This campaign enabled women to challenge the recent chauvinistic trend on social media in China called 好嫁风 or ‘good for marriage’ at their own term and pace.

While the trend encourages women to diminish themselves and their achievements and choices for marriage, our entertaining piece of content leveraged the interactive nature of China video platforms to offer women 20 different choices that disputed the clichés and led to surprising endings.

20 different choices that allowed women to defy traditional marriage pressures and write their own narrative.

The work was so successive a wholly new term was born and took over social media in China to combat "good for marriage": "#HardToMarry".

In China, there is a chauvinistic trend on social media called 好嫁风 or ‘good for marriage’. Since there is a common notion of men 'marrying down', the term encourages women to diminish themselves so they are not too smart, too ambitious, or too successful for the average Chinese man. In a country where marriage pressure is immense, the term reinforced stereotypes of a woman’s only value being her ability to get married.

SK-II's long standing "Change Destiny" brand platform has advocated for women's right to choose their own destiny for almost a decade. To push the brand platform further, we decided to do something about 好嫁风 (‘good for marriage’).

In China, there is a chauvinistic trend on social media called 好嫁风 or ‘good for marriage’. As there is a common notion of men 'marrying down', the term encourages women to diminish themselves so they are not too smart, too ambitious, or too successful for the average Chinese man. In a country where marriage pressure is immense, the term reinforced stereotypes of a woman’s only value being her ability to get married.

SK-II believes that women should have the right to choose their destiny. So to give women a safe space to make life decisions that reflect who they truly are, they created the skincare industry’s first interactive movie: My Destiny, My Choice. The movie stars you, the viewer. Starring award-winning actress Zhang Zifeng as your best friend, you could navigate through twelve story paths and over 1 hour of playable content that covered life’s most important decisions. You could choose to either be ‘good for marriage’ or stay true to yourself. Every choice allowed women to defy traditional marriage pressures and write their own narrative.

SK-II believes that women should have the right to choose their destiny. So we created a safe space for women to explore making their biggest life decisions for themselves, not to be ‘good for marriage’. The experience had zero product.

My Destiny, My Choice consisted of 20 choices, 12 story paths, and over 1 hour of playable content. You could date the typical “perfect husband”, a young artist, or stick with your besties. Story paths lead to surprising endings like moving to the big city, quitting your job, or ditching both men and marrying your best friends instead.

The script was based on real experiences from interviews with 30 women, interwoven into one multi-dimensional story. It included simulated phone calls and text messages.

The work leverages the interactive nature of china specific platforms, such as Bilibili, where users go looking for opportunities to engage in a more immersive way with the content. On Bilibili specifically, a special ticker feature allowed viewers of our film to leave personal comments at moments that resonated with them and which could then be seem by the entire community at any point in time.

480M mentions: Weibo.

“Most Played” on platform Bilibili.

Official selection of Vogue China Film Festival.

SK-II became the #1 skincare brand on e-comm site JD.com

But most importantly, we successfully combated the derogatory term 好嫁风 ("good for marriage") by igniting a new trending term: “#hardtomarry”.