Our Favorite Chinese New Year 2018 Social Media Campaigns So Far

While New Year celebrations are starting to feel like a distant memory in some parts of the globe, those of us in Asia are still waiting in anticipation for Chinese New Year to kick into full swing.

It’s a tremendously important time of the year for marketers in the region, as brands compete to make their mark during the festivities. Let’s take a look at a few examples that have stood out from the pack so far.

Singtel – Mr Lim’s Reunion Dinner

If you’re based in Singapore, there’s a good chance you’ve already seen this video by local telco Singtel. At six minutes long, it’s not the shortest video campaign in the list, but the family-oriented narrative seems to have struck a chord with plenty of viewers.

The video tells the story of an aging widower, Mr Lim, who prepares a traditional reunion dinner only to find out that neither of his adult children will be able to attend, as both are living abroad with obligations of their own. Neither of the children is aware that the other will not be returning home for CNY, but they eventually discover the truth and make it to dinner in the nick of time, just as Mr Lim begins to eat alone.

There are a lot of great things about this ad. It’s well acted, and the themes of family, tradition, and coming together resonate strongly. You need only look at the Facebook comments – out of the 3000 people who commented, more than a handful mentioned that the clip literally brought a tear to their eye. In addition, at the time of writing the video has attracted in excess of 9000 “Sad” and “Love” reactions each, contributing to over 100,000 engagements.

While telling a story, it also subtly – and crucially – relates back to the Singtel brand, illustrating how phones and mobile devices can help families reconnect even when living apart.

Tiger Beer – The Reunion Project

Singtel isn’t the only Singaporean brand that has latched on to the idea of reuniting families for Chinese New Year.

The promotional video for Tiger Beer’s ‘The Reunion Project’ campaign has obvious parallels to Singtel’s clip. It’s told from the perspective of a father. He has children living abroad whom he would like to see for Chinese New Year. The tone is generally pretty somber.

However, Tiger has taken a different approach by introducing a compelling element to the campaign – a contest in which the brand will actually fly family members back to Singapore. The Facebook video links to a microsite for The Reunion Project, where users can enter to win free travel to be with their families in Singapore. For their 2017 campaign they offered free taxi rides from the airport on the eve of Chinese New Year, and this year’s effort feels like they’ve really taken the concept to the next level.

Just like the Singtel ad, it’s a wonderfully modern take on a Chinese New Year campaign. More Singaporean families than ever are separating to build lives overseas, and The Reunion Project does a fantastic job of acknowledging this reality in the context of CNY. The video has been viewed more than 400,000 times.

Shopee Malaysia – Wang With Shopee

Over the past few weeks, e-commerce site Shopee has been rolling out its multi-faceted ‘Wang With Shopee’ Facebook campaign, which brings together a variety of interactive games, quizzes, and contests to connect with fans.

The brand’s creativity truly stands out in the variety of ways it has encouraged fans to participate and engage. For instance, it held a series of interactive ‘Crack The Fortune Cookie’ guessing games using Facebook live video. Users were asked to post their predictions in the comment section, and each guess was reflected in the video itself, slowly revealing the answer on screen. Each of the posts attracted tens of thousands of comments, with the best performing video receiving an incredible 57,000.

Perhaps most cleverly of all, Shopee introduced a mechanism that required fans to click ‘Going’ in a special ‘Wang with Shopee’ Facebook event in order to enter a contest. As more people joined the event, the prizes became more impressive.

What’s so clever about this, you ask? Every time a page posts in a Facebook event, each attendee automatically receives a notification about the post, which gives it a considerably higher chance of being seen. Unsurprisingly, Shopee used this to their advantage, driving people to their website with discount codes and other promotional materials posted in the event page. By the end of the contest, the event had more than 7,000 attendees.

RHB Bank – Perseverance

In contrast to Singtel and Tiger Beer’s emotionally charged videos, RHB Bank in Malaysia has adopted a rather different angle with their CNY 2018 campaign – ‘Perseverance’.

To portray their vision of ‘persevering for prosperity’, the bank has recruited Olympic silver medalist and world champion diver, Cheong Jun Hoong. The video depicts Jun Hoong training for competition, with short, snappy shots adding a sense of intensity to the ad. However, interspersed between the training clips are shots of Jun Hoong receiving breakfast and exchanging ‘ang pao’ with her family.

It’s an interesting take on perseverance and prosperity, which is summed up by a tagline at the end of the video – “Success is born of belief and support that never end”. In other words, prosperity is not just a product of Jun Hoong’s efforts, but also those of her family. This makes all the more sense when you consider that RHB Bank’s slogan is “Together We Progress”.

The video has amassed nearly one million views, with over 10,000 reactions and 600 shares.

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