City Dwellers Dream of Snow in Ad Pushing Winter Sports in China

Ski season’s in progress. What better way to welcome it than by bidding farewell to everything that too quickly gripped your softened attentions after the holidays?

Goodbye, enterprise group chat. Goodbye, libraries. Goodbye, even, to the slick hairdressers and the big city. “My soul’s hometown lies in the backcountry,” a man muses from the back of his taxi.

“Goodbye City, See You on Snow!” was created by Fred & Farid Shanghai for retail site TMall.com. The Alibaba Group brand, formerly called Taobao Mall, is using the ad to kick off its 2022 Winter Festival, a yearly digital shopping event dedicated to winter sports brands. 

While winter sports are still fairly new to China’s mainstream, they’re also among the fastest-growing commercial interests. By the Beijing Winter Olympics on Feb. 4, over $126 billion will be spent in China’s winter sports ecosystem, with an expected target of $160 billion by 2025.

Thus, at the same time that the Olympics will introduce the world to an association between China and snow (the country has nearly 800 ski resorts), China’s retailers will be more aggressively integrating a culture of winter sports into the mainland urban landscape.

The ad marks, but also ushers in, a new lifestyle ritual among city dwellers, who are as itchy as the rest of us to get outside as the pandemic wears on. This series of not-very-melancholy goodbyes introduces the idea that even preparing to hit the slopes—getting the right gear, doing your hair, making plans with your friends—is now part of the cycle of Chinese urban life, no matter where you find yourself in the social strata.

This is perhaps most apparent through the ad’s one child. “Goodbye, playground,” he thinks. “Mum says there are bigger slides on the mountain.” Habits start young.

See some print work below.

CREDITS

Client: Tmall, Alibaba Group
Title of the campaign: See you on Snow
Agency: FRED & FARID Shanghai
Chief creative officers: Fred & Farid
Executive creative director: Feng Huang
Creative director: Adrien Goris
Copywriters: Cao Wen, Yucy Wang
Art director: Billy Liao
Designer: Zoy Wang
Agency supervisors: Paul Lin, Chelsea Lin, Amber Yan, François Lin
Agency producers: Charles Renard, Caroline Wei
Brand Strategist: Karen Ge, Aaron Wang
Production company: FRED & FARID Shanghai
Director: Alvynn Diagne
1st AD: Ash
Executive Producer：Charles Renard
Producer: Jason Fu
Editor: Alvynn Diagne
Music composition: Ker Sound
Sound Recorder, Design & Final Mix: 韦代立