Sands Resorts Macao's 'That's The Taste' film by Saatchi & Saatchi featured David Beckham hunting Macao's backstreets for egg tarts, reaching 5 million views
ARCHIVEHow Sands Resorts Macao Made David Beckham Chase Egg Tarts
"That's The Taste" is a 2018 micro-movie campaign created by Saatchi & Saatchi for Sands Resorts Macao, released in China in August 2018, in which David Beckham and a cast of six Chinese and Hong Kong celebrities pursue Macao's iconic egg tarts through the destination's backstreets as a vehicle for authentic travel storytelling.
Sands Resorts Macao published the campaign in China in August 2018. Rather than constructing a conventional resort advertisement showcasing rooms, pools, and gaming floors, the brand and Saatchi & Saatchi Greater China chose to frame Macao itself — specifically its street-level culinary culture — as the true protagonist. The egg tart, a pastry rooted in Macao's Portuguese colonial heritage and beloved across Mainland China and Hong Kong, became the narrative device that pulled audiences through the city's alleyways and local life.
The film featured David Beckham alongside six regional celebrities: Luo Lan, Lam Suet, Liu Yan, Cao Tu Jun, Qiao Shan, and Yang Di, as reported by The Drum. This ensemble cast bridged multiple audience segments within China, pairing Beckham's global recognition with the cultural familiarity of well-known Chinese and Hong Kong personalities. The result was a scripted micro-movie format that sat comfortably in the entertainment content Chinese audiences were already consuming on social and streaming platforms, rather than interrupting that experience as an advertisement would. The campaign contained one primary film asset and was accompanied by a WeChat mini-app that allowed users to create their own Macao egg tart experience, extending the campaign's interactive reach beyond passive viewing. Clapboard's editorial archive assigned the campaign a score of 63 out of 100.
Sands Resorts Macao operates inside one of the world's most competitive integrated-resort markets. In China's outbound and domestic tourism landscape, Macao held a structurally advantageous position in 2018: the destination recorded approximately 8.5 million visitor arrivals in Q1 2018 alone, up approximately 9% year over year, with Mainland China arrivals growing approximately 13% in the same period, according to the Macao Government Tourism Office as cited by Gov Mo. Average length of stay reached approximately 2.2 days, increasing by 0.1 day year over year, according to the same source. Gross gaming revenue for Macao reached approximately MOP 74.3 billion in Q1 2018, up approximately 21% year over year, according to ggrasia.com, signalling a destination economy in strong expansion.
Within that expanding market, Sands Resorts Macao faced direct competition from SJM Holdings and MGM China, among others operating within the Macao integrated-resort landscape. The strategic imperative for Sands was not simply to capture visitors already bound for Macao, but to differentiate the brand as a gateway to Macao's cultural identity — not merely its gaming and hospitality infrastructure. Saatchi & Saatchi Greater China's insight was direct: Chinese audiences, particularly younger Mainland consumers, were increasingly motivated by experiential and food-driven travel, and were consuming entertainment content in short-form video formats at scale across platforms including WeChat and Weibo. By casting David Beckham — a figure carrying aspirational global cachet well-established in the Chinese market — alongside regionally beloved Chinese and Hong Kong celebrities, the campaign spoke simultaneously to aspiration and cultural belonging. The egg tart served as a culturally specific, emotionally resonant anchor that made Macao feel like a living destination rather than a resort brochure.
"That's The Taste" was structured as a scripted micro-movie rather than a conventional travel commercial. Production credits for the campaign are not publicly documented in full, though The Drum confirmed the creative work was produced by Saatchi & Saatchi Greater China, identifying the agency as the creative originator behind both the film and the accompanying WeChat mini-app experience, as reported by The Drum. The decision to adopt the micro-movie format was itself a creative and strategic one: in China in 2018, micro-movies had established themselves as a legitimate entertainment genre on digital platforms, carrying audience expectations of narrative, character, and comedic or emotional resolution rather than the product-first logic of advertising.
