UCLA Health: Lunar New Year
Client: UCLA Health
Agency: Hylink
Year: 2020
Lunar New Year, also called Spring Festival, is the most important and most festive holiday of the year in China and other Asian countries like Korea, Vietnam, and Singapore. To increase UCLA Health’s brand awareness in China, and promote its brand values as well as an appreciation for Chinese culture, a series of social media shareables and interactive games were created to encourage engagement.
One of the customs to celebrate the holiday is to paste red paper decorations at the entrance to the home, usually including three elements: chunlian (auspicious phrases of new year’s blessing), menshen (a pair of Door Gods to guard the home), and fu (Chinese character meaning good fortune).
Our design places more focus on UCLA Health’s branding rather than following the traditional decoration format. As a play on words, “UCLA” letters are incorporated into the design of fu. The fu character is upside down because the word “upside-down” is a homophone of “here” in Chinese, which is a pun representing that good fortune is coming or is already here.
The intricate design of Door Gods features a surgeon and a doctor from UCLA Health, sending the health wishes to people in China and the Asian communities around the world. Ads and murals can be placed in LA as well to prompt local community engagement.
Paying respect to one’s ancestors has also remained in China’s philosophy throughout thousands of years of celebration. During the Lunar New Year, UCLA Health published a custom new year greeting card integrated with UCLA letters each day for the 15 days of the holiday on Weibo & WeChat (China’s social platforms). Through the social posts, users are directed to the HTML5 interactive game.
The phrases are traditional lucky words people use to express their love during the Lunar New Year, most of which are health-related message, as we are aiming to encourage our users to share the best wishes from UCLA Health with all their family and friends.
On New Year’s day, family members would give their loved ones red envelopes containing small amounts of money to show their blessings. Inspired by the tradition, the game invites users to create custom UCLA blue packets and share with the elders of their family to express their appreciation.