CIMB's You-Sang We-Sang, created by Ogilvy Malaysia in February 2019, reframes the origins of yee sang to make a case for imperfect, communal celebration.
CIMB Rewrites Chinese New Year Tradition With You-Sang We-Sang
CIMB's "You-Sang, We-Sang" is a 2019 Lunar New Year film produced in Malaysia by Ogilvy Malaysia that uses a fictional 1940s restaurant origin story for yee sang — the communal tossing dish central to Chinese New Year — to argue that shared, imperfect celebration matters more than visual perfection.
The campaign launched in Malaysia in February 2019, timed to the Gong Xi Fa Cai season. Its primary medium was a long-form narrative film, supported by a mobile yee-sang-tossing game that CIMB described as a first of its kind, according to reporting by Marketing Interactive. The central tension of the film revolves around competing historical claims about who invented yee sang, a debate with genuine cultural currency in Malaysia and Singapore. Rather than resolving the dispute, the story — set inside a fictional 1940s restaurant and anchored by a character known as Mr. You — uses that ambiguity to make its emotional argument: the messy, communal act of tossing the dish together is the point, not the provenance.
The campaign was developed by Ogilvy Malaysia alongside media partners IPG Mediabrands and Reprise Malaysia, according to adsoftheworld.com. Its objectives sat at the intersection of cultural relevance and brand warmth — positioning CIMB not as a transactional financial institution but as a bank that understands what celebration means to Malaysian Chinese communities during the Lunar New Year period. The Clapboard Score for this campaign is 67 out of 100, reflecting strong cultural specificity and narrative ambition against a backdrop of limited formal creative risk.
CIMB identified a genuine cultural flashpoint to build its 2019 Lunar New Year campaign around. Yee sang — the raw fish salad tossed communally at the table during Chinese New Year — is one of the most recognisable festive rituals in Malaysia, yet its precise origins are disputed between Malaysian and Singaporean culinary historians. That dispute is not a footnote; it is a lived conversation among the communities CIMB was trying to reach.
The strategic insight, as covered by brandinginasia.com, is that celebrations are only perfect when shared, regardless of whose version of history is correct. By refusing to arbitrate the origin debate and instead celebrating the act of collective tossing, Ogilvy Malaysia gave CIMB a position that felt generous rather than corporate. The mobile yee-sang-tossing game extended that logic into an interactive format, inviting audiences to participate rather than simply watch.
In Malaysia, the banking sector is highly consolidated. According to asianbankingandfinance.net, Malaysia's six largest banking groups account for approximately seventy percent of system loans, making differentiation at the brand and culture level critically important for any institution seeking to build affinity beyond rate competition. CIMB competes directly with Maybank, which has a long history of high-production festive advertising, and Public Bank, both of which invest significantly in Lunar New Year Ads to capture emotional share of wallet. Against that competitive backdrop, grounding "You-Sang, We-Sang" in a specific, narratively original cultural story rather than generic festivity was a deliberate strategic choice designed to cut through a saturated seasonal advertising environment in the Malaysian market.
Ogilvy Malaysia constructed the film around a period setting. The creative team placed its central character, Mr. You, inside a fictional 1940s restaurant, using production design, costuming, and a warm, desaturated colour palette to signal historical authenticity while maintaining the freedom of fiction. The period frame allowed the film to dramatise the origin-of-yee-sang debate without requiring factual precision — a smart creative solution to a culturally sensitive subject.
Creative directors on the campaign were Jarrod Reginald and Pashyn Sethna, according to adsoftheworld.com. The copywriting team comprised Andrew Perera, Naomi Hon, Sheena Sidhu, and Joceline Yan, also per adsoftheworld.com. The script operates on two registers simultaneously: a surface-level culinary mystery and a deeper argument about what communal ritual is actually for. That layered writing is what separates the film from the category norm of straightforward family reunion narratives that dominate Lunar New Year advertising across Malaysia and the broader region.
The Drum's Asia Editor Charlotte McEleny featured the campaign in the publication's "Ads We Like" editorial format on January 31, 2019, describing the film positively and noting its thematic ambition, according to thedrum.com. The film's long-form structure — it qualified for and won Best Long Form Video at Festival YouTube Malaysia 2019, per Campaign Asia — gave the narrative room to breathe and build emotional momentum in a way that a thirty-second execution could not have achieved. The companion mobile game, described by CIMB as the first of its kind in the market according to marketing-interactive.com, extended the film's central metaphor of participatory, imperfect togetherness into a tactile digital experience.
The campaign's performance was substantial by any measure available in the public record. CIMB Group Chief Marketing Officer Mohamed Adam Wee Abdullah reported that the video received more than three million views within eight days of its launch, according to marketing-interactive.com. That figure, delivered in a market the size of Malaysia, represents a significant organic reach achievement for a piece of long-form branded content in the finance category.
The campaign won two awards at Festival YouTube Malaysia 2019: Best Long Form Video (over two minutes) and Best Ad in the Financial Services and Institutions category, as reported by campaignasia.com and marketing-interactive.com. Both wins are independently verifiable through festival records. The dual recognition confirms that the film performed not only algorithmically — earning views — but also against the creative and strategic judgement of industry juries.
No verified data on brand-lift metrics, search uplift, or direct product attribution for the You-Sang We-Sang campaign is publicly available beyond the view count and award outcomes cited above. Structurally, however, the campaign's effectiveness case is coherent: a culturally specific narrative in a high-competition festive window, distributed on a platform optimised for long-form content, supported by an interactive mobile extension, and validated by both audience scale and peer recognition. The Clapboard Score of 67 out of 100 reflects that coherence while acknowledging that the creative ambition, though above category average for Malaysian Lunar New Year banking advertising, does not fully disrupt the conventions of the genre.
CIMB's You-Sang We-Sang is a 2019 Lunar New Year film set in a fictional 1940s Malaysian restaurant. It dramatises the disputed origins of yee sang to argue that the communal act of tossing the dish together matters more than who invented it, positioning CIMB as a bank that values shared celebration over perfection.
Ogilvy Malaysia created the campaign for CIMB, with media support from IPG Mediabrands and Reprise Malaysia. Creative directors were Jarrod Reginald and Pashyn Sethna, according to adsoftheworld.com. The copywriting team included Andrew Perera, Naomi Hon, Sheena Sidhu, and Joceline Yan, all per adsoftheworld.com.
The film received more than three million views within eight days of launch in Malaysia, according to marketing-interactive.com. CIMB Group Chief Marketing Officer Mohamed Adam Wee Abdullah confirmed that figure publicly, making it one of the most-watched pieces of long-form banking content during the 2019 Chinese New Year season in the Malaysian market.
The campaign won two awards at Festival YouTube Malaysia 2019: Best Long Form Video for content over two minutes in length, and Best Ad in the Financial Services and Institutions category, as reported by campaignasia.com and marketing-interactive.com. Both recognitions confirm the film's performance across audience scale and industry creative evaluation in Malaysia.
CIMB chose the disputed origins of yee sang because it is a culturally live debate among Malaysian Chinese communities during Gong Xi Fa Cai. As covered by brandinginasia.com, the campaign's core message holds that celebrations are only perfect when shared, turning an unresolved culinary question into an argument for togetherness that aligned with CIMB's brand positioning.
CIMB launched a mobile yee-sang-tossing game alongside the film, which the bank described as the first of its kind in Malaysia, according to marketing-interactive.com. The game extended the film's central metaphor of participatory, imperfect celebration into an interactive digital format, inviting audiences to engage directly rather than passively consume the campaign's narrative.
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