LingoAce, the Chinese learning platform targeting young students, teamed up with former NBA star Jeremy Lin to front a new multi-channel, global campaign to promote learning Chinese and invite patents to encourage their children to learn Chinese.
The online learning platform partnered with agency F5 and production studio Golden LA to create and execute a campaign featuring the Harvard educated point guard best known globally for spearheading an unexpected New York Knicks turnaround during the NBA 2011/12 season generating a cultural and media phenomenon known as ‘Linsanity’.
The launch a film starred the former NBA star and UNICEF ambassador Lin who bridges the Western and Eastern worlds and has long been a champion for youth personal development. Indeed, one key synergy between LingoAce and ambassador Lin is, according to the brand, that they both believe that ‘when you encourage kids to learn Chinese they get to open up new worlds of cultures, perspectives, and opportunities’.
The live-action animated film features Lin passing a magical basketball to three kids; the ball represents Chinese knowledge and when the kids receive it, new worlds of unbelievable possibilities open up to them.
The trio of worlds featured in the film represent three of the many benefits experienced when learning Chinese: seeing the world through different perspectives, connecting with and sharing ideas with more people, and participating in making a better future.
The acts of passing in the spot echoes Lin’s point guard position: the player who controls the rhythm of the game. This links to the idea of learning Chinese to inherit some of the culture and knowledge passed down through the generations of Chinese civilization through language.
The hero spot dropped on 12 July and was supported by a ‘making Of’ online video which was posted a week later on 20 July.
“Production took place from March to June, during Shanghai’s strictest lockdown period. There was also a 15-hour time difference between Shanghai and Los Angeles, where production took place,” said F5 CCO Adams Fan. “Despite these challenges, we wanted to ensure that LingoAce and their mission of bridging worlds through learning Chinese would resonate with overseas Chinese families everywhere, and with our high quality creative strategy, cross-border collaboration, and compliance with international market aesthetics, we were able to make this happen.”
The campaign was created for client LingoAce by a team at agency F5 Shanghai which included Chief Creative Officer Adams Fan, Creative Lead Sarah de Joya, Senior Copywriter Sherry Xue and Head of Design Hua Yue with Production House Golden LA.
Comment
From students and business people, to celebrities and diplomats, learning Chinese has been steadily growing in popularity as China has risen to global prominence and Mandarin has become a global language.
The NBA is hugely popular across China, so it certainly seems sensible to team up with a hoops brand ambassador to front the campaign – particularly one who is a Taiwanese-American professional basketball player who last played for the Beijing Ducks of the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA).
Brought up in the San Francisco Bay area, Lin was the first American of Chinese or Taiwanese descent to play in the NBA and is one of the few Asian Americans to have played in the league. He was also the first Asian American to win an NBA championship, having done so with the Toronto Raptors in 2019.
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