Julie's Biscuits launched 'The Worst Feng Shui Master' for CNY 2022, a branded film by GOVT Singapore that won Silver at the 2022 Gong Awards for its
Julie's Biscuits Bets on a Failed Fortune Teller for CNY 2022
Julie's Biscuits launched 'The Worst Feng Shui Master' on January 1, 2022, a narrative branded film created by GOVT Singapore that follows a disgraced feng shui master whose every prediction fails, and who ultimately finds meaning not in restored fortune but in enduring hope — positioning the Malaysian snack brand as a symbol of resilience during the Chinese Lunar New Year.
The campaign centres on Master Wong, a feng shui practitioner whose predictions repeatedly collapse after he loses his lucky jade ring. Ridiculed by those around him, he eventually encounters an unexpected opportunity connected to Julie's Biscuits, allowing the brand to enter the story not as a product but as a quiet companion to perseverance. The approximately ten-minute film format, rare in confectionery advertising, signals a deliberate investment in long-form emotional storytelling over conventional thirty-second brand messaging.
Julie's Biscuits is produced by Perfect Food Manufacturing (M) Sdn Bhd, a Malaysian company, according to available brand records. The campaign was published across digital platforms in the Malaysian market and surrounding Southeast Asian region, drawing on the cultural weight of Chinese New Year — a festival period when consumers are especially receptive to narratives about renewal, luck, and collective support. The film accumulated over 102,000 views and 943 likes, as documented at the time of submission. Clapboard rates this campaign 73 out of 100, reflecting its creative ambition and cultural precision.
Julie's Biscuits identified a strategic gap in how confectionery brands typically approach Chinese Lunar New Year advertising. Most CNY campaigns default to abundance imagery — golden palettes, family feasts, and aspirational prosperity — yet GOVT Singapore recognised that audiences in Malaysia and across Southeast Asia were living through a period of collective uncertainty in early 2022, making conventional celebration messaging feel tone-deaf rather than uplifting.
The insight driving 'The Worst Feng Shui Master' is precise: feng shui, as a cultural system, is built on the belief that fortune can be influenced and redirected. By choosing a protagonist who is professionally terrible at the very practice meant to control luck, the campaign subverts that belief in a way that is disarming rather than cynical. The resulting message — that hope matters even when outcomes cannot be guaranteed — carries far more emotional weight than a straightforward prosperity narrative. As Tzy Horng Sai, Director of Julie's Biscuits, noted via marketech-apac.com on January 11, 2022, the campaign sought to encourage people "to be agents of hope to one another as the new year begins."
The global biscuits market was valued at approximately US$117.11 billion in 2022, according to marketresearchfuture.com, with a projected compound annual growth rate of around 5.0 percent through 2029. In this competitive landscape, Julie's faces pressure from multinational players including Mondelēz International, which holds an estimated eight to twelve percent global market share through brands such as Oreo, according to marknteladvisors.com, and Nestlé, which competes across the same snack and confectionery aisles throughout Southeast Asia. Against rivals with substantially larger media budgets, Julie's strategic choice to invest in culturally specific, emotionally sophisticated storytelling represents a defensible point of differentiation that pure product advertising cannot replicate.
'The Worst Feng Shui Master' is directed by Tzy Horng Sai, who also serves as Director of Julie's Biscuits, a dual role that reflects the unusual degree of brand ownership over the film's creative vision. The creative lead on the agency side is Kevin Joseph, Associate Creative Director at GOVT Singapore, whose involvement is documented by marketech-apac.com. Joseph articulated the film's intent directly: "This film aims to show everyone that coming back from hard times is possible, especially with help from our fellow members of society," as reported by marketech-apac.com on January 11, 2022.
The decision to produce a film of approximately ten minutes — substantially longer than the standard branded content format — is itself a craft statement. Long-form branded entertainment in the confectionery and snacks category is uncommon, and sustaining audience engagement across that duration requires disciplined scriptwriting, confident direction, and a story structure capable of holding emotional escalation. The script builds through repeated failure rather than a single dramatic reversal, which means the comedy and pathos must be calibrated carefully to keep Master Wong sympathetic rather than merely buffoonish.
