The Campaign

We wanted to give a voice to woman under pressure to marry and find a symbolic way for them to make a statement. The marriage market is a place where the pressure materializes in physical form. It seemed fitting that the women would stand their ground there. We built an installation and replaced the dating ads with personalized messages from single women, proclaiming that they’re happy being independent, contrary to the image being portrayed by media. To create a story we shot a documentary with four single women and their parents. We used real women and not actors, making it easier for the target audience to relate. Many women feel alone in facing this pressure and by using real women we could combat that notion. The film was created as a tool that people could use to raise awareness.

Creative Execution

We created an installation at the marriage market in Shanghai’s People’s Park, where we replaced dating ads with statements from single women, proclaiming that they’re happy being independent and won’t marry just to please someone else. We then shot a documentary style film with four of the women and their parents. The film was created to be a tool that people could use to raise awareness. After all, it’s easier sharing a film than to start a debate on your own, especially with this taboo subject matter The film was premiered on Chinese video hosting sites Youku, Tencent as well as YouTube. Supporting the launch was Chinese and international influencers who shared the film and helped spread the word on blogs, Twitter and Chinese microblogging site Weibo. We then launched Behind the Scenes interviews with the women, providing an even greater insight into the nuances of China’s views on marriage.

So far, the film has garnered over 44 million views around the globe, showing the universal appeal of the message. We’ve seen over 2000 editorial pieces and been featured in everything from Forbes, BBC and CNN to Buzzfeed, Mashable, Huffington Post and Elle generating a total reach of over 4 billion. The story has spread to 55 countries on all continents and proved to be a huge success in China, where it became the first ever to make the top ten trend list on the 650 million users strong Weibo. It has also been featured on news channels, with over 7 million social actions as a result. Most importantly, we’ve thousands of social media posts from women talking about how the campaign has had a real effect. We created so much buzz that the state-owned media promoting the Sheng Nu term couldn’t ignore addressing the campaign.

By packaging a complex topic in a beautiful, though provoking and easy to understand film, this work managed to raise a Chinese issue and make it relevant for people all over the world. It managed to captivate audiences in over 50 countries across the globe and spark an intercontinental discussion about women’s rights and the pressure to marry young many women around the world face. It also managed to connect with SK-II’s target audience in a brand new way, providing them with a much more emotional message, rather than the rational communication they are used to.

We wanted to elevate SK-II’s #changedestiny campaign to not only include “skin destiny” but “life destiny”. We conducted interviews in China with the target audience and discovered that many viewed the pressure to marry as one of the biggest problems in their lives. We also realized that single shaming is a global issue. By putting a spotlight on a Chinese issue that people around the world could relate too, we created the potential for a global campaign. But we wanted to avoid a demonization of Chinese culture, instead raising an important topic and using it to kick-start discussions on every continent. We decided to feature real women in the film, to counter the overexposure of celebrities in Chinese advertising and make the film feel honest. To further support this we took a documentary approach to the film and shot Behind the Scenes interviews with the women.