Background
Atour's sleep pillow on WeChat Video Channels. The platform was brand new no benchmarks, no industry playbook, algorithm was a black box. Nobody on the team had cracked it.
Insight
Nobody buys a pillow because they want a pillow.
They buy it because they're lying awake at 2am. Because their neck hurts. Because they're exhausted from living alone and can't switch off.
I went wide on research social media, tiktok, forums, international platforms too, because sleep anxiety isn't a Chinese-specific problem. The complaints were the same everywhere.
5 pain points: insomnia, neck and shoulder tension, work stress, solo-living anxiety, emotional exhaustion.
What I did
Built a creative matrix: five pain angles, four video formats (unboxing, UGC testimonial, lifestyle, emotional narrative). Wrote every script, directed the content team. Then solved the
platform problem: new account has no history, algorithm can't learn. Solution push high bids early with hard budget caps, force initial exposure, give it time. Adjusted bids max 3x per day, never more than 50% per move. Took a full month before data appeared. Winner turned out to be UGC-native video with the sleep anxiety hook. Not the polished content. The one that looked real.
Result
Channel stable by month three. Grew to 50% of total Wechat ads spend. Wrote up the methodology
how to launch on Video Channels, what the algorithm responds to and shared it as internal training.
The channel ran stable for the full year.