Shot on iPhone: Little Garlic
Client: Apple
2024
🎯 Challenge
Chinese New Year is the most commercially competitive moment in China's calendar, bigger than the Super Bowl in scale and cultural weight. Apple had produced a long-form CNY film every year for six consecutive years. The seventh needed to feel fresh and earn cultural resonance rather than simply demand it.
💡 Insight
China's Gen-Z were living through a period of profound self-doubt. Post-Covid uncertainty, relentless social media comparison, and an record youth unemployment had created a quiet crisis of confidence in young people. The tension was internal: a generation being told they could be anything, quietly wondering if who they already were was enough.
🚀 Solution
Tap into that tension directly. Rather than celebrate Chinese New Year with aspiration or nostalgia — the two most common routes — we gave the audience something more personal: permission to be themselves.
The Work
The film follows a young girl with the power to shapeshift into anyone around her, gradually learning that her real superpower is the confidence to stay exactly who she is. Shot entirely on iPhone, the device itself becomes the storyteller: intimate, close, honest. Little Garlic launched during Chinese New Year 2024 and reached 306 million views in its first 72 hours, breaking viewership records for the campaign. It generated over 1,700 press articles (50% more than the prior year) and was featured in a long-form segment by Chinese state media, a rare distinction for any advertising campaign, and almost unheard of for a foreign tech brand.