2023 New Year Marketing, These Brands Shot Micro-Movies That Are Not Losing the Spring Festival | Inspiration Cases

Watching movies should be one of the indispensable forms of entertainment at the beginning of 2023. At the same time, the Spring Festival is also a critical period for consumption explosion. For marketing purposes, many brands have begun to shoot micro-films. How do they make innovations and changes? Let's take a look.

2022 may be the year we are most eager to say goodbye to.

January this year marks both the Gregorian New Year and the Lunar New Year. At this double juncture of bidding farewell to the old and welcoming the new, "new year, new atmosphere" has become the collective national sentiment, and brands also hope to take advantage of this opportunity to set a good tone for the year's marketing. At the same time, this New Year is also the critical period for the explosion of consumer potential accumulated over three years. Key sales data of the new year show that consumption recovery is almost certain, so this time has become a must-win node for brand marketing.

At such a special moment, each member of the Knife Skills editorial department chose a brand marketing case that impressed them. Let us see how PROYA, Apple, Mengniu, Yuanqi Forest, Safeguard, etc. have made their own innovations and changes in the continuation and inheritance of culture.

01 PROYA: "Thank you for participating" annual project

In early to mid-January, PROYA launched a series of annual planning activities with "thank you" as the keyword, including a brand micro-film called "Thank you for participating", a brand user story exhibition held in Hangzhou, three podcast collaborations and a gift box product. The gift box was launched before the New Year and contained a "story bottle" with a random collection of real user stories.

Among them, the brand micro-film was officially launched on January 5. It is based on the real experience of PROYA users and tells the story of a teacher named Liu Jia and her relationship with her student Doji during her teaching in western Sichuan. Doji was unable to keep up with the progress of Chinese learning due to late schooling, but he had a passion for music and insisted on writing songs in Tibetan. In the process of encouraging Doji to return to the classroom, Liu Jia not only witnessed the birth of Doji's song "Stars", but also found the meaning of her own teaching - going is more important than where to go.

In addition to the micro-film, PROYA also collected stories from more than 2,000 people and presented them in the form of an offline exhibition in Hangzhou; online, it collaborated with three podcasts, Ten Percent Radio, No Ideal Editorial Department, and Sage Time, to start an audio journey about "thank you".

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PROYA has always been an excellent student that moves people with emotion. Whether it is the "First Year After Graduation" that focused on the graduating college students, the "Echo Project" that focuses on the mental health of contemporary people, or the women's topics and slogans raised on the annual International Women's Day that focus on gender issues, they have all been in line with the social sentiment and produced sincere and delicate content.

The same is true for this year's "Thank You for Your Participation" annual plan. Starting with the micro-film, PROYA used a coherent combination of punches, multiple online and offline touchpoints, and various media such as text, pictures, images, and sounds to convey a common message to all users at the beginning of the year: Thank you for your participation.

After an indescribable 2022, many people seem to have nothing to grasp when they look back on this year. PROYA speaks out at this moment, with the intention of "participation", which means thanking all the moments that have happened and participated in everyone's life. It may be small or short, but for others, you must have become the star that illuminates others; for yourself, no matter what will be left, life is here and now.

As its year-end project, PROYA has chosen "thank you" as the keyword and brought the real stories of users to the forefront. In addition to reflecting the brand's humanistic feelings, it is also practicing "people-oriented" in a way that is close to users.

A brand is not the brand of its founder, but the brand of its users. The brand imprint is widely present in the "relationship" with users. Whether a long-term, healthy and intimate relationship can be built is the key to the continued vitality of the brand. From getting users to identify, trust, recommend, and empathize, each level of progression requires the brand to maintain emotions, and the most sincere expression of emotion is - no matter what, I see you.

02 Apple: New Year's blockbuster "Passing Five Levels"

On January 12, Apple's annual Spring Festival Eve program "Shooting Movies with iPhone" arrived as scheduled. This year, Apple and Peng Fei, the award-winning director of the Venice Film Festival, worked together to shoot the micro-film "Passing Five Gates" with iPhone 14 Pro. The film, which takes less than 18 minutes, tells the story of a Peking Opera actor in the late 1980s who overcame all obstacles in reality, practiced hard for 20 years, and finally became the protagonist and went on stage to play Guan Yu "passing five gates and killing six generals".

In the era of transition from the old to the new, Peking Opera gradually declined under the impact of pop music. The once popular national quintessence could only stay briefly on the stage of the platter performance. The protagonist was not a talented person and often made mistakes when practicing. But when his seniors switched to singing pop songs and breakdancing, he was the only one who persisted. But in the first performance after becoming the protagonist, the organizer reduced the length of the Peking Opera from 20 minutes to 10 minutes, and finally only 5 minutes. The troupe fell apart in an instant, and finally he decided to go on stage alone and sing this "Passing Five Gates".

