The encyclopedia · Advertising & PR · Marketing decision · 2025
PETRONAS turned an unspoken family sacrifice into Malaysia's CNY film — a Kancil Silver
PETRONAS's CNY film 'Stay' turned the 1980s practice of giving children to relatives into a tender story — and won Silver at Kancil 2025.
PETRONAS
The solution
Every Chinese New Year, Malaysian brands compete to tell the most memorable festive story, and PETRONAS — known for heartfelt CNY films — faces the hardest brief of all: staying original in a crowded ritual. The 2025 challenge was to make a film that felt fresh, deeply human, and unmistakably its own.
Accenture Song set the year's theme as 'Behind Closed Doors' — stories families share but never say aloud — and anchored the first film in a real 1980s insight: struggling Malaysian families sometimes had to give their children into the care of relatives. 'Stay' follows Xiao Bao, a boy who visits relatives for CNY and slowly learns he will not be going home; the 80s-era cinematography and tight close-ups turn a private sacrifice into a universal one.
The film premiered on 22 January 2025 on PETRONAS's YouTube and Facebook, directed by Caleb Huang and shot in rural Kuala Selangor. It won the Silver Kancil in Film (Online): Single at the Kancil Awards 2025, keeping PETRONAS's annual film among Malaysia's most recognised pieces of festive advertising.
Why it worked
- A taboo family practice gave the film a truth competitors can't imitate
- The 1980s setting made the sacrifice feel historical, not like modern-day poverty porn
- PETRONAS's long-running CNY ritual means the audience arrives expecting emotion, so the film only needs to deepen it
- Premiering on owned channels kept the whole story under the brand's control
What can be applied
When every competitor tells the same seasonal story, win on truth nobody else will touch: an insight from real family life makes a festive film impossible to copy.
Aftermath
'Stay' opened PETRONAS's 2025 festive series under the 'Behind Closed Doors' theme, and at the Kancil Awards 2025 PETRONAS was named Advertiser of the Year. The film continued a tradition that has made PETRONAS's CNY web films a fixture of Malaysian holiday media and a benchmark other brands measure themselves against.
Sources
- PETRONAS Premieres CNY Film 'Stay', A Story About Love and Sacrifice
- PETRONAS CNY 2025 - STAY — Silver Film (Online): Single, Kancil Awards 2025
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