The film used Macao's physical environment — its narrow backstreets, colonial architecture, and local vendors — as production design rather than set dressing. This approach positioned the destination as something to be discovered rather than showcased, aligning the visual grammar of the piece with the travel curiosity the campaign sought to trigger in Chinese audiences. David Beckham's presence introduced a fish-out-of-water comic tension, a globally recognisable figure navigating a hyper-local culinary quest, which gave the film its propulsive energy. The six Chinese and Hong Kong co-stars — Luo Lan, Lam Suet, Liu Yan, Cao Tu Jun, Qiao Shan, and Yang Di — provided comedic counterpoint and cultural grounding, ensuring the film did not read as a foreign celebrity endorsement but as a shared cultural adventure. The WeChat mini-app extension translated the film's egg tart premise into an interactive user touchpoint, demonstrating that the campaign's creative thinking extended into platform-native execution rather than stopping at the film itself.
ARCHIVENo verified campaign-specific effectiveness data for "That's The Taste" is publicly available across sales lift, occupancy impact, brand awareness shift, or return on advertising spend. No verified entries or wins for this campaign appear in the records of Cannes Lions, the Effie Awards, The One Show, D&AD, the Clio Awards, the Webby Awards, or WARC Awards.
One concrete distributional signal is documented. The campaign generated more than 5 million views in its first hour among Chinese audiences, according to The Drum. That figure, reported by The Drum on August 6, 2018, in coverage by Danielle Long, Acting APAC Editor, points to a release mechanism — almost certainly across Chinese social and video platforms — that aligned with how Mainland audiences discover and share entertainment content. Reaching that volume within a single hour is not a passive outcome; it indicates either significant platform seeding, strong earned sharing behaviour, or a combination of both, likely amplified by the celebrity ensemble's own social footprints across Chinese platforms.
Structurally, the campaign's effectiveness rests on three decisions: choosing a format audiences would choose to watch rather than skip, anchoring the brand to a culturally specific and emotionally legible object in the egg tart, and casting a combination of global and regional talent capable of generating organic sharing across multiple audience segments inside China. Whether those structural advantages translated into measurable booking or awareness uplift for Sands Resorts Macao remains undocumented in the public record. Clapboard's editorial archive assigned the campaign a score of 63 out of 100, reflecting competent and culturally attuned execution within the broader context of destination marketing in China.
"That's The Taste" is a 2018 micro-movie created by Saatchi & Saatchi Greater China for Sands Resorts Macao. Released in China in August 2018, the film features David Beckham and six Chinese and Hong Kong celebrities chasing Macao's iconic egg tarts through local backstreets as a form of destination storytelling for Chinese audiences.
David Beckham carries strong aspirational recognition among Chinese consumers. Casting him alongside six regionally familiar Chinese and Hong Kong celebrities — including Luo Lan, Lam Suet, and Yang Di — allowed Sands Resorts Macao to bridge global aspiration with local cultural familiarity, ensuring the film resonated across multiple audience segments within China simultaneously.
The campaign generated more than 5 million views in its first hour among Chinese audiences, according to The Drum. That figure was reported by Danielle Long, Acting APAC Editor of The Drum, on August 6, 2018, indicating strong platform seeding or earned sharing behaviour driven by the campaign's celebrity ensemble.
Saatchi & Saatchi Greater China created the campaign. The agency produced both the scripted micro-movie film and a companion WeChat mini-app that allowed users to engage interactively with the egg tart premise, extending the campaign beyond passive viewing into a platform-native experience for audiences in China.
Clapboard's editorial archive assigned "That's The Taste" a score of 63 out of 100. This score reflects the platform's assessment of the campaign's creative and strategic execution and is an editorial archive rating, not an industry award from organisations such as Cannes Lions or the Effie Awards.
Macao recorded approximately 8.5 million visitor arrivals in Q1 2018, with Mainland China arrivals growing approximately 13% year over year, according to gov.mo. Sands Resorts Macao's campaign launched into this expanding market, competing against integrated-resort rivals including SJM Holdings and MGM China for Chinese visitor attention and destination preference.
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