The campaign's bilingual framing — presented in Chinese with supporting English copy — reflects the linguistic reality of the Malaysian market, where code-switching between Mandarin, English, and Malay is culturally normative. The tagline structure reinforces the narrative's emotional logic: spoiler declared upfront (he cannot change his fortune), immediately reframed (but hope is what he keeps). This inversion technique compresses the entire thematic arc of the film into two sentences, functioning as both trailer copy and philosophical proposition. The production sits within a lineage of Malaysian CNY branded film-making that values character-driven storytelling over spectacle, a tradition Julie's has leaned into with increasing creative confidence.
'The Worst Feng Shui Master' received four wins and one finalist citation at the 2022 Gong Awards. The campaign took Silver in Film (Online), Bronze for Best Use of Cultural Insights in Film and Branded Content, Bronze for Film and Branded Content: Script, and Bronze for Film and Branded Content: Direction, with an additional Finalist recognition for Script. The breadth of these categories — spanning creative craft, direction, and cultural strategy — indicates that the awards body evaluated the work as consistently strong across both executional and conceptual dimensions rather than excelling in one area at the expense of others.
No additional verified third-party performance data beyond view and engagement counts is publicly available for this campaign. The documented figures — over 102,000 views and 943 likes recorded at submission — are meaningful for a long-form branded film in a specialist cultural moment, where audience self-selection tends to produce engaged rather than passive viewers. The 38 comments logged against the film suggest active audience response rather than passive consumption.
Structurally, the campaign's effectiveness rests on the coherence between its cultural insight, narrative execution, and brand integration. Julie's Biscuits enters the story at a moment of genuine emotional need rather than as product placement, which means recall is tied to story memory rather than logo repetition — a more durable form of brand association. The Clapboard Score of 73 out of 100 reflects this balance of creative ambition and measurable industry recognition.
'The Worst Feng Shui Master' is a CNY 2022 branded film by Julie's Biscuits about a feng shui practitioner whose predictions repeatedly fail after losing his lucky jade ring. Created by GOVT Singapore and directed by Tzy Horng Sai, the approximately ten-minute film argues that hope has value even when fortune cannot be guaranteed, positioning Julie's as a brand companion to resilience.
GOVT Singapore created the campaign for Julie's Biscuits. Kevin Joseph served as Associate Creative Director at GOVT Singapore, with Tzy Horng Sai — Director of Julie's Biscuits — also credited as the film's director, as documented by marketech-apac.com on January 11, 2022.
The campaign won four awards at the 2022 Gong Awards: Silver in Film (Online), Bronze for Best Use of Cultural Insights in Film and Branded Content, Bronze for Film and Branded Content: Script, and Bronze for Film and Branded Content: Direction, plus a Finalist citation for Script, according to Clapboard's editorial records.
Feng shui carries deep cultural significance in Chinese New Year tradition as a system for redirecting fortune. By centring the story on a practitioner who fails at that very purpose, Julie's Biscuits and GOVT Singapore created a narrative about hope under uncertainty — more emotionally resonant than conventional CNY prosperity imagery, particularly given the collective difficulties of early 2022.
The film recorded over 102,000 views and 943 likes at the time of submission, according to Clapboard's records. For a long-form branded film of approximately ten minutes in a specialist cultural moment, these figures reflect a meaningfully engaged audience, supported by 38 documented comments indicating active rather than passive viewership.
Julie's Biscuits is produced by Perfect Food Manufacturing (M) Sdn Bhd, a Malaysian company. The brand competes in a global biscuits market valued at approximately US$117.11 billion in 2022, according to marketresearchfuture.com, facing multinational rivals including Mondelēz International and Nestlé across Southeast Asian retail channels.
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