The archive · Marketing & Growth · Marketing decision · 2022
BESTORE gives Crescent Moon Spring a one-night full moon — Dunhuang art wins 4A award
BESTORE and Dunhuang Academy built a half-moon fruit tree by Crescent Moon Spring so its reflection made a full moon — one night, for Mid-Autumn.
BESTORE (良品铺子) · Dunhuang Academy (敦煌研究院)
What it had to solve
Snack brand BESTORE, four years into its Dunhuang heritage-protection partnership, needed a big idea for its 2022 Mid-Autumn fresh-fruit mooncake launch: build 'BESTORE equals fresh-fruit mooncake' in consumers' minds while supporting sand-wind protection for the Mogao Grottoes.
How it works
For Mid-Autumn 2022, Chinese snack brand BESTORE and the Dunhuang Academy set out to launch the brand's fresh-fruit mooncakes with a big idea. BESTORE had supported Dunhuang heritage protection with donations for four years; this time the brief was to upgrade that support from donation into something people could experience.
The insight was geographic: Crescent Moon Spring (Yueyaquan) is called the health gauge of Dunhuang's ecology — when the spring shrinks, wind-sand erosion threatens the Mogao Grottoes. Agency Tian Yu Kong Guangzhou built a 5-metre half-moon sculpture containing a fruit tree and placed it at the water's edge, so the reflection completed a full moon: the tree echoed the mythic osmanthus tree of the moon palace and the real fruit inside BESTORE's mooncakes.
Five cross-media artists spent 20 days and nights shaping the moon from carved foam, plaster and resin with internal lighting; the piece travelled roughly 2,400 km from Beijing to Dunhuang over three days. On the night of August 21, 2022, the reflected full moon appeared at the ancient spring, drawing crowds of visitors, and a documentary film released online on August 26 carried the scene to the wider web.
The one-night-only event carried a simple message — beauty is fleeting, cherish it — linking Mid-Autumn reunion to the protection of Dunhuang culture. BESTORE again donated RMB 500,000 to the China Dunhuang Grottoes Protection Research Foundation, and the campaign won a China 4A Creative Award in the brand-led public-welfare category.
Why it lands
- The landscape was the medium: the spring's crescent shape made the half-moon reflection feel inevitable and site-specific — an idea that could not be copied anywhere else.
- It converted a product feature into a cultural symbol: real fruit in mooncakes became the osmanthus tree of the moon palace, so the product carried the story.
- One-night-only scarcity built urgency: the installation had to be seen or missed, which made the film and online release events rather than advertising.
- It fused commerce with heritage: a mooncake launch doubled as a call to protect Dunhuang, giving the brand meaning beyond the transaction.
What it did
The one-night scene drew crowds at the spring and spread online with broad media coverage; the campaign won a China 4A Creative Award in the brand-led public-welfare category, and BESTORE donated RMB 500,000 to the China Dunhuang Grottoes Protection Research Foundation for sand-wind control.
What you can take
Let the place complete the idea: when the landscape itself contributes half the concept, a product launch becomes a site-specific cultural event people travel to see and share.
Since then
The campaign became one of the most-cited Chinese examples of brand-led cultural-heritage marketing: its documentary film and case write-ups circulated widely through industry platforms such as digitaling and adquan, and the China 4A Creative Award entry documented the full production. BESTORE continued its Dunhuang partnership and its fresh-fruit mooncake line in later Mid-Autumn seasons, keeping the cultural narrative as brand property.
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