The archive · Content & Film · Marketing decision · 2020
Wufangzhai's 'Find a Friend' ads make collabs a child's dream — Wufang Studios is born
99-year-old zongzi brand films a boy's dreamlike quest to meet collab partners — 'Wufang Studios' persona is cemented.
Wufangzhai (五芳斋)
What it had to solve
Wufangzhai, founded in 1921, was a respected time-honored brand but aging; since 2018 it had been reinventing itself with deliberately weird ads under the 'Wufang Studios' persona. For Dragon Boat Festival 2020 it needed to sell co-branded zongzi with young food brands.
How it works
For Dragon Boat Festival 2020, Wufangzhai — the Jiaxing zongzi maker founded in 1921 — ran a campaign built on friendship. It posted 18 posters 'helping friends advertise' for brands such as Mengniu and Xiao Ming Tongxue, then released a three-part film, 'Find a Friend,' for its co-branded products with AKOKO cookies, Laxim Shuo ramen and Zhong Xue Gao ice cream.
The film is a child's stream-of-consciousness dream: a boy crosses wheat fields, becomes Van Gogh cutting a solid sea, wonders about Plato's split halves, quotes The Little Prince, and eventually announces 'zongzi meets cookies,' 'zongzi meets ramen,' 'zongzi meets ice cream.' Copy like 'I'm 99 and I've never had a cookie — is that reasonable?' refers to the brand's own age.
Commentary split between bafflement and love. Ad writers read the films as a deliberate code for young audiences who post in-jokes instead of plain statuses; one roundup called Wufangzhai 'the most playful time-honored brand,' able to film like Wong Kar-wai, Disney or Spielberg. By 2020 the 'Wufang Studios' persona was established brand lore.
Context gave the joke weight: in the Alibaba Research Institute's 2018 time-honored-brand index, Wufangzhai's recognition score beat Moutai's; Adquan reported the brand sells 407 million zongzi a year at over 45% gross margin, with Tmall monthly sales roughly double the runner-up — evidence the weird ads did not hurt the core business.
Why it lands
- Deliberate opacity became a signature: 'ads you can't understand' are memorable in a feed of plain selling.
- The collab partners brought their own young fanbases, who decoded the film together and spread it.
- The 'helping friends advertise' posters flipped the attention economy — free goodwill instead of borrowed hype.
- Years of strange ads made the campaign recognizable brand character, not a one-off stunt.
What it did
The campaign cemented a persona netizens dubbed 'Wufang Studios'; by 2020 the brand's recognition index (Alibaba Research Institute, 2018) outscored Moutai's, its Tmall zongzi sales roughly doubled the runner-up, and it sold 407 million zongzi a year at over 45% gross margin.
What you can take
An old brand can borrow youth by making advertising deliberately hard to understand: the confusion becomes a signature, and the collab partners' fans decode it together.
Since then
Wufangzhai kept producing surreal films, and the style became its brand identity, routinely cited in Chinese marketing commentary as a model for time-honored brands going young. The brand entered IPO counseling in autumn 2019 and listed as the 'zongzi first stock' in 2022, with the 'Wufang Studios' persona still part of its marketing.
Sources
- Wufangzhai's Dragon Boat ads: helping 18 friends promote, plus a baffling film
- Wufangzhai's 'Find a Friend' ad is a bit stream-of-consciousness
- Wufangzhai's co-branded ad: 'we'll have layers together'
- How time-honored brands get younger: Wufangzhai, Zhulaoda, Zhenzhenlaolao
- Wufangzhai lists on the SSE main board, becoming the 'zongzi first stock'
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