When brands play the winter-sports card, the script is predictable: icy backdrops, fake snow, perhaps a slogan about resilience. Yili Group (伊利) has chosen a different tack for a tie-in with the Winter Olympics. In its latest ice-and-snow campaign, the company appoints stand-up comic Xu Zhisheng as its ‘Chief Victory Officer’ (伊利制胜官), turning a pun into a positioning strategy. Zhisheng’s name (志胜) echoes zhisheng (制胜), meaning to secure victory.
The Yili winter-sports ad comes in the form of a campaign film that opens with Xu as a high-performance winter-sports athlete. It’s framed in the visual language of elite sport and looks like a conventional brand tribute, until the scene collapses. The athletic fantasy is revealed to be Xu daydreaming before an office meeting. His dream is cut short by a client call, and he wakes as an office drone.
Creative details reinforce the joke. At one point, Xu declares ‘my Zhisheng is not ordinary,’ then appears in the stadium stands in three forms – himself, a mascot and a miniature figurine – chanting ‘aim for victory.’ Even the end credits extend the gag, naming the plush character in sync with the storyline’s timeline.
Instead of hiding the mechanics of endorsement, The Yili winter-sports ad pulls them into view. Contract discussion and casting logic pull brand rationale into view. The self awareness gives the ad a fourth dimension while Xu keeps the whole thing buoyant. Yili are masters at this. They’ve been doing great ads with comedians this year, ads that allow humour to become differentiation.
The result is less a sports ad than what Chinese netizens are calling a ‘life ad’ – an ad that layers fantasy and reality, misdirection and reveal. Beneath the comedy sits a familiar message: support for national sport and its athletes. But somehow by acknowledging the artifice of advertising, Yili makes that support feel less staged, and paradoxically more sincere.
