Tencent bonds with brotherhood-themed brand campaign

BEIJING - Tencent has launched its three-week long corporate branding campaign ahead of Chinese New Year, exploring the theme of 'brotherhood'.

by Jenny Chan 陳詠欣 | 01/19/2012

Entitled "Brothers", the campaign centres on a story exploring the dreams and aspirations of four male friends, how they bond and stay in touch online with the QQ messenger, despite being physically apart.

Produced with Grey Beijing, it emphasises Tencent's corporate brand image of 'bringing people together', and is an extension of last year's story entitled "Mother" - a portrayal of the kinship between a mother and her overseas son.

This year's campaign broke online a week before Chinese New Year on a minisite hosted on Tencent. As for offline advertising, a 60-second TVC will be aired on CCTV's highly-rated Spring Festival variety show on 22 January. In addition, there is an extended four-minute mini-movie version of the TVC on Tencent's video platform.

Jeff Kwek, head of strategy and branding of online media at Tencent, told Campaign the story of the four buddies "creates resonance within Chinese society about the value of relationships and ties the emotive analogy of wanting to take flight with Tencent's products nicely".

With more than 700 million users, QQ is a popular instant messaging (IM) platform in China, and is also the most representative of Tencent’s offerings, since its launch more than 12 years ago.

"The 'Brothers' campaign was born out of an extensive exploration of relationships," Yue Chee Guan, executive creative director of Grey China, commented. "In order to dramatise that, the characters in the story were made to have the same unrealistic dreams when they were young and foolish but didn't realise those dreams."

In the story, only one out of the four characters indulged in his dream of flying a fighter jet though he knew he would never make it as a pilot. The other three moved on to something else in their lives but reminded one another not to give up on dreaming.

"Relationships among true buddies are more than skin-deep. The new TV spot has a romantic soul and is entertaining. So, watch it like you are going to a movie," Yue added.

Credits:

Project: "Brothers"

Client: Tencent

Creative Agency: Grey Beijing

ECD：Cheeguan Yue

CD：Nicky Zhang（Copy）

ACD：Li Xiaochen（Art）

Producer: Catherine Law

Account: Brenda Cai（AAD）, Amy Wang （SAE）

Director: Alfred Hau

Post-production team: Ping Pong

Exposure: Television, online

Source: Campaign China