For Mother’s Day, fruit tea brand Auntea Jenny (沪上阿姨) has looked upstream. Instead of campaigns centering on urban mums, the tea chain looks to the women behind its ingredients. To do so it’s given them a very public stage.
The campaign follows three farming mothers working across the brand’s fruit sourcing regions: Zhong Axu in Xishuangbanna growing watermelons, Wu Qiaodi in Jiangmen harvesting fragrant lemons, and Kang Yanru in Jianshui picking grapes.
Their routines are unglamorous and physically demanding – a far cry from life in Shanghai. For the campaign, these women’s portraits are lifted out of orchards and fields and placed onto large digital screens across busy shopping districts, effectively blasting origin stories at everyday urban consumers.
Accompanying copy deliberately ties product attributes to personal narratives. ‘The sweeter mum smiles, the sweeter the watermelon.’ ‘Mum’s flavour is the fresh scent of lemon.’ ‘When the grapes ripen, mum picks the sweetness of life.’ It’s emotional storytelling mapped directly onto taste profiles.
But cleverly tying their emotional punch to a bit of flavour inspiration isn’t all the brand is doing. There is also a supply chain pitch here. By foregrounding real producers, Auntea Jenny makes its sourcing more legible.
In a category built on freshness claims, showing the people and places behind ingredients adds a layer of credibility that packaging alone cannot deliver. The labour becomes part of the product.
This builds on the brand’s recent trajectory. Last year, it put mothers’ names on big screens. More recently, it appointed comedian Fang Zhuren (房主任) as ambassador, leaning into more grounded, everyday narratives. The through line is consistent: a broader definition of womanhood that moves beyond polished, urban archetypes.
