FairPrice Finds the Love Hidden Inside Lunar New Year Chores
FairPrice's "Love prospers in the little things" is a 2025 Lunar New Year film campaign set in Singapore that follows Mi Bao, a feline character inspired by the traditional fortune cat, as she observes quiet, intimate gestures of care exchanged between family members, friends, strangers, and FairPrice staff during the Chinese New Year season, according to Giiresearch.
The campaign launched in January 2025 across television and online channels in Singapore, created by Homeground United — the creative unit comprising Omnicom Production and TBWA\Singapore, according to Marketing Interactive. Its central question is deceptively simple: are the preparations that define Lunar New Year merely chores, or are they rituals born out of love? FairPrice's answer, delivered through Mi Bao's wandering perspective, is unambiguously the latter. A daughter chooses red for her mother. An Indian boy learns a New Year custom. FairPrice staff assist customers with quiet attentiveness. Each small exchange accumulates into a portrait of a community that expresses affection through action rather than declaration.
In Singapore, where NTUC FairPrice commands an estimated share of between 42 and 50 percent of grocery and food-and-grocery revenue according to industry analysis, the brand carries a cultural weight that extends well beyond the supermarket floor, according to Marketech-Apac. "Love prospers in the little things" leverages that embedded presence to position FairPrice not merely as a retailer but as an empathetic partner in customers' most meaningful seasonal rituals. The campaign extends FairPrice's established "make lives better" brand positioning while sharpening its emotional focus from broad social utility toward the intimate, everyday texture of family life during Chinese New Year. A companion activation — Chinese New Year Block Parties combining cultural experiences and games — brought the campaign's themes into physical community spaces across Singapore, reinforcing the film's message through direct participation.
FairPrice built this campaign on a specific and defensible cultural truth about Singapore's Lunar New Year, according to Jengyo. Festive preparations in Singaporean households — the cleaning, the cooking, the shopping, the visiting — are rarely experienced as pure celebration in the moment they are performed. They carry the weight of obligation alongside the warmth of tradition. The strategic insight is that reframing these acts as expressions of love, rather than burdens to be discharged, creates genuine emotional resonance without requiring the brand to fabricate sentiment.
Yong Ping Loo, Executive Creative Director at TBWA\Singapore, articulated the cultural grounding of this approach directly, noting that Asians are not overt in how they show love, as reported by Marketing-Interactive, according to LinkedIn. This observation shapes the entire creative grammar of the campaign: love in "Love prospers in the little things" is never stated, only demonstrated — through gesture, proximity, and small practical acts. Mi Bao functions as the ideal narrative witness precisely because a cat requires no explanation and offers no editorialising. She simply watches.
In Singapore's grocery retail market — described as mature and highly competitive by industry analysts — FairPrice faces sustained pressure from Dairy Farm International's Cold Storage and DFI network, as well as Sheng Siong, which holds an estimated 20 percent market share in 2025 according to industry estimates. Against competitors whose Chinese New Year campaigns have historically leaned on aspirational family reunion tableaux, FairPrice's choice to anchor its storytelling in the unspectacular moments of preparation — not the reunion dinner itself — represents a meaningful strategic differentiation. As reported by Campaign Brief Asia, the broader campaign was described as a multi-faceted integrated campaign built around harmony, connection, and appreciation, suggesting a deliberate ambition to own the emotional register of everyday festive life rather than its cinematic peak moments.
The 2025 FairPrice Chinese New Year film deploys a single, sustained creative conceit: the world of Lunar New Year preparation observed entirely through the mobile gaze of Mi Bao, a cat whose name in Mandarin — 咪宝 — translates loosely as "precious little meow." Mi Bao is explicitly inspired by the traditional fortune cat, a figure whose cultural associations with good luck and domestic abundance give the character immediate legibility across Singapore's multicultural audience without requiring exposition.
