The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2024
Ele.me's 2024 CNY campaign tells people not to order — 620M exposures
Instead of New Year promos, Ele.me ran text-only ads wishing people a year without it — 620M exposures and nearly 1M interactions.
Ele.me (饿了么) · Heaven&Hell
What it had to solve
Chinese New Year is the noisiest promotion week of the year in China. Ele.me read its users' mood — tired, inward-looking, hungry to escape the grind — and decided the most honest gesture was to tell people to put the app down and spend the holiday offline with family.
How it works
For Chinese New Year 2024, when Chinese platforms usually flood the market with gift guides and sales, delivery app Ele.me ran a campaign telling people not to order from it. Text-only posters carried lines like 'when mum needs soy sauce, go out and buy it yourself, like when you were a child' and 'remember the joy of sticking your hands into the rice bin'.
The idea, by agency Heaven&Hell, read the mood around the holiday — 'escape and pause' after years of hustle culture — and skipped the standard promotion logic entirely. Instead of products, the campaign offered permission to switch off: shop at the market, cook with family, be a child again. It ran in a Shanghai Xuhui metro station and on village postings for people travelling home.
The reverse pitch spread on its own. Users began posting the ads on Xiaohongshu the day after they appeared; within a week there were over 100 organic posts, and one user post drew more than 70,000 interactions. The LongXi Creative Awards case page reports 620M exposures, nearly 1M interactions and 20-plus industry write-ups, and riders from rival Meituan even joined the banter online.
Why it lands
- Every rival pushes sales during Chinese New Year, so a brand that tells you not to buy stands out in the noisiest ad week of the year.
- The ads sell nothing — they voice the audience's own fatigue and wish to pause, which makes the message feel true rather than promotional.
- Replacing offers with permission to log off gives people something to share, which is why a single user post drew 70K+ interactions and 100+ organic posts followed within a week.
- The gesture positions Ele.me as a companion for ordinary life rather than a nagging storefront, and it stayed in industry conversation for about two months.
What it did
The award case page reports 620M exposures and close to 1M interactions. Organic Xiaohongshu posts began the day after the metro work appeared and passed 100 in the first week; one user post drew over 70,000 interactions. Industry coverage exceeded 20 pieces, brand-related reports rose 40% and brand-keyword searches rose 10%.
What you can take
The strongest festival ad can be the opposite of a festival ad: tell customers to go live their lives without you, and the warmth becomes the reason they come back.
Since then
The campaign launched on 2 February 2024 for the Chinese New Year break and kept generating industry coverage for about two months afterwards. It won Silver in the Direct category at the 2024 LongXi Creative Awards and became a frequently cited example of 'reverse marketing' in the Chinese advertising press, including coverage by adquan and TOPYS.
Sources
- 祝你过年不用饿了么 (Wish You No Ele.me for the New Year) — LongXi Creative Awards 2024, Silver, Direct
- Ele.me's CNY initiative '祝你过年不用饿了么' — adquan case coverage with the original posters
- Ele.me's CNY initiative '祝你过年不用饿了么' — TOPYS
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