The archive · Marketing & Growth · Marketing decision · 2020
Kuaishou 9th Anniversary Film 'Seeing': 'Aoligei' Uncle Pays Tribute to Ordinary People
On June 6, 2020, Kuaishou's 9th anniversary, 'Aoligei' uncle delivered 'Seeing', a montage of ordinary lives, winning praise unlike 'Hou Lang'.
Kuaishou (快手)
What it had to solve
June 6, 2020 was Kuaishou (快手)'s 9th anniversary. 1 month earlier, Bilibili (B站)'s 'Hou Lang (后浪)' praised young people from an elite perspective and sparked widespread controversy; Kuaishou (快手) had long carried the 'earthy party' label and wanted to use its anniversary milestone to prove that 'ordinary people's records are equally worth seeing'.
How it works
On June 6, 2020, Kuaishou (快手) reached its 9th anniversary. 'Kuaishou Film & Television (快手影视)' released the promotional film 'Seeing (看见)' on its official Weibo (微博) account: platform streamer Huang Chunsheng (黄春生; 冬泳怪鸽), the 'Aoligei (奥利给)' uncle, wore a suit and delivered a speech on stage, paying tribute to every ordinary person who lives earnestly; the opening line 'Do not coldly walk into ordinary people' directly responded to the external label that Kuaishou (快手) was 'not trendy enough'.
The film is widely seen as benchmarking against Bilibili (B站)'s 'Hou Lang (后浪)', which had gone viral 1 month earlier, but its stance is completely opposite: the visuals contain no elite templates, but real records by Kuaishou (快手) users, such as dancing in the mountains, singing in the vegetable fields, and fishing in the Ussuri River (乌苏里江); the script adapts Bertrand Russell's (罗素) 'the diversity of lives is the source of happiness', and the closing line 'Keep it up, Aoligei (奥利给)!' became the memorable point of the whole film.
In production, Kuaishou (快手) spent almost no large budget: it was produced solely by the Operations Department Marketing Center, with no external creative agency, no central media resources, and the first-release account 'Kuaishou Film & Television (快手影视)' had a very small follower count at the time; after release, it only placed in-feed ads in WeChat Moments (朋友圈), yet earned unanimous public praise—in sharp contrast to the controversy surrounding 'Hou Lang (后浪)', a Digitaling (数英) author bluntly said 'Kuaishou (快手) gave Bilibili (B站) a good lesson'.
Why it lands
- Stand on the side of 'ordinary people', use the platform's real content to respond to elite narratives, and make the stance itself the creative idea
- Choose the 'Aoligei (奥利给)' uncle as the speaker, turning the internet's most memeable person into the spokesperson for a brand manifesto
- Small budget, no agency, zero central media resources; word-of-mouth spread relies entirely on the content itself
- Benchmark against the controversy over 'Hou Lang (后浪)': the rival's failure point becomes one's own leverage point
What it did
'Seeing (看见)' surpassed 10 million views within 4 hours of being released on Weibo (微博); by the evening of June 7, it had 32.74 million views, nearly 187,600 reposts, and about 530,000 likes, and the topic #Aoligei (奥利给) Moments of Small People# reached 280 million reads; unlike 'Hou Lang (后浪)', which received mixed praise and criticism, 'Seeing (看见)' received unanimous public praise and was evaluated by media as 'giving Bilibili (B站) a good lesson'.
What you can take
Capitalizing on a rival's elite narrative failure, stand with ordinary people using real user content; right stance can beat resource-heavy campaigns.
Since then
After 'Seeing (看见)', 'Aoligei (奥利给)' and 'laotie, mei maobing (老铁,没毛病)' further became national memes; in 2020, Kuaishou (快手) continued to sign Jay Chou (周杰伦), sponsor the CCTV Spring Festival Gala (央视春晚), and advance its brand upgrade to remove earthiness (去土味化); 'Seeing (看见)' was listed by multiple media outlets on 2020 annual brand film rankings, became a representative work of 'ordinary narrative' marketing, and also opened the topic of a 'manifesto film showdown' between the Bilibili (B站) and Kuaishou (快手) platforms.
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