mega-sale windows, so you can see where your budget competes with Raya, 11.11 and 12.12.
Chinese New Year campaigns for restaurants and F&B brands
For restaurants, CNY is a booking problem before it is an awareness problem. Families book reunion dinners and group meals weeks ahead, and the restaurants that open bookings first, show the set menu clearly and make it easy to confirm get the tables.
- Reunion dinner and set menus: publish the menus, prices, seating times and deposit terms on one page, with a booking form or WhatsApp link that captures the date, time and party size.
- Pre-orders: yee sang, takeaway sets, pastries and cookies sell best as pre-orders with a pickup or delivery slot, so the kitchen can plan production.
- Gift sets: hampers and cookie tins need their own campaign aimed at gift buyers, with clear delivery cut-off dates.
- Creators: food KOLs and micro creators should post two to four weeks before CNY, when families are choosing where to book, not during the holiday when the restaurant is already full.
- After CNY: keep posting through the 15 days and ask diners for reviews while the visit is recent.
Measure the campaign in bookings and covers, not in post reach. For Amazonas at The Exchange TRX, social media and on-location video took direct reservations from 45 to 142 a month between month 1 and month 6, and weekend occupancy rose from 60% to 88%. The year-round approach is in our restaurant marketing guide.
Chinese New Year campaigns for retail and e-commerce brands
Retail and e-commerce brands run CNY close to the start-of-year marketplace campaigns, so the plan has to treat them as one calendar. Check the Malaysia mega sale calendar for the marketplace dates, then decide which products lead each window.
- Pick the CNY products: home appliances, new clothes, beauty gift sets and food hampers are bought for the holiday; push the items customers actually buy for CNY rather than discounting the whole range.
- Bundles over discounts: a gift-ready bundle with festive packaging protects margin better than a price cut.
- Delivery cut-offs: show the last order date for delivery before CNY on product pages, ads and marketplace listings; courier capacity tightens in the final weeks.
- Live selling: plan live sessions for the evenings in the three weeks before CNY, with stock and demo products ready.
- After the holiday: customers return with ang pow money; a short post-CNY campaign can clear festive stock.
For Swiss Thomas, a Malaysian home appliance brand, TikTok Shop GMV grew from RM 120,000 to RM 745,000 a month with GMV Max, Spark Ads, bundles and a live demo studio. The live selling calendar sets out which windows to staff.
Corporate gifting campaigns before Chinese New Year
Companies send CNY hampers and gifts to clients, partners and staff, and the buyer is usually an office manager, HR or a business owner rather than a consumer. Target them separately from consumers, with a page that shows minimum order quantities, branding options, lead times and delivery dates, and a form or WhatsApp line for quotes.
Bilingual English and Chinese creative matters here. For In C Studio, a Malaysian gifting brand, Meta Ads aimed at business buyers drew 30 messaging conversations and 386 landing-page clicks for the B2B corporate gifting campaign between June and August 2023, and the Father's Day campaign drew 45 conversations.
Start CNY corporate gifting campaigns earlier than consumer ones: companies confirm orders weeks before the holiday.
Chinese New Year and clinics: what you can and cannot promote
Many clinics see fewer bookings in the days around CNY and more before and after it, as patients plan treatments around the holiday. A CNY plan for a clinic is mostly about opening hours, booking the weeks before and after, and staying inside the advertising rules.
- No impulse-style price promotions on regulated procedures. "CNY special, today only" discounting on medical treatments can be treated as inducement under the Medicine Advertisements Board's policy; see our guide to KKM and MDC advertising rules.
- Publish holiday opening hours on the website, Google Business Profile and WhatsApp greeting before the holiday.
- Promote booking, not urgency: "Book your consultation before or after the holiday" is a service message; a countdown timer on a medical treatment is not.
- Festive greetings are fine on social media, as long as they do not carry treatment claims or before-and-after photos.
For a Klang Valley aesthetic clinic, rebuilding Meta Ads around compliant creative and WhatsApp conversion tracking raised the consultation show-rate from 41% to 63% within a 90-day window, with no creative left at compliance risk.
Which channels to use for a CNY campaign in Malaysia
| Channel | Best job in the CNY window | What to measure |
|---|---|---|
| Meta (Facebook and Instagram) | Reach Chinese-speaking families and gift buyers; drive bookings and messages | Bookings, WhatsApp conversations, orders |
| TikTok and TikTok Shop | Short festive video, live selling and shop sales | GMV, orders, live session sales |
| Xiaohongshu (XHS) | Discovery for Chinese-speaking audiences choosing restaurants, gifts and beauty | Saves, profile visits, booking clicks |
| Google Search and Maps | Catch people already searching for reunion dinner, hampers or opening hours | Calls, direction requests, bookings |
| Confirm bookings and pre-orders; message past customers who opted in | Confirmed bookings, repeat orders | |
| KOLs and creators | Recommendation content two to four weeks before CNY | Code use, bookings, tracked clicks |
Write the Chinese creative in Chinese from the start rather than translating the English ad, and run Mandarin and English versions as separate ad sets so you can see which audience books.
Our KOL marketing team shortlists creators by audience, not follower count: for Shopee For Youth and ZUS Coffee, a student creator programme took organic views from 850,000 to 14.2 million with no paid media behind the content.
A CNY 2027 campaign checklist
- Holiday dates checked against the gazette; opening hours written for every channel.
- One offer per audience: families, gift buyers, corporate buyers, past customers.
- Booking, pre-order or quote forms tested on mobile, with WhatsApp as a fallback.
- Delivery and last-order dates in every ad and on every product page.
- Creative in Chinese and English, made for each, not translated.
- Creators briefed and booked, posting two to four weeks before CNY.
- Conversion tracking checked: bookings, messages and orders counted against each campaign.
- Consent checked before messaging past customers on WhatsApp or SMS (PDPA).
- A short post-CNY plan for reviews, repeat visits and leftover stock.
If you want a team to plan and run it, our F&B marketing team and paid media team in Kuala Lumpur build CNY campaigns for restaurant groups, retail and e-commerce brands and clinics, measured in bookings, orders and enquiries.