The archive · Product Ideas · Product decision · 2016–2020
JD's 'running chicken' must walk 1M steps before sale — verifiable free-range meat
JD puts step-counting rings on free-range chickens and only sells those that logged 1 million steps — '1M steps or no sale' becomes an internet-famous label.
JD.com (京东)
What it had to solve
In 2016 JD.com launched the 'Running Chicken' project with farmers in Wuyi County, Hebei: village families raise free-range chickens in forest land, and JD buys them at a premium and sells them online. The problem was trust — how could a customer tell a real free-range chicken from a caged one?
How it works
In 2016 JD.com launched the 'Running Chicken' project with farmers in Wuyi County, Hebei. Village families raise free-range chickens across roughly 300,000 mu of forest land, and JD buys the birds at a premium and sells them through its e-commerce platform. The distinctive rule: every chicken must walk one million steps before JD will put it on sale.
To enforce it, each bird wears a QR-coded ankle ring with an IoT chip; the ring records movement, feeding, drinking, vaccination and cleaning data onto a blockchain traceability platform. Chickens are typically raised about 160 days — around four times the cycle of a market broiler — to reach the step target and a 3–4 jin body weight. Consumers scan the code on the foot to review the chicken's whole life history.
'1 million steps or no listing' (跑够100万步才上市) became the project's internet-famous label. By 2020, JD said the program covered 6 townships and 114 poor villages in Wuyi County, helping about 1,600 households; it was replicated in Guizhou's Shibing County, and 'Running Chicken' ranked 12th in JD's fresh chicken category with over 14,000 reviews.
Why it lands
- The 1-million-step rule is a number customers can grasp instantly, turning an opaque supply chain into a concrete, shareable promise.
- The step data came from a device on the animal, not a label on the pack, so the claim could actually be checked — that is what made it credible.
- The mechanic also improved the product: the longer free-range cycle produced tastier meat, so the marketing rule and the quality were the same thing.
- The project gave farmers a premium sales channel instead of a charity discount, so the idea was sustainable for both sides.
What it did
'1 million steps or no listing' (跑够100万步才上市) became the project's internet-famous label. By 2020 the program covered 6 townships and 114 villages in Wuyi County, helping about 1,600 households; it was replicated in Guizhou's Shibing County, and 'Running Chicken' ranked 12th in JD's chicken category with over 14,000 reviews.
What you can take
A verification mechanic can be the creative: let the product prove its quality with live data, and make the proof the story — '1M steps or no sale' is what made people trust the chicken.
Since then
JD built the model into a family of farm 'IP' products — Running Duck, Swimming Fish, Mountain Pig — and the original 2016 campaign film with agency Hua Yi ('run, and dreams get closer') passed one million views within a day of release. The running chicken became the most-cited Chinese example of IoT plus blockchain food traceability, and the '1M steps' label stayed attached to JD's fresh-food strategy for years.
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