The Campaign

• Objective: We need an emotional insight to touch 1.4 billion people. • Challenge: It requires a small insight that offers an extraordinary glimpse of China. • Strategy: We chose “name” as our response to the challenge. • Execution: At the stroke of Chinese New Year, we aired a film inviting people to reflect upon the meaning of their name. Because unlike others, every Chinese name has a literal and symbolic meaning. We created a massive online map where people could pin their name and its meaning to their hometown. This drove an even more massive discussion on social. People passionately shared, from big name celebrities to, more importantly, every day Chinese from every tier city. • Outcome: The film had earned 1.4 billion total views – 11x the entire Super bowl audience – and the campaign created a national conversation. In the context of globalization, Chinese people are getting used to the western lifestyle. However, in the same time, Chinese culture is gradually disregarded. As the “Chinese Super Bowl ad”, the CCTV Spring Festival Gala PR ad is an opportunity to raise the public attention towards Chinese culture. Chinese name is an important part of Chinese culture. It has the simplest form, but with the most extensive and profound meaning. It’s not only the unique identification of every Chinese, but also a close bondage of family and miniature of Chinese civilization.

The Brief

The campaign aims to awaken the public awareness towards Chinese culture from a small aspect. This is to create sympathy amongst the 1.4 billion populations by showing human feelings based on daily trivial events. To achieve this goal, we need to find an emotional insight that is strong enough to touch the entire Chinese people, who are the audience of the client. To reach the goals, apart from a detailed research on social media to search insights, several professionals in the literature and art fields as well as sociology scholars were interviewed in a seminar to express their opinions and expectations toward this campaign.

Results

The film had earned 1.4 billion total views – 11x the entire Super bowl audience – and the campaign created a national conversation.

Execution

At the stroke of Chinese New Year, we aired a film inviting people to reflect upon the meaning of their name. Because unlike others, every Chinese name has a literal and symbolic meaning. We created a massive online map where people could pin their name and its meaning to their hometown. This drove an even more massive discussion on social. People passionately shared, from big name celebrities to, more importantly, every day Chinese from every tier city.

The Situation

CCTV, China’s top TV network, wanted to be the biggest name of Chinese New Year, China’s most sacred season. Nowadays, China is washing over by globalization: more people are getting used to western lifestyle, but meanwhile, the original Chinese culture is gradually falling into oblivion. As the “Chinese Super Bowl ad” that watched by 1.4 billion people, CCTV Spring Festival Gala PR ad is an opportunity to raise the public attention towards Chinese culture. But how do you create a campaign broad enough to resonate with the billion-plus Chinese, while unique enough that each would have something to share?

The Strategy

Chinese might have the simplest names in the world: compared to western names, most Chinese names only have 2-3 characters; but Chinese might also have the most complicated names in the world: in 2-3 characters, people are reminded of bygone ages, they recalled wisdoms from Chinese philosophy and science, extracted essence from the beautiful poems, and also great expectations and blessings from the elders…As an unique identification of every Chinese, Chinese names not only held the bondages amongst families but also inherited the ancient culture. Chinese names are invested with the thousand years of Chinese civilization and closely related to Chinese people.