COVID induced marketing campaigns by Australian Wool Innovation have increased gross merchandise values and woollen garments sold across the world.
AWI director Don Macdonald told the MerinoLink audience the peak wool body identified China's economic recovery before any other key wool markets, and they acted on it.
"Of that 60 per cent dedicated marketing founds we recognised it wasn't the time to pour money into projects that we believed wouldn't yield," Mr Macdonald said.
"We canned quite a few projects and we sat on those reserves."
But in October last year, with the first signs of a recovery in China, AWI launched 'Treasure Wool' and albeit somewhat quirky for AWI, it turned out to be incredibly successful.
AWI partnered with TMALL, one of the largest online retailers in China, and launched the short film centred around three Merino sisters.
The online piece highlighted wool's features, particularly towards the female market as well as showing environmental awareness and the high quality products.
"The beauty about the online platform was it was very easy to measure the success of the campaign," Mr Macdonald said.
"The key one from this effort was 451,000 units or woollen garments sold during that one campaign."
In March a second short film was launched called Goddess Day starring Chinese celebrity Chun Via.
The film positions Merino wool clothing as the perfect fibre for spring or summer.
It was rolled out across Woolmark owned channels, Net-A-Porter and China's online platforms including their TMALL store
It received 20 million views while month-on-month figures showed an improvement of gross merchandise value of 150 per cent.
AWI's marketing strategy has now shifted to the US and the UK with anticipated market recovery due to vaccine rates being the highest in the world.
Their latest wool pitch, 'Feel Merino', saw in increase of $3 million in brand partner sales and 34,000 million online views.
