Spring Festival and the Year of the Dog are four days away. Although today is still a work day for most Chinese companies, people seem to be distracted from their day jobs by “2?18汪年全家福” (Family Portrait of the Year of the Dog), a viral campaign developed by child lifestyle brand PUPUPULA that has reached over 100 million hits.
On the starting screen, a prompt reads: “No matter if it’s relatives, kids, pets or friends, they all keep us company; To capture the moment is the meaning of a family portrait.”
Set initially in an empty room with a wood floor, you can choose the furniture, hang an upside-down “福” character on the wall (“Blessing,” a word traditionally hung on doorways during the holiday), and add your cartoon family members in detail, customizing their hairstyle, clothing, glasses, and facial hair.
Then add your Tabby or Persian, Corgi, Golden Retriever or Husky:
Of course there’s an option to add your “frog sons” as well (be careful: they will jump around and be hard to control, as always). Apparently some families are taking the hit game Traveling Frog very seriously:
That’s it. Don’t forget to save your personalized family portrait! Naturally, once it’s saved, you can easily share your portrait on WeChat or Weibo.
“It is greatly exceeding our expectation, totally,” Han Yi, PUPUPULA’s co-founder and the person in charge of the family portrait program, told Q Daily in an interview (link in Chinese). “We were expecting only 500,000 direct hits at first, we didn’t even promote it,” Han said, marveling at the fact that the app has received over 3 million direct hits and the above-mentioned 100 million total clicks.
A beta version of the game was released at the end of 2017, and it spread at a smaller scale. “We adjusted a bit to let users be able to create more diverse families,” Han told Q Daily. “For example, they could be dad and a mom, as well as two mothers or two fathers.”
“We adjusted a bit to let users be able to create more diverse families. For example, they could be dad and a mom, as well as two mothers or two fathers.” — PUPUPULA co-founder Han Yi
PUPUPULA didn’t place their logo in the game very prominently, because they wanted to attract customers who were genuinely interested in them, rather than funnel users without children towards their products. However, some household items for kids that appear in the game will be released by the company after Spring Festival.
Here are some more creative pictures from the game’s many users:
Some snake, squirrel and lizard owners have been asking why there aren’t more pets to choose from. As a proud bunny owner, I wonder the same thing…
Read more:
Cover image: @PUPUPULA (Weibo)
