The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2019
UnionPay makes a 16-minute Tang epic about two soldiers delivering military pay
UnionPay and SGAD+ made a Tang-dynasty escort film; it hit Bilibili's #1 in 28 hours, 50M plays in 3 days.
UnionPay (中国银联) · UnionPay Yun Shan Fu (云闪付)
What it had to solve
In 2019 UnionPay's Yun Shan Fu app was a late challenger to Alipay and WeChat Pay, and the state-owned brand itself was a "familiar stranger" nobody could explain. It had to communicate a dry product fact — cross-bank transfers at zero fee — plus a promise of trustworthiness, without anything people could feel.
How it works
In 2019 UnionPay's Yun Shan Fu app was the third entrant in a mobile-payment market dominated by Alipay and WeChat Pay, and the brand itself was a "familiar stranger" — everyone had a UnionPay card, almost no one could say what UnionPay actually did. Its one honest advantage, cross-bank transfers at zero fee, was a feature so dry that no one felt anything about it.
Agency SGAD+ (胜加) and UnionPay decided the product fact needed a promise around it, and the promise needed a true story. They found the oldest transfer in Chinese history: after the An Lushan rebellion, the Tang army's Western Regions garrison lost contact with the capital for 42 years, yet soldiers kept escorting pay across the desert — the historical coin cast for that garrison is the film's centerpiece.
The resulting 16-minute film follows two soldiers, Guo Junye and Lu Shisi, who must deliver military pay from Kucha to Xizhou after their escort dies. They face sandstorms, bandits and the temptation to keep the money, and the brand appears only in the final frames, under the lines "Reject fate, accept only the mission" (不认命，只认使命) and "However far, it must arrive; not a cent missing" (虽远必达，分文不差).
A fan uploaded the film to Bilibili the night it launched; 28 hours later it was No.1 on the whole-site chart, and within three days it had 100M reads and 50M plays. UnionPay later said Yun Shan Fu's voluntary registrations rose more than 25% after it aired, and the Chinese industry spent the rest of 2019 debating what "blockbuster advertising" had proved about the length of attention.
Why it lands
- It anchored a dry product feature — zero-fee cross-bank transfers — to an emotional promise that a true historical story could carry, so the function became a mission.
- It bet on 16 minutes of cinema when the industry believed attention died after 15-30 seconds, making the length itself part of the surprise.
- It gave the audience work to do — history, characters — spawning thousands of long comments, fan comics and even an unofficial Japanese-subtitled version that spread without paid media.
- It let a state-owned challenger talk like a filmmaker rather than an institution, converting institutional trust into a reason to download the app.
What it did
A fan uploaded the film to Bilibili the night it launched; 28 hours later it topped the whole-site chart, and within three days it drew 100M reads and 50M plays, with comment threads running 100 to 2,000 characters across Weibo, Zhihu, Bilibili and forums. UnionPay later said Yun Shan Fu's voluntary registrations rose more than 25% after the film aired, and it became the year's most-cited example of long-form brand storytelling in Chinese advertising.
What you can take
When the product's real difference is a promise, don't demo the feature — tell the oldest true story of that promise; length is not the enemy of attention, a story worth finishing is.
Since then
Bilibili accidentally deleted the fan upload at one point; after 6,900 comments and 12,000 danmaku, the platform restored it within a day and viewers celebrated in the film's own dialogue. The work became the reference case for China's "blockbuster ad" trend — SGAD+ chief Ma Xiaobo said its industry contribution was proving that runtime is not the limit — and UnionPay kept the momentum with "Zhongguo Renmin Henxing" (《中国人民很行》) before the 70th anniversary and later campaigns. The film also traveled overseas through YouTube and Twitter, where audiences shared their own long reviews.
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