Fido and Rogers Bring Lunar New Year Home for Chinese Canadians
The 'Lunar New Year' campaign is a 2025 Canadian film advertisement created by Ethnicity Matters for telecommunications brands Fido and Rogers, positioning electronic devices as essential tools for cultural continuity and family connection among Chinese newcomers celebrating the holiday from afar, according to Adsoftheworld.
Fido and Rogers published the campaign in January 2025, timed precisely to coincide with the start of the Lunar New Year period in Canada. The work falls under the electronic devices category and was produced as a single film asset, making concentrated narrative craft the primary vehicle for its message. The campaign earned a Clapboard Score of 59 out of 100, reflecting a competent but not yet breakthrough execution within a strategically sound creative framework, according to Ethnicitymatters.
The campaign's central premise addresses a genuinely resonant human condition: the experience of Chinese Canadians and recent newcomers who participate in Lunar New Year celebrations while physically separated from family in their countries of origin. Rather than leading with product specifications or price-led offers, Fido and Rogers position their network and electronic devices as the connective tissue that makes those celebrations feel whole. The campaign was developed and submitted through Ethnicity Matters, a Canadian agency that specialises in multicultural marketing, and was subsequently listed on Ads of the World as a notable Canadian campaign entry, according to Ads of the World. The work reflects a deliberate strategic evolution for the Rogers-Fido portfolio, extending a multicultural marketing programme that previously centred on Diwali-themed campaigns and is now expanding its cultural calendar to include Chinese New Year as a primary creative moment.
Canada's telecommunications sector generated C$59.6 billion in revenue in 2023, according to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, making it one of the most competitive and capital-intensive consumer markets in the country. Mobile services represented approximately 55.2 percent of that total revenue, according to the CRTC, establishing wireless connectivity as the dominant battleground on which carriers like Rogers, Fido, Bell, and Telus compete for share.
The strategic logic behind a culturally specific Lunar New Year campaign becomes clear against this backdrop, according to Strategyonline Ca. In Canada, where immigration from East and Southeast Asia continues to grow, newcomer communities represent a significant and underserved acquisition opportunity for telecommunications brands. Chinese Canadians and recent arrivals from Lunar New Year-observing cultures carry a demonstrable need for reliable, affordable connectivity: staying in contact with family abroad during festivals is not a casual use case but an emotionally urgent one. By centering the campaign on this insight, Ethnicity Matters gives Fido and Rogers a meaningful point of differentiation from competitors such as Bell and Telus, whose mass-market campaigns do not typically speak to this audience in culturally specific terms.
The campaign also reflects a documented strategic shift within the Rogers-Fido multicultural marketing programme. According to Clapboard's editorial records, the brands previously ran Diwali-focused campaigns through Ethnicity Matters, including a 2023 Fido initiative titled 'Coming Home,' which offered a travel voucher to return to India for the festival. Extending that multicultural calendar to include Lunar New Year 2025 signals an intentional broadening of the programme's cultural scope, moving from South Asian audiences toward East Asian communities without abandoning the core strategic architecture of belonging, heritage, and connection through technology.
Ethnicity Matters directed the creative strategy and production of the 'Lunar New Year' film for Fido and Rogers, choosing the film medium as the sole asset format for this campaign. That decision concentrates the entire emotional and persuasive burden on a single piece of moving-image storytelling, a high-risk, high-reward approach in a category where brands frequently rely on multi-asset rollouts to distribute messaging risk.
The film's thematic architecture centres on the experience of maintaining cultural heritage and participating in Lunar New Year celebrations while away from one's original home, according to Clapboard's editorial analysis. This is a narrative posture that demands visual and emotional specificity to work: generic imagery of red lanterns and family meals would undermine the campaign's stated commitment to cultural respect and authenticity. The effectiveness of any film operating in this space depends on the quality of cultural detail, the authenticity of casting and performance, and the precision with which the brand's product role is integrated into the human story rather than imposed upon it.
Bobby Sahni of Ethnicity Matters posted a description of the campaign on LinkedIn following its publication, according to Clapboard's archive records. Production credits for the 'Lunar New Year' campaign beyond Sahni's agency involvement are not publicly documented in full detail across available sources, according to About Rogers. The campaign was listed on Ads of the World as a Canadian film entry in the electronic devices category, according to Ads of the World, which provides metadata confirmation but no extended creative review. The creative approach aligns with what Clapboard's archive describes as an emphasis on inclusivity, family, and community mediated through technology, a tonal register that requires restrained, observational filmmaking to avoid sentiment tipping into sentimentality.
The 'Lunar New Year' campaign recorded 57,463 views and 6 likes on the platform where it was archived, with no published comments, according to Clapboard. These figures represent the verified engagement data available for this campaign in the public domain.
The view count indicates the film achieved meaningful initial distribution, reaching a five-figure audience without evidence of significant paid amplification in the archived record. The like-to-view ratio, however, is extremely low, which suggests the content reached a broad audience that did not convert to active engagement at the level that culturally resonant campaigns in this category typically generate. Clapboard's editorial assessment places the campaign's score at 59 out of 100, reflecting a work that executes its strategic brief competently and occupies a genuine cultural moment but does not yet demonstrate the creative distinctiveness or audience activation that would elevate it to benchmark status within Canadian multicultural advertising.
No verified third-party performance data, media spend figures, or brand-lift results for the 'Lunar New Year' campaign are publicly available from Fido, Rogers, or Ethnicity Matters at the time of writing. No awards entries or jury recognitions for this specific campaign are documented across available sources. Structurally, the campaign's greatest measurable asset is its strategic positioning: by publishing in January 2025 and targeting the Lunar New Year moment directly, Fido and Rogers claimed cultural territory in Canada's telecommunications market that neither Bell nor Telus visibly occupied with comparable specificity during the same period, according to Clapboard's archive review.
The 'Lunar New Year' campaign is a 2025 Canadian film by Ethnicity Matters for Fido and Rogers. It focuses on Chinese newcomers in Canada maintaining cultural traditions and family connections through electronic devices and telecommunications during the Lunar New Year period, positioning the brands as enablers of cultural belonging.
Ethnicity Matters, a Canadian multicultural marketing agency, created the campaign. Bobby Sahni of Ethnicity Matters shared details of the work following its January 2025 publication. The agency has a documented prior relationship with Rogers and Fido through earlier multicultural campaigns, including Diwali-themed work in 2023.
The campaign received a Clapboard Score of 59 out of 100, according to Clapboard's editorial assessment. The score reflects competent strategic execution and genuine cultural relevance within Canada's telecommunications market, while indicating that the creative work has not yet reached the distinction level of top-performing multicultural campaigns in its category.
Fido and Rogers claimed distinct cultural territory in Canada by targeting Chinese newcomers during Lunar New Year 2025. No comparable culturally specific Lunar New Year campaign from Bell or Telus is documented in available archives for the same period, giving the Rogers-Fido programme a measurable first-mover advantage in this audience segment.
The campaign recorded 57,463 views and 6 likes on its archived platform, with no published comments, according to Clapboard. The view count confirms meaningful initial distribution, but the low like-to-view ratio suggests the film did not generate the active audience engagement typically associated with high-performing culturally targeted advertising in Canada.
Yes. The 2025 Lunar New Year film extends a multicultural marketing programme that Fido and Rogers previously built around Diwali campaigns with Ethnicity Matters, including a 2023 initiative for Fido. Expanding the cultural calendar to include Chinese New Year signals a deliberate broadening of audience targeting across distinct communities within the Canadian market.
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