Can you be cool and post-modern humorous at the same time? Of course you can. But few other than Balenciaga have pulled this off successfully. Now STACCATO, a Chinese footwear brand founded in 1998 has taken on the challenge with Yang Mi, its global brand ambassador since 2023.
The key visuals of the campaign place Yang in an industrial background but with a “post-human” feel of overgrown flora. She shows off the rider boots in dresses, outdoorsy jackets and leather coats. The campaign video sees Yang walking through the landscape with the varying outfits in quick cuts until the overgrowth pops up from the ground and the empty hangar is no longer empty. The campaign is a cross between a rider as a biker and a knight in shining leather armour (for both words are “骑士” in Chinese).
It is all well and cool up to this point, or “飒爽” (lit. valiant, elegant and spirited) in the words of the brand. However, netizens soon started to notice the out-of-home (OOH) adverts are of a different tone, but with the same key visuals. From billboards to posters, from the streets to metro stations, and even on the side of buses, STACCATO has plastered Yang all across China. However, it is the tagline that brought the humour out of the otherwise serious campaign.
Punny and meme-tic, the taglines are a blend of internet buzzwords and local dialects transcribed. The brand even released a list of locations where visitors can “check in” (打卡). Here are a few examples:
“靴靴，有被美到” meaning “Thx, I’m impressed.” Here “靴靴” (xuexue, sounds similar to xiexie “谢谢”) is often used to humorously replace “xiexie” online.
“四川一下，好乖哦~” in Sichuan, meaning “trying it on, it’s cute”. This tagline plays on the similarity between “四川” (Sichuan) and “试穿” (shichuan, lit. trying on).
“别看我，看鞋” meaning “don’t look at me, look at the boots”.
“下一站STACCATO”, meaning “next stop, STACCATO”, on the side of a double-decker bus in Hong Kong.
The combination of post-modern meme-tic humour and regular adverts provides layers of interpretation to the campaign. With the coolness of the original visual and the impact of the humourous OOH ads, STACCATO can appeal to both the fashionable and raise awareness among regular netizens, not to mention Yang’s star power.
