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FairPrice Group Finds the Dragon Spirit in Chinese New Year Retail
FairPrice Group's "More Reasons to Celebrate" is a 2024 Chinese New Year film and 360° digital campaign produced in Singapore that retells the Dragon's story from the ancient Great Race mythology, drawing a direct parallel between the Dragon's spirit of generosity and FairPrice's role in helping Singaporeans prepare for CNY reunions and feasts, according to Fairpricegroup Com Sg.
Launched in January 2024 and created with agency partners TBWA\Singapore, eg+, and creative collaborator Homeground United, the campaign centres on a single animating insight: in Chinese mythology, the Dragon was destined for first place in the Great Race yet chose acts of kindness along the way, ultimately finishing fifth, according to Straitstimes. FairPrice Group adopts that same narrative logic, positioning the brand not as a commercial winner but as a willing helper behind the grand spectacle of festive celebration, according to Campaignbriefasia. The campaign film carries the hashtag #FairPriceCNY and was accompanied by digital and 360° media activations across the Singapore market.
The campaign's objectives are threefold. First, it reinforces FairPrice Group's social purpose — easing the cost of living and providing essentials to the community — during the most commercially and culturally significant retail period on the Singapore calendar. Second, it celebrates the people whose labour makes CNY feasts and reunions possible, inviting audiences to carry the Dragon spirit of inclusiveness forward into the new year. Third, it drives practical retail engagement, promoting fresh ingredients, greater value and savings, and the convenience of the FairPrice Group app. In Singapore, where NTUC FairPrice Group holds an estimated 49.3% share of the modern grocery market in 2024 according to Retail Asia, a campaign that fuses cultural resonance with utilitarian retail messaging speaks simultaneously to brand equity and basket conversion.
FairPrice Group's strategic rationale for "More Reasons to Celebrate" rests on a well-established truth in Singapore retail: Chinese New Year is the single most commercially consequential season for grocery and fresh-produce categories. Singapore's food-and-grocery retail market generated S$12.3 billion in 2024, with food accounting for S$8.7 billion, or 71.1% of the total, according to IGD. Within that landscape, CNY concentrates purchasing intensity into a compressed window, making brand relevance during January the difference between loyalty reinforcement and lost share.
The consumer insight driving the campaign is that Singaporean families experience CNY preparation as an act of care rather than mere consumption, according to Ntuc Org Sg. By personifying that act of care through the Dragon — a zodiac figure already culturally loaded with auspiciousness in the 2024 Year of the Dragon — TBWA\Singapore and eg+ found a storytelling device that required no translation for its target audience. Alison Ee, FairPrice Group's director and head of customer and marketing, explicitly connected the Dragon spirit to the brand's social purpose of serving the community and easing consumers' cost of living, as reported by Campaign Brief Asia and Marketech APAC.
Competitively, the strategy is shrewd. Sheng Siong holds an estimated 20.4% share of Singapore's modern grocery market in 2024, according to Retail Asia, making it the most direct challenger to FairPrice Group's dominant position. Where Sheng Siong's brand identity leans on value and local accessibility, FairPrice Group's campaign claims higher cultural ground — positioning the brand as an active participant in Singaporean heritage rather than simply a price-competitive retailer. Cold Storage, operated by Dairy Farm International, competes in the premium grocery segment and does not contest the same cultural positioning. By anchoring "More Reasons to Celebrate" in mythology rather than promotion, FairPrice Group signals a brand that belongs to Singapore's festive identity, not merely its festive shopping list.
The "More Reasons to Celebrate" film executes its creative premise through narrative parallelism rather than product demonstration. The campaign retells the Great Race from Chinese mythology, foregrounding the Dragon's decision to pause, help, and share rather than race for first place, then cuts between that mythological world and the contemporary reality of Singaporeans preparing CNY feasts — the fishmongers, the grandmothers, the families crowding fresh-produce aisles. The structural move is deliberate: by intercutting myth and modernity, the film argues that the Dragon spirit is not an ancient abstraction but a living quality expressed through the everyday generosity of the FairPrice Group ecosystem.
