I Asked You to Shoot an Ad, So Why Did You Make the Whole Internet Burst into Tears?

[One female lead + feel-good career story]

At thirty, Gu Bei was an award-winning advertising director with countless international honors to his name. He was blacklisted for refusing investors' unreasonable demands, then died from overwork.

When he opened his eyes, he was back in a university classroom just before graduation.

Film technology in this world had reached its peak, but its creativity was as barren as a desert.

From the start, he faced hellish difficulty: his graduation project was to design an ad for Shanhe Soda, a domestic brand on the verge of bankruptcy and mocked as tacky.

While his classmates piled on special effects and copied Hollywood, Gu Bei quietly presented a short film called “The Taste.”

No stars. No special effects. Just a clumsy father and a bottle of soda waiting in silence.

At first, nobody paid attention when the ad was released. Then, overnight, it set the whole internet ablaze, racking up billions of views and turning the comments section into an ocean of tears.

“I thought I was watching an ad, but you showed me the regret of my entire life!”

“Dad, I miss you…”

Watching sales skyrocket a hundredfold and seeing the slogan “The mountains and rivers remain, and the taste never changes,” Shanhe Soda's chairman wept like a child in his office. “Please! Make us another one! Name your price!”

From then on, Gu Bei used one “advertising short film” after another to crush the competition with a dimensional advantage.

He made “Live Greatly” for a sports brand, reigniting countless people's dreams.

He made “Everyone's Life Shines in Its Own Way” for a real estate developer, sparking a broader conversation about what “home” means.

One “advertising film” after another took the world by storm. He used other people's money to tell his own stories, and picked up awards from around the globe along the way.

As he held his Oscar statuette, a reporter asked, “Director Gu, what's the secret to your success?”

Gu Bei smiled. “I'm just an ad director who happened to tell a few good stories.”