Synchronously with the main film "Passing Five Levels", there is also a behind-the-scenes feature "Passing Five Levels Behind the Lens", which tells how the staff used iPhone 14 Pro to break through the limitations of technology and finally completed the work from the perspective of the director and behind-the-scenes producers. It cleverly shows the product's motion mode, light and shadow contrast, and detail processing capabilities.

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Since collaborating with director Peter Chan in 2018 and using iPhone X to shoot Three Minutes, Apple has used iPhones to shoot New Year films for six consecutive years. Jia Zhangke's A Bucket, Lawrence Sher's Daughter, Wang Ziyi's An Nian, and Zhang Meng's Comeback, year after year, the form is no longer fresh, only the content gives it vitality.

When "Guan Yu" came on stage, the audience lost interest. When everyone thought this was a doomed performance, the master's drum beats sounded, and his companions came to help, and the show officially began. The moves that he had practiced for 20 years finally won the applause of the whole audience.

"Passing Five Gates" uses the iPhone to show the grandeur of Peking Opera, and uses modern technology to reinterpret the traditional culture that has been ignored for a long time. I see three meanings of "Passing Five Gates" in the film: the first is the play within the play of Guan Yu passing five gates and killing six generals, the second is the hardships that the protagonist has experienced in life in order to play Guan Yu vividly, and the third is us. In the past year, every ordinary person has also "passed five gates".

At first glance, I didn't recognize Guan Yu, but by the end of the song, he was already a character in the play. The new year has arrived. May we be full of hope and wait for the clouds to clear and the moon to shine.

03 Mengniu: New Year feature film "Let's Find It Back Together"

This film tells the story of the protagonist Zhuang Xiaomeng's and her family's series of hilarious experiences during the 2023 Spring Festival from the first perspective:

Unemployed Xiaomeng went home for the New Year. Because she didn't want to worry her mother, she decided to keep it a secret. Unexpectedly, the New Year's gift (a box of Mengniu pure milk) and the red envelope containing the resignation certificate, which symbolized unemployment, were missing. In order to get the things back, Xiaomeng and her father visited relatives and friends who might have touched the items before.

The whole family searched back and forth for dozens of kilometers, and finally returned to Xiaomeng's home and found that her mother had seen the box of milk a long time ago and actually knew everything.

The short film is 10 minutes long. Judging from the distribution channels, this round of exposure focuses on platforms that are relatively suitable for playing medium and long videos, such as Weibo and WeChat Video Account, followed by Douyin. As of January 28, Weibo front-end showed 18.54 million views, and many Weibo celebrities forwarded and interpreted it, which aroused empathy from many people in the comment area.

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Compared with the grand narrative techniques commonly used in brand marketing throughout 2022, the insight entry point of this film is small enough. During the Spring Festival, when warmth elements are saturated, brands use relatively exaggerated expressions and various small humors to dispel the anxiety of ordinary people's lives.

Judging from the content of the short film, from childhood to adulthood, everyone has more or less had the experience of telling their parents good news but not bad news, but more often than not, family members are always the ones who understand us the most and care about us the most. Sometimes, we are strong-willed and make some choices "to take care of our family's emotions", but we don't know that they have already seen through everything and are also taking care of our emotions.

In the short film, the process of Xiaomeng and his father searching for items actually reproduces the famous scene of "visiting relatives" when people were young. A few simple shot switches convey the personalities of the relatives and the festive atmosphere of the New Year.

And the mother said to Xiaomeng, "As long as the family is together, winter will pass and spring will come back." It is easy to think of the classic lyrics of "Go Home Often to Visit": The elderly do not expect their children to make great contributions to the family. It is not easy to have a lifetime, so they just want to be reunited with their children - this is probably the most simple wish of parents all over the world.

What Xiaomeng wants to find back is not only the box of milk, but also the following images: find back the self who "always made her mother proud", find back the lost self-confidence, find back the courage to start again, find back the feeling of celebrating the New Year with the whole family when she was a child, find back the meaning of family reunion...

It is worth mentioning that the word “strong” is mentioned several times in the film, interspersed with stories about Xiaomeng’s mother raising her. The superficial meaning is to describe the character itself, which actually echoes Mengniu’s slogan in recent years, “World quality, born strong”, and also reminds people of the brand declaration that was familiar during the World Cup: “Every bit of strength in the nutritious world”.

From the perspective of social responsibility, Mengniu wants to express another meaning: in the face of the cold winter, as long as people gather together because of love and persevere, there will be no spring that will not come.

Finally, the film begins with the theme of "Together for the Year to Make Love Stronger", which once again elevates the brand's beautiful expectations and blessings for the new year and new atmosphere.

