Marriage Market Takeover

Why it works

A four-minute film in which unmarried Chinese women in their late twenties, branded sheng nu or ‘leftover women’, talk with their parents about the pressure to marry, before turning up at the marriage market in Shanghai’s People’s Park, where parents post their children’s details, with portraits and messages of their own. Made for P&G’s Japanese skincare brand SK-II as part of a global push urging women to shape their own destiny, and released on YouTube and Weibo in April 2016, it is framed as a documentary rather than a beauty advertisement. It is studied as a premium beauty brand taking a side in a live social argument in China, and as evidence that a purpose-led online film can move sales. The BBC reported within days that it had gone viral in China. It won a Glass Lion at Cannes 2016, then the Grand Prix at the WARC Prize for Asian Strategy and a Silver at the IPA Effectiveness Awards, whose summary says sales nearly doubled in a year.