The choice of a non-human protagonist is a craft decision as much as a creative one. Mi Bao moves freely between social contexts — family home, neighbourhood street, FairPrice store floor — without the narrative awkwardness that would accompany a human observer in the same spaces. She witnesses a daughter selecting red clothing for her mother, an Indian boy absorbing a Chinese New Year tradition, and FairPrice employees attending to customers with unhurried care. Each vignette is constructed to feel observed rather than staged, a quality that Campaign Brief Asia noted in its coverage of the campaign as reported by that publication. The film's visual and tonal register is deliberately quiet: domestic light, unhurried editing, and an absence of the orchestral swells that characterise many festive retail productions.
Alison Ee, Director and Head of Customer and Marketing for Retail Business at FairPrice Group, stated that the brand believes love thrives in the little things — in familiar and meaningful rituals that celebrate kinship during Chinese New Year, as reported by Marketing-Interactive. Joyce Chen, Chief Executive Officer of Omnicom Production, stated that the campaign honours the rich heritage of the season while adding joy and demonstrating the value FairPrice brings to its customers, also as reported by Marketing-Interactive. The campaign asset consists of a single film of approximately 60 seconds in length, distributed across television and online channels in Singapore.
No verified performance data for "Love prospers in the little things" is publicly available. FairPrice and its agency partners have not released quantified metrics covering viewership, brand lift, or sales attribution for the campaign period. What can be assessed is structural effectiveness.
The campaign earned editorial recognition from multiple trade publications in Singapore and the region. Marketing-Interactive included the film among Singapore's notable Lunar New Year festive films for 2025, and Campaign Brief Asia characterised the broader effort as a multi-faceted integrated campaign, as reported by those respective publications. These are indicators of industry visibility, though not of commercial outcome.
Structurally, the campaign demonstrates several attributes associated with durable festive retail communication. The Mi Bao character is original, culturally grounded, and transferable — qualities that allow FairPrice to build recognition equity across future Lunar New Year cycles rather than starting from a blank creative canvas each year. The film's avoidance of explicit product placement in favour of ambient brand presence is consistent with the emotional positioning of a retailer that holds a dominant share of Singapore's grocery market and does not need to argue utility; it needs to argue affinity.
The Chinese New Year Block Party activation extends the campaign from passive viewing into active community participation, a structural decision that increases the probability of genuine brand association rather than mere ad recall. Clapboard Score for this campaign is 66 out of 100, reflecting competent and culturally attentive execution within a crowded seasonal category, with room to push further on originality and measurable integration depth.
"Love prospers in the little things" is FairPrice's Chinese New Year 2025 film campaign, created in Singapore by Homeground United, Omnicom Production, and TBWA\Singapore. It follows Mi Bao, a fortune-cat-inspired character, observing small acts of care during Lunar New Year preparations. The campaign launched in January 2025 across television and online channels.
Mi Bao is a fictional cat character inspired by the traditional fortune cat. FairPrice used Mi Bao as a neutral observer who moves freely across domestic and retail spaces without narrative friction. The character's name, 咪宝, means precious little meow, and its fortune-cat heritage gives it immediate cultural legibility for Singapore audiences.
The campaign was created by Homeground United, the creative unit comprising Omnicom Production and TBWA\Singapore. Alison Ee led the client side as Director and Head of Customer and Marketing at FairPrice Group. Yong Ping Loo served as Executive Creative Director at TBWA\Singapore, with Joyce Chen as CEO of Omnicom Production.
The campaign extends FairPrice's established "make lives better" positioning, shifting emotional emphasis toward intimate, everyday expressions of love rather than broad social utility. In Singapore, where FairPrice holds an estimated 42 to 50 percent of grocery revenue according to industry analysis, the brand focuses on affinity over utility to maintain its dominant cultural presence.
The FairPrice "Love prospers in the little things" campaign receives a Clapboard Score of 66 out of 100. The score reflects culturally attentive and competent festive execution, with the Mi Bao character offering strong brand-building potential. The score also identifies room for greater originality and deeper measurable integration across the campaign's components.
FairPrice differentiates from competitors including Sheng Siong and Cold Storage by anchoring its storytelling in the unspectacular moments of Lunar New Year preparation rather than aspirational reunion tableaux. Campaign Brief Asia described the effort as a multi-faceted integrated campaign built around harmony and connection, a register distinct from conventional festive retail narratives in Singapore.
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