Welcoming Spring Festival with Viral Video Ads

This year’s Chinese New Year have begun. Public school holidays have started, and the world’s largest human migration is underway as families return home to celebrate the lunar new year together. In recent years, viral videos have become a competitive marketing effort by China’s largest companies. These ads are emotional, always feature family, changing traditions, and usually some kind of conflict or struggle between the old ways of the village home and the new, urban lives of China’s young professionals. To me they also are the perfect glimpse into modern China behind blustery political headlines, economic woes, and the large geopolitical concerns that often get mistaken for what concerns people here day-to-day.

This year we’ve had two stellar additions to this new-ish genre. The first, What is Peppa? dominated social media channels like Weibo and We Chat as soon as it launched in mid January. Its a clever and very accurate look at the growing distance between the elderly in rural areas and their urbanized younger generations, the struggle of rural residents to stay connected in rapidly this digitizing country, and the importance of family... all while advertising a new film and a mobile phone company. Manya Koetse and Miranda Barnes of What’s On Weibo? have written an excellent explainer of the importance of this campaign which has now been viewed more than a billion times. Or you can grab a tissue and watch it now.

Apple has also launched a sentimental film shot by Chinese film maker Jia Zhangke on its new iPhoneXS about a young man returning to the city after Chinese New Year celebrations at home with a bucket full of things from his mother. While not as full on charming and funny as What is Peppa?, The Bucket is a sweet look at the journeys people make to celebrate with families, and the love that a taste of home gives everyone. Anyone who has traveled in China this time of year is familiar with the rather unorthodox luggage people drag with them. I suspect this film will gain traction later in the holiday as people begin returning from their celebrations. In the meantime, its definitely worth a watch to get a sense of the journeys people undertake at this time of year.

Saturday morning my daughter will join the rest of China on the road. She’ll travel to Beijing to be with her father for the holiday, as she has done many times before. The journey itself is one she is excited to make, and while we will miss her while she is away with the Chinese side of her family for a few days, we all know it is the right thing to do. So much of the rest of the year she feels comfortable floating in, out, and between her two cultures. At Spring Festival, however, understand where her heart needs to be. I hope these two films give those who are not connected to a Chinese family a sense of that strong pull to be “home” with family many feel at this time of year and the lengths people go to in order to make that happen.