04 Yuanqi Forest: "Good fortune will come to you" theme marketing

After 2020, Chinese talk shows have entered the mass market from a niche circle. In just a few minutes, a group of talk show hosts have relieved the audience's "unspeakable suffering" through self-deprecation and offense, successfully aroused the public's emotional resonance, and become an outlet for venting pressure in this era. Talk show hosts have also become the "Internet mouthpiece" of contemporary young people.

During the Spring Festival, a time when many brands must compete, Yuanqi Forest teamed up with talk show host Niao Niao to shoot a video with the theme of "Childhood vs. Growing Up". The Spring Festival in childhood became sweet because people could eat candy, but when they grew up, they would only wonder if there was any sugar-free sweet candy. The interesting and lifelike story was expressed with fresh and simple pictures and Niao Niao's "depressed but energetic" copy, which resonated strongly among young consumers.

In addition, Yuanqi Forest also launched the topic "1000 Moments of Blessing" with Niao Niao. Users can submit to the official website through pictures + texts with the words "() is my blessing", and complete the last few pages of the new book "Good Luck Will Bring You" with Niao Niao, and jointly write the book of blessings in 2023. The related topics have received over 10 million views.

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Founded in 2016, Yuanqi Forest took six years to build a national offline channel system. During this year's Spring Festival, it launched a large-package 1.25L, multi-flavored Fuqi bottle of sparkling water, entered the offline channel on a large scale, and was put on more supermarket shelves and stores, facing head-on strong competitors such as Coke, Sprite, and Fruity Orange.

If you want to occupy the New Year’s dinner table, enrich the consumption scenarios of sparkling water, and expand the target audience, you need to establish differentiation on the communication end, "let those who love you love you more."

From the stars and the sea to the daily necessities of life, young people today are increasingly moved by the tiny details of life beyond the grand narrative. When brands break away from simple functions and become representatives of lifestyles, perceiving the subtle emotions of the times and speaking the minds of consumers becomes one of the important missions of brands.

“Life is like a page, and days will always turn over. It turns out that blessings are hidden in the subtle gaps.” When each of us is swept into the turbulent torrent of the times, how to find the “small emotions” in the “big era” and amplify them to form a spiritual resonance with the target group has become a compulsory course for young brands.

05 Safeguard: Long-term IP "Wash your hands and eat"

In early January, Safeguard’s long-term IP “Wash Your Hands and Eat” arrived as expected.

In the film, "hands" as an important image frequently appears in front of the camera. Wrinkled hands, strong hands, and tender hands, when they are held together, it represents that the people returning home have finally reached their destination.

A quick look at the film makes you feel that Safeguard this year has focused on three groups: children, middle-aged people and the elderly. It conveys the simple but powerful phrase "wash hands and eat" by telling the stories of children's impatience, middle-aged people's eagerness to return home and the elderly's anticipation.

But in fact, the protagonists of this year's story are only the parents. The great grandmother is waiting for her son, who is already a grandfather, to come home for dinner. Although both of them are old, time has not changed the catchphrase "wash your hands before eating".

The parents, who came to their son's home for the first time to celebrate the New Year, faced an unfamiliar environment. Their granddaughter held their hands and led them to the dining table with awkwardness and helplessness, and then they washed their hands and ate.

In addition, Safeguard also collaborated with Li Jiaqi to shoot stories in the special live broadcast room for the New Year’s Eve dinner, connecting the expression of brand value and sales, and integrating product power with dining scenes. At the same time, it launched the #Wash hands and eat, and have a healthy New Year# topic interaction on Weibo, so that there are both high-tower content brought by the KOL linkage effect and square-style content that users express and discuss spontaneously.

Editor's Recommendation:

This is the eighth year that Safeguard has been operating the long-term IP "Wash Hands and Eat". These four words carry the nagging of parents, the busy backs in the kitchen, and the joy of reunion of hundreds of millions of families.

The profound and powerful simplicity often comes from the wonderful summary of the inner complexity. As a catchphrase often said by Chinese people, "wash hands before eating" cleverly encompasses multiple marketing themes such as festivals, scenes, functions, etc., while simplifying them.

Compared to story-telling micro-films, this short video by Safeguard advocates the display of emotions, starting from real and daily little things, combining brand value to amplify and enrich individual emotions, and using a light rhythm to describe the beautiful connection between family members.

From a trend perspective, using life as a model and targeting daily emotions has become a major idea for brand advertising shooting this year. By summarizing the commonalities of everyone's daily life and finding emotional resonance in the details, a two-way engagement between the brand and the audience is formed. Those tiny and trivial details are actually the warmth that is most easily overlooked but most powerful for everyone.

Source: WeChat public account "Knife Skills Research Institute (ID: DigipontClub)"