BMW | NOTHING BUT SHEER JOY | 2022
The Courage Not to Make You Cry / BMW "NOTHING BUT SHEER JOY"
Chinese Lunar New Year ads have a go-to formula: a long, tearjerking drama about family reunions. In 2022, BMW threw that formula out completely. Ninety seconds, relentlessly upbeat, without a single tear. Choosing not to make people cry actually takes real nerve.
The problem
Lunar New Year is as fiercely competitive as Christmas advertising. Brands compete with celebrity-studded emotional films, and BMW had built its own tradition around the word "joy" every year. After a tiring 2021 shaped by ongoing pandemic fatigue, the team wondered whether going for tears again, the same way everyone else does, was really the right move.
The insight
BMW's Chinese name, "Baoma," means precious horse, and 2022 was the Year of the Tiger. With horse and tiger, two auspicious animals, lining up in the same year, BMW decided to drop the heavy emotion and deliver nothing but pure joy. As Executive Creative Director Mo Chen put it, "No tears, no pressure, just sheer joy to welcome the Year of the Tiger." In a year when everyone else was trying to make people cry, BMW decided to make them laugh instead. That bold stance became the idea itself.
The idea
Working with Real Good Studio, the team created a 90-second animation built from a stream of vignettes that play on the sounds and imagery of "tiger" and "horse." There are no car specs, no deep meaningful messages. It's 90 seconds that exist purely to delight the eyes and ears. Campaign Asia wrote that "the usually unsmiling Ad Nut laughed out loud several times," which captures the feel of this campaign perfectly.
What happened
The campaign ran across multiple platforms including Weibo, Douyin, and Bilibili, and included a dance challenge. It reportedly broke nearly every record for views and engagement across BMW's social channels, and 50 dealerships even went on to create their own versions of the dance video. At Cannes Lions 2022, it won a Gold Lion in the Social & Influencer category.
Afterthought
In a year when everyone else was throwing emotional punches, BMW chose to win purely on fun, and a premium brand pulled it off in China, the world's largest car market. That alone makes these 90 seconds plenty interesting. You don't need tears to make an ad powerful.
Awards
- Cannes Lions Gold 2022
