Every Emotion Hides
in a Chinese Character
一字千金 · A Word Worth Gold
Alipay Spring Festival Campaign 2018
Creative Director
·
HAOMAI 好卖广告
·
2018
Alipay Spring Festival Campaign 2018
A digital red envelope that turned a payment app into a poetry platform — 100M+ users in 5 days.
Spring Festival red envelopes had become purely transactional — tap, send money, done. Every tech company competed with bigger cash giveaways. The cultural richness of Chinese New Year was being reduced to a number.
一字千金，一字见心
The concept: A red envelope where you choose ONE character that says everything. Not money — meaning.
As Creative Director at HAOMAI, I led the complete creative strategy for Alipay's 2018 Spring Festival red envelope campaign — from concept development through celebrity talent direction and cross-platform launch. The insight was counterintuitive: in a market where every tech company competed with bigger cash giveaways, we stripped the red envelope down to its emotional essence — one Chinese character that says everything. Zhang Guoli narrated a 2:59 brand film tracing characters from ancient pictographs to modern emotions, while the in-app experience let users choose their own character to send. The campaign earned Tiger Roar Silver and Golden Lion Bronze.
Zhang Guoli narrates a 2:59 film tracing Chinese characters from Cangjie's 28 original pictographs to the emotions they carry today. From ancient cave carvings to airport farewells — every character holds a story.
《一字千金，一字见心》Brand Film · Featuring Zhang Guoli · 2:59
Users chose from hundreds of characters — each one a compressed blessing.
“The most viral content isn't the loudest — it's the most resonant.”