Founded in 1990, Li-Ning is China’s leading homegrown sports brand. They design and sell a wide variety of sporting goods and sponsor high-profile Chinese and international athletes including the NBA’s Dwayne Wade.

Even though the brand is beginning to step onto the global stage, it is still immensely proud of its Chinese roots and wanted to celebrate them in a brand campaign that would bring to life their ‘Make the Change’ philosophy with a unique Chinese twist.

We needed to launch our campaign across digital channels and outdoor in tier 1 cities across the country.

Cupping is a traditional Chinese medical therapy that dates back 3,000 years. It is still practiced across the country, including at Shanghai’s renowned Tong Tian He Pharmacy, established in 1877.

Today, cupping is used by athletes around the world to aid recovery by relieving muscular pain.

Our idea was to transform this traditional therapy into a unique branding campaign. We collaborated with physicians from Tong Tian He Pharmacy to create special typographic healing cups in the shapes of Chinese characters – that were still designed with efficacy in mind. We used the cups to spell out the individually crafted creeds of sponsored athletes directly onto their bodies – messages of motivation saying that pain is a medal worth striving for. The cups also served their original purpose to relieve the muscle pain that athletes suffer from.

Our target audience were Li-Ning’s sports mad fans and potential new customers across Mainland China. With the dominance of global players such as Nike and Adidas in the country, we needed to take a more nuanced approach to our campaign, one that would be uniquely Chinese, celebrating the heritage of the brand. The campaign consisted of a Weibo Live broadcast, online film content and KVs.

Using CAD, we designed 40 different healing cups in the shapes of different Chinese characters, which were then 3D printed. This allowed us to create different creeds that were applied to the bodies of some of Li-Ning’s sponsored athletes by physicians at Shanghai’s Tong Tian He Pharmacy.

Each athlete was shot in action doing their sport or hard at work training. Every shot was art directed to highlight the messages of motivation on their bodies.

On April 11, 2019 #CuppingMyCreed launched with a Weibo Live online broadcast featuring athletes who had been treated with our unique healing cups. On April 20, OOH launched in iconic sites around major cities plus a content video that revealed how the innovative typography was created. All digital assets directed our audience to a discussion page on Sina Weibo.

Engagement for #CuppingMyCreed was 100+ million across WeChat and Weibo, with over 200,000 comments. The live online broadcast content was viewed 30+ million times, plus the campaign was picked up by major Chinese media portals.

Most importantly, the Li-Ning brand was able to connect with its young fans in a fresh, modern way that was Chinese at heart.