Role: Strategist and Planner

Agency: R/GA Japan

Market: Taiwan

Client: PONOS – The Battle Cats

Languages: English and Chinese

Year: 2024 and 2025

As the Strategist and Planner on R/GA Strategy team, my focus was on the Taiwan market for the 2025 Lunar New Year campaign, celebrating the Year of the Snake for PONOS and their hit game The Battle Cats. This cross-cultural project involved collaboration across five locations and three time zones (Australia, South Korea/Japan, and Singapore/Taiwan), and discussions within four languages (English, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese). I worked closely with our Creative and Production team, alongside local media agency.

• Strategy: Developed a culturally nuanced Lunar New Year strategy that seamlessly integrated Taiwanese and Korean traditions with The Battle Cats' gameplay and narrative.

• Media Planning and Campaign Execution: Collaborated with local media agencies to execute a multi-platform paid media strategy, encompassing digital advertising, influencer partnerships, and OOH placements, to maximise campaign reach and impact within the Taiwan market.

• The Challenge

  • Adapting same assets for two markets: A key challenge in this project was adapting the same creative assets for South Korea and Taiwan, while respecting the cultural nuances of both markets. Despite both regions being in East Asia and sharing similar cultural backgrounds, each country celebrates the Lunar New Year in its own unique way. South Korea celebrates Seollal for three days, which includes sebae (a traditional bowing to elders), while Taiwan celebrates Chinese New Year for 16 days, concluding with the Lantern Festival on the 15th day of the lunar calendar.

  • Both cultures value family gatherings and fortune-telling through zodiac signs, but the festivities differ in duration, customs, and even the significance of certain colors and symbols.

• Cultural Insights (some examples)

  • Snake Symbolism: While the snake is often associated with negative connotations in the West, it represents positive traits in East Asia, such as rebirth (shedding skin), intelligence (keen senses and adaptability), and resilience (camouflage and survival).

  • Color Significance: In South Korea, the festival is celebrated with soft pastels, whereas in Taiwan (and broader Chinese culture), Chinese New Year red(not CCP red) is predominant, symbolising prosperity, good fortune, and celebrating the arrival of spring for Spring Festival(aka the Chinese New Year).

  • By conducting in-depth research into these cultural insights, I was able to feed valuable information to the creative team, ensuring that we remained sensitive to local traditions while delivering a unified, cross-cultural campaign.

• Creative Concept

  • The Battle Cats campaign needed to integrate the festive spirit of the Lunar New Year while highlighting one of the game’s most iconic elements—the CAT CAN. After several brainstorming sessions, we developed a creative idea that incorporated the dog (a natural enemy of the cat) helping his friend, the snake, to battle the cats. In this campaign, the dog hides dog cans (vegan, collagen-filled, no MSG) throughout the game. These dog cans are far superior to the cat cans, as they can be exchanged for 10 cat cans.

  • The reason for the dog's actions? It’s simply in the dog’s nature to hide good things so no one else can find them—adding a playful twist to the story.

  • The Illustration: The dog’s drawing of the ad’s design was part of the creative concept—a fun and quirky element that reflects the dog’s personality. The design was intentionally “ugly-beautiful,” and our talented designer did an incredible job bringing this concept to life in Figma, showcasing the dog’s unique and imperfect artistic style.

Below is teaser film and the actual launch film.

The campaign will run till the end of February 2025.