Maxis brings lion dance to life with a talking lion and AR red packets

If lions could talk, they'd sound like this: "Train so hard. Harder than hard! And more than harder than hard, ah!"
That's just part of a dialogue from Ah Huat the lion, who is the main star in Malaysian telco Maxis' latest Chinese New Year commercial to promote its HuatAR Ang Pao app.
The app helps bring the lion to life using augmented reality (AR). Users can download the Maxis HuatAR app and collect unique red packets from any Maxis store. After scanning the red packet, it will then activate an interactive lion that users can engage with.
And it's not just the AR app that allows the lion to be interactive. Ah Huat the lion comes to life too in a pretty dramatic interview in the Maxis commercial.
In fluent Hokkien and somewhat gangster mannerisms, he laments about how hard he trains to dance at offices, factories and homes during the busy Lunar New Year period. Because he can't be everywhere at the same time due to his busy schedule, he introduces the HuatAR app so that "whenever, wherever you are, I will be there".
He also says the app allows people to take photos with the digital version of him and asks people to share the photos with their "ah ma, lao bei (father), lao bu (mother) and aunty."
[embed]https://www.facebook.com/maxis/videos/10155700712974681/[/embed]
Ah Huat is in fact part of the Kun Seng Keng Lion and Dragon Dance Association, reported Marketing Interactive, and he definitely appeals to many with over 955,000 views and close to 10,000 shares since the video was posted on Facebook last Friday (Feb 2).
For the Chinese New Year campaign, Maxis worked with Ensemble Worldwide, the creative agency for IPG Mediabrands Malaysia. It also worked with The Ministry Experience, who built the app from scratch.
The Ministry Experience told Marketing Interactive that in order to replicate the lion dance movements as realistically as possible, the agency had to conduct in-depth research into studying the moves. They said that they also included pet-like behaviours and animated movements to have a mixture of "traditional and and millennial interactions."
The HuatAR app is currently available in Google Play Store. It will be available on the Apple App Store this week.
Looks like Ah Huat the lion can finally take a break, thanks to technology.
klim@sph.com.sg