Chinese dairy brand, Yili (伊利), has hit a strong note with a new ad featuring comedian Zhang Xingchao (张兴朝). The ads feature a blend of absurdist humour – Zhang’s signature style – and a stab at workplace stresses, that seems to have resonated well with Chinese audiences.
The jokes hinge on the sudden emotional reversals familiar to white-collar workers: surprise overtime, awkward boss mistakes, and the clipped, exasperated reactions that follow – except these are turned into wry puns.
In one scene, an employee about to clock off is told they must stay late. A giant ‘草’ (lit. grass, but also slang shorthand for a word too rude to repeat here) appears before dissolving into a literal pasture. The link ties the emotional outburst to Yili’s ‘good grass’ milk narrative.
In another, the employee lands himself in trouble. After a beat of exaggerated shock, the word ‘COW’ appears – a visual pun on the expletive ‘靠’, something like ‘damn’ in English – followed by Yili’s dairy cow imagery. The joke lands first, the product message slips in after.
The ads are structured around meme logic: fast reversals, visual puns, and personality-led timing designed for short-video feeds rather than brand films. It’s smart. By structuring the jokes this way, Yili unites the humour and the marketing message so closely they’re almost inseparable.
The Yili ad appears to be doing its job. On social media, the video is circulating less like an advert and more like a comedy skit, with users commenting that it’s hard to figure the line between visual joke and promotion. In many ways, this type of marketing could be linked to Heinz’s simple-but-effective campaign in Guangzhou earlier this month. In a world where we’re marketed to almost non-stop, it’s the campaigns that deviate from the norm that hit the best.
