The Olympic Games are a global, multi-sport event that brings together athletes from over 200 countries. The 2022 Winter Olympics in China will showcase traditional Chinese elements, such as the Olympic mascot and national team emblem. To promote the Winter Olympics and display China's unique culture, a video titled "Ice & Snow Dreams Towards the Future" was created. This video features traditional Chinese cultural symbols, including shadow puppetry and the mythology figure Nezha, who performs various Winter Olympic sports. By combining Chinese culture with world-class sports, this work highlights the significance of cultural diversity in sport entertainment.

Situation: As the world’s most appealing sports and entertainment event, The Olympic Games are the world's only truly global, multi-sport, celebratory athletics competition. Beijing became the first city in the world to have hosted both the summer and winter Olympic Games.

Objectives: The objectives which to create a visual spectacle with a video that fused traditional Chinese culture with modern sports and convey the spirit of the Winter Olympics to the world, engaging more audiences to pay attention to Winter Olympics and traditional Chinese culture.

Brief: A shadow puppetry video featuring Nezha, a beloved Chinese mythological figure, promoted unity for the Winter Olympics by showcasing Chinese culture during the opening ceremony. It depicted Nezha pursuing the light and Olympic rings on the road to "Faster, Higher, Stronger, Together," conveying a message of collaboration among nations and leaving a lasting impression on athletes and spectators.

The strategy was to promote the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 and showcase Chinese culture to a global audience. Audience insights revealed that there was a higher desire to watch Olympic Games coverage among youth. To reach more audiences and differentiate from similar projects, a video called "Ice & Snow Dreams Towards the Future" was produced, combining folk culture and sports.

The community building and management approach involved creating a video that conveys the spirit of the Winter Olympics and displays traditional culture to reach more young adults. The video features Nezha, a protection deity in Chinese mythology, as the main character in over 20 different films, using shadow puppetry to show Nezha chasing towards the Olympic rings on the road of "Faster, Higher, Stronger, Together." This strategy aimed to reach a wider audience and promote the Winter Olympics through a creative and unique approach that highlighted traditional Chinese culture.

Three key elements of the video are the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, the intangible cultural heritage of shadow play, and the image of Nezha. We decided to use "Nezha" as the main character, who is an ancient Chinese mythological figure. In the video, Nezha chases the Olympic rings by taking different winter sports, showing the audience characteristic movements of major sports of Beijing 2022, including Ice Hockey, Curling, Bobsleigh, Luge, Biathlon, and Figure Skating. Traditional shadow play art form was restored with modern animation production methods.shadow play emphasizes on rhythmic and dynamic expression. Combined with sports and Winter Olympics culture, it makes winter sports more appealing with exquisite figures and humorous performances. By incorporating well-known Hebei local myths and stories, it also helps to create a lively atmosphere for people who watch the Winter Olympics.

The Nezha image in the video was created by Wang Xiuming, a Tangshan Shadow Puppets representative inheritor of Hebei Province's intangible cultural heritage project in China. The two-minute video showcases Nezha engaging in various winter sports, demonstrating the characteristics of major sports in Beijing 2022. It highlights the charm of winter sports, traditional culture, and the Olympic spirit of “Faster Higher Stronger Together." The project's timeline began with producing ideas and requirements at the end of January, drawing filming scripts and preparing for filming in mid-January, completing the overall vision during the Chinese New Year in February, and submitting the final video on February 22. The video was released on multiple official media platforms, including CCTV.com, CCTV Sports APP, CCTV Children's Channel, and Xuexi.cn, effectively reaching a broad audience. Overall, the video blends winter sports, cultural heritage, and national symbolism to create a compelling representation of Beijing 2022.

Reach:

This video reached 330 million people on social media platforms worldwide.

Engagement:

The video's engagement rate is around 5%.

Impact:

The video was released on multiple official media platforms, such as CCTV.com, CCTV Sports APP, CCTV Children's Channel, and Xuexi.cn, and was viewed over 32.2 million times.

Brand perception:

After the video was released, most of the feedback from the audience was positive, and it helped to improve the brand's search rate.

Achievement against objectives:

We created a visual spectacle with a video that fused traditional Chinese culture with modern sports and conveyed the spirit of the Winter Olympics to the world, engaging more audiences to pay attention to the Winter Olympics and traditional Chinese culture.

The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and Paralympics are not only a major sports event, but also an embodiment of China's value pursuit of promoting the construction of a community with a shared future for mankind. They have far-reaching global significance. Shadow puppetry used to be a very important cultural art in ancient times. Many people are deeply involved in their emotions, hoping to find their directions and answers. Nowadays, shadow puppetry is adored globally and bears witness to people's joys and sorrows. Nezha is a distinctive character in Chinese classical fiction and culture, and is widely recognized as a symbol of bravery and fearlessness. As a well-known young hero representing the spirit of bravery and fearlessness, Nezha not only embodies the striving spirit of the Winter Olympics, but also motivates people to confront life's challenges together and advance with courage.