Kris Wu, a major star in China (as popular in China as One Direction or Justin Bieber in the West), became the spokesperson for Tencent’s first 3D first-person shooter game “We Fire” in August 2015. With tens of thousands of celebrities making simple product endorsements in China every year, you have to go a step further to attract attention. Our objective for this project was to surpass other celebrity endorsements and incite a frenzy among both fans and the general public.

We wanted Wu to endorse the We Fire game, but not by an ordinary method. As a busy celebrity, he had only one hour to give to us for shooting, so we needed a plan to translate that hour of work time into a maximum number of fans reached. We spent a week planning the fake news story and special effects, after which we placed the “story” in a real news feed. The “story” could be shared to all social media platforms. The interactive experience – a celebrity emerging from his photo and making a FaceTime call to his fans – spurred millions of shares and made the ad an overnight sensation.