iQiyi turns a comedian's 'Passion!' into 2024's catchphrase — 10.7B Douyin plays

iQiyi had never made a stand-up competition, and the category already had established names. Its answer was not a bigger stage but a sharper emotion: a rookie-heavy cast of ordinary people telling stories about work, family and self-image, anchored by champion Fu Hang's explosive 'Passion!' — a word that captured the era's hunger to shout back at pressure.

The campaign treated the catchphrase as the campaign. 'Passion' was seeded through Douyin challenges tied to everyday life — travel, dance, work — until it detached from the show and became a 2024 mood word people used outside comedy. The stage clips traveled the same way, pushed across Weibo, Bilibili and Xiaohongshu so the audience found the moment before the marketing ever felt like marketing.

Sponsorship was designed into the format rather than bolted on: advertisers such as Nin Jiom and Chunfu green tea appeared inside sketches and punchlines, becoming part of the joke ecosystem. Because the show's audience came for emotional release, brands that entered through laughter read as fellow participants instead of interruptions.

The results made the case for comedy as a business channel: 10.7 billion Douyin plays, 5,356 hot-search mentions and a peak heat index of 9460, while Nin Jiom added 6.11 million yuan in e-commerce sales during the run and Chunfu green tea jumped to No.5 in its category. The show won two golds at the 2025 Golden Eyes Awards and a 2025 Roi Festival nomination.