Loo Yong Ping, Deputy Executive Creative Director at TBWA\Singapore, articulated the brand logic behind the execution. As reported by Campaign Brief Asia and Marketech APAC, Loo stated that FairPrice as a brand has always been dedicated to extending a helping hand to make lives better for the people, and that the brand's role in the community has always been significant, especially so during festive seasons. That statement functions as both a creative brief and a tonal directive: the film must feel earned, not aspirational.
Joyce Chen, managing director of eg+, was quoted on cultural insight and client-agency collaboration by both Campaign Brief Asia and Marketech APAC, underscoring the importance of approaching the Great Race retelling with fidelity to its mythological source rather than treating it as mere decorative reference. The 360° and digital extensions of the campaign carried the same tonal consistency as the film, with the FairPrice Group app and in-store promotions integrated as practical expressions of the same Dragon-spirit generosity. Production credits beyond the named creative leadership at TBWA\Singapore and eg+ are not publicly documented in full detail across available sources.
The "More Reasons to Celebrate" campaign film recorded 169,531 views and 70 likes on Clapboard. No verified performance data beyond those platform metrics — including sales uplift, brand-tracking shifts, or independent reach figures — is publicly available for this campaign. No verified awards at Cannes Lions or Effie Awards have been confirmed for this work at the time of publication.
Assessed on structural effectiveness, the campaign demonstrates meaningful strategic coherence. The choice to anchor a retail brand's CNY message in Chinese mythology rather than price-and-product mechanics is a defensible creative risk in Singapore's grocery market, where NTUC FairPrice Group already commands an estimated 49.3% share of modern grocery according to Retail Asia and therefore has less need to shout on price than to deepen cultural legitimacy. The Dragon narrative provides the film with a storytelling logic that is culturally specific to Singapore and to the 2024 Year of the Dragon calendar cycle, limiting its shelf life but maximising its contextual resonance within that window.
The campaign's structural weakness is the lightness of its digital engagement relative to its view count — 70 likes against 169,531 views represents a low interaction rate that suggests the film reached audiences broadly but did not compel active participation at scale. This may reflect distribution mechanics as much as creative response. Overall, Clapboard rates "More Reasons to Celebrate" at 67 out of 100, acknowledging strong strategic and cultural grounding tempered by modest measurable engagement and the absence of independently verified results.
"More Reasons to Celebrate" is a 2024 Chinese New Year campaign by FairPrice Group in Singapore. Created by TBWA\Singapore, eg+, and Homeground United, it retells the Dragon's story from Chinese mythology's Great Race to position FairPrice as a generous, community-minded partner in CNY preparation, running across film, digital, and 360° formats.
TBWA\Singapore and eg+ served as the lead agencies on "More Reasons to Celebrate," with Homeground United as creative partner. Loo Yong Ping, Deputy Executive Creative Director at TBWA\Singapore, and Joyce Chen, managing director of eg+, were among the named creative leaders quoted in coverage by Campaign Brief Asia and Marketech APAC.
FairPrice Group used the Great Race narrative because 2024 is the Year of the Dragon, making the Dragon's mythology immediately culturally relevant in Singapore. The Dragon's choice of generosity over winning provided a direct symbolic parallel to FairPrice's brand purpose of helping the community, as explained by the brand's head of customer and marketing, Alison Ee.
The campaign film recorded 169,531 views and 70 likes on Clapboard. No independently verified sales, brand-tracking, or award data is publicly available. Clapboard rates the campaign 67 out of 100, citing strong cultural and strategic grounding but noting modest active engagement relative to overall view count.
FairPrice Group holds an estimated 49.3% share of Singapore's modern grocery market in 2024, according to Retail Asia. That dominant position allows the brand to invest in cultural storytelling rather than purely price-led messaging, distinguishing it from competitors such as Sheng Siong, which holds an estimated 20.4% share and competes primarily on value and local accessibility.
Alongside its mythological narrative, "More Reasons to Celebrate" promoted fresh ingredients, greater value and savings, and the convenience of the FairPrice Group app for CNY shopping in Singapore. The campaign used the hashtag #FairPriceCNY and integrated practical retail messaging across its digital and 360° extensions, connecting the Dragon-spirit theme to tangible consumer benefits.
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