Interview: How JianHao Tan's green Lamborghini led to a Giant CNY campaign

Supermarket chain Giant has released a new Chinese New Year (CNY) campaign featuring influencers such as Debbie Soon and Jianhao Tan in addition to a catchy music video. 

Titled "How GIANT is your Huat?”, the campaign was anchored with a music video directed by Tan. The video features influencers Tan, Soon, Ridhwan Azman, gamer Julynn Lau, entrepreneur Denise Soong and Titan Digital's Vincent Sin and Kevin Foo.

In the video, the group dance through the Giant Supermarket singing about what Giant has available for CNY as well as the fact that they are "ready" for the festivities. 

Don't miss: Revealed: Singapore's most influential influencers for 2023 

The video then moves into a home where the group are hosting a CNY meal. As they celebrate together around the table, they sing about how important the small details are during the festiveness and how Giant has everything one could need for it. 

The video is also anchored by Tan's iconic bright Green Lamborghini which matches the shade of the Giant logo. Tan, Soon and his team are seen dancing around the car outside the supermarket in pink traditional outfits as the video comes to an end. 

"The campaign takes a disruptive marketing strategy to engage and excite Singaporeans through various engagements and communications that helps Singaporeans measure or create more 'huat' this coming new year, spreading positivity and joy," said a spokesperson at Giant. 

"It was a fun way to land the Giant branding this CNY using it as an adjective to our big idea and wishing everyone a GIANT HUAT this 2024," she said. 

In addition to the video, Giant is also running six weeks of "Huat Deals" and an initiative with Yuu. The “Giant x Yuu Huat-o-meter” roved around eight Giant stores where shoppers who are Yuu members simply needed to shout “Huat Ah” to stand to win up to 8,888 Yuu points and Giant cash vouchers.

"We wanted to create top of mind awareness and presence for Giant in a typically cluttered CNY environment, creating cut through to our target audience," said the spokesperson who added that its target was young families of which Tan and Soon are.

With the release of the video, MARKETING-INTERACTIVE sat down with Tan, who was the director of the video, to find out more about how it came about.

MARKETING-INTERACTIVE: How did you and your team come up with the concept for the video?

Tan: Over the years, we’ve done several music videos on this channel. 10 years ago, before our popular series Titan Academy, we produced some music videos. It was how people started taking notice of this channel. For this video, we decided to gather the Titan Academy stars for a special Chinese New Year MV.

It started off with a strong colour association - my green Lamborghini Huracan Evo and Giant’s green logo. We thought it’d be such a fun association to decal my car with a Giant logo and that’s really how the discussions started.

Then it just got bigger and bigger, I requested for lion dances, then dragon dances, more locations, then a dance choreography, a catchy tune and it all came together.

MARKETING-INTERACTIVE: Which came first? The campaign idea or the song?

Tan: With Giant, it started off with fruitful discussions on how Giant and Titan could partner for key content productions (KCPs) this year. With the company’s interest to explore new and impactful formats such as music videos, we then curated the entire song for the purpose of the campaign.

CNY is the time to make puns. As it’s dragon year, I initially wanted "long time no see", or "long long time" as a pun. But upon discussion with my executive producer, she mentioned that Giant’s campaign was going to be “How GIANT is your Huat”?

Internally, the Titan team had a few debates on what the title should be. I gave a few ideas that I knew were too crazy and my executive producer almost fainted and just said “as long as you follow the brief”.  It was then that I realized…'As long as you Huat'. We all immediately agreed on it.

When it came to crafting the song, we agreed that we wanted something different and that it would be fun to modernise Chinese New Year with a song that incorporate elements such as dance, rap, K-pop.

MARKETING-INTERACTIVE: What was the filming process like?

Tan: Throughout the process, Giant was absolutely encouraging every step of the way. There were even one or two lines which they came up with themselves and that fit well into the rhythm.

This made the process really smooth for us as they were clear on what they wanted every step of the way while giving us full creative control. There was never a moment of confusion Everything was recorded, filmed and edited in a span of 12 days.

MARKETING-INTERACTIVE: What do you hope audiences take away from the partnership?

Tan: That Giant has the freshest Tiger Prawns for CNY! But really, we hope that we were able to inspire and create joy for our audiences. We also want to encourage creators and brands to create positive noise, push the boundaries and reinventing the wheel if needed. 

Join us this coming 24 - 25 April for #Content360, a two-day extravaganza centered around four core thematic pillars: Explore with AI; Insight-powered strategies; Content as an experience; and Embrace the future. Immerse yourself in learning to curate content with creativity, critical thinking, and confidence with us at Content360!

Related articles:
PETRONAS tackles the hardships of CNY in heartwarming film 
Bumble gets users to manifest love this CNY and Valentine's Day with Lo Hei spin 
These are the best CNY ads in Malaysia for 2024