[Note: See Appendix for reference images.]

COMPETITION, CATEGORY, CULTURE: A PERFECT STORM

ShotOniPhone CNY re-wrote the playbook for smartphone brands showcasing camera features. But where Apple led, our competitors followed, making it harder to cut through than ever.

The category presented even tougher obstacles.

In 2021, strict pandemic controls in China had slowed the economy and dampened smartphone demand. That year, the category grew just 1% YoY, languishing more than 10% below the pre-COVID-19 level in 2019.

Meanwhile, geopolitical tensions sparked a surge in nationalism, driving a trend of ‘patriotic consumption’ amongst Chinese consumers.

As a massive global brand, how could we make iPhone more attractive to Chinese customers?

We knew we had to tell a different kind of story this year: one that would cut through the noise, while creating cultural resonance in an environment that was increasingly hostile to foreign brands.

FROM HOLIDAY CLICHES TO HOLLOW HOMETOWNS

New Year is when people in China go home to see their families; most brands’ CNY communications feature clichéd themes of reunion and homecoming.

To cut through the CNY tropes, we looked for a deeper cultural insight that could unlock a bigger, more interesting homecoming story.

Investigating China’s fast-changing demographics, we uncovered our breakthrough insight.

Searching for better opportunities, more and more young people were leaving their rural hometowns for cities. As they encountered the competitive reality of city life, they discovered that achieving their dreams was much harder than anticipated.

Meanwhile, their hometowns were stagnating in a phenomenon that we called ‘hollow villages’.

This cross-generational tension gave our film’s story its emotional heart, which we needed to hook and captivate our audience.

But we also discovered a behavioral insight that fundamentally changed how that story was brought to life.

In three years from 2019-2021, viewership of our behind-the-scenes film had jumped from 12% of main film viewership to over 90%. Our audience was hungry for the ‘how-to’ that showed off the camera techniques we were using to shoot with iPhone.

This sparked a question that led to our big idea: What if we showed iPhone in action as part of the story of our main film?

A MOVIE WITHIN A MOVIE

We created The Comeback: a 23-minute ‘movie within a movie’ shot on (and starring) iPhone.

To bring our insight to life, we partnered with Zhang Meng, a director known for telling heartwarming, never-say-die stories about the people usually forgotten by the rest of society.

The Comeback follows a down-on-his-luck director and a rag-tag crew of villagers on a mission to shoot an epic sci-fi movie, which they hope will reverse the fortunes of their forgotten village by catapulting it to internet stardom.

All the crew need to create spectacular sci-fi set pieces is some imagination, ingenuity, and what they have to hand: an iPhone 13 Pro.

Spanning comedy, martial arts, and sci-fi, The Comeback shows off iPhone’s versatility and encourages people to never stop believing in their dreams—even if that dream is as far